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Mapparium

Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

The Mapparium™, the three-story stained-glass globe located in The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity™ in Boston, has been one of the city's most unique and popular attractions since its opening in1935. Designed and built by Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill, it features 605 curved glass panels painted with a map of the world on their interior surface and fitted within a bronze framework. Visitors to the Mapparium cross a glass bridge into the heart of the 30-foot-in-diameter sphere, where they view a multimedia presentation from within the giant globe glowing with a revolutionary intelligent LED-based lighting technology from Color Kinetics Incorporated.

This multi-sensory presentation, "A World of Ideas," replaces one that had been in use for over half a century and that incorporated 300 plain white, 60-watt light bulbs as its illumination component. Groups of the bulbs were clicked on and off to highlight geographic regions during the original exhibit presentation. When the Mary Baker Eddy Library underwent its recent four-year refurbishment, they took the opportunity to explore a wealth of new technologies that would update the Mapparium experience for visitors.

The result? This three-story stained glass globe now glows with over 16 million possible colors provided by 206 Color Kinetics ColorBlast fixtures, ringed in three levels around the outside of the sphere. The advanced control capabilities offered by Color Kinetics technology enable the Mapparium to use lighting as a major storytelling element, creating a variety of intricate lighting effects that are all digitally synchronized to the presentation's audio and video tracks. Previously, countries and continents simply lit up at the appropriate time; today colors suddenly appear, ebb and seem to float across the glass, helping to tell the story of how ideas have expanded and shaped the world over time. In addition to its all-around tech wizardry, the Color Kinetics system offers an incredibly energy efficient lighting solution, requiring only half the power of the original incandescent bulbs.