Standing tall in the Bogota skyline
Torre Colpatria is a 50-story skyscraper located in the busy downtown area of Bogotá, Colombia, and was once the tallest building in the country and the second tallest building in South America. The tower has been an icon of the Bogotá skyline since construction was completed in 1979.
In 1998, the tower's designers began experimenting with color-changing exterior lighting, beginning with 36 xenon lights. Throughout the years, Torre Colpatria has undergone many lighting updates, and had previously been fitted with ColorBlast 12 LED wash lights from Color Kinetics.
But the tower's owners had even grander aspirations for Torre Colpatria. To make the 196 m (643 ft) structure truly come alive against the night sky, they wanted an innovative LED solution that could transform its four sides into a massive video matrix. Signify Colombia and Color Kinetics were able to provide the perfect solution with iColor Flex LMX, (now specified with Flex Compact gen3, RGB) strands of flexible, high-intensity, full-color LED nodes designed for extraordinary effects and expansive installations.
Mounting tracks were used to secure 812 50-node Flex strands to the building's façade. The strands were placed 300 mm (11.8 in) apart vertically, and 1.5 m (4.9 ft) apart horizontally. The result is surreal and stunning: Torre Colpatria is ablaze with pulsating light and capable of full video and real-time SMS transmissions via three networked Pharos LPC X controllers.
Dancing silhouettes, spinning sunflowers, and New Year's Eve countdowns are just a few of the images that Torre Colpatria has displayed. But the pairing of Flex luminaires with the high channel capacity and advanced pixel mapping capabilities of the controllers opens an endless realm of lighting possibilities.
"Torre Colpatria's design was a merger of ideas, creativity, and the objectives of the Lighting Applications Solutions and projects team, fulfilling the client's request and giving him more than he expected," said Diana López, Lighting Application Specialist for Signify Colombia.
