Sundance Square, Texas

Grupo MCI together with SL- Rash, a German company specialise in special buildings and lightweight structures, has just completed the design, development and installation of four large umbrellas in the newly opened Sundance Square, located in Forth Worth, Texas. Sundance Square is the new heart of downtown Fort Worth and attracts more than 10 million visitors each year.

Each umbrella - the only ones of their kind in the United States - measures 12x12 m by 10 meters high and consists of a telescopic mast, folding steel frame and a Teflon fabric capable of handling high wind speeds in open and closed positions.

The umbrellas will react automatically to changing weather conditions, and will provide their own sort of entertainment in addition to protection from the sun and the rain. Each umbrella comes equipped with multi-colored LED lights from Grupo MCI that will be lit up at night.

The project for Grupo MCI was to develop a LED lighting system to be integrated into the 10 meters high telescopic mast, ensuring a uniform light and high performance. Our R&D department developed a 100% Custom Made RGBW projector according to the customer's needs.

The final design of the product was a projector of 520 mm high with a total of 6 Line Grazer 300 mm, 72W consumption and a protection rate IP66 to ensure that the dust in the Texas area will not affect the lights.

The luminaire design is segmented into two parts; at the top of the luminaire is placed 3 Line Grazer RGBW providing indirect light into the membranes of Teflon fabric sunshade , and at the bottom were installed 3 Line Grazer warm white to provide direct light toward the square.

Each Liner Grazer has 8 LEDs 1.5 W and asymmetrical Swarovski lenses especially designed for this projector. The lenses were designed to distribute the light more evenly and accurately redirect the light to the desired point by the customer.

In total Grupo MCI installed 16 projectors, 4 units per umbrella, providing high visual comfort for the pedestrians visiting the square.

To control the lighting application the communication protocol DMX512-A, often abbreviated as DMX (Digital Multiplex), was used. This protocol is used for installations RGB where you look for colour escalades, sweet or quick dynamics changes even multimedia contents if you have a big number of luminaires.

The finality of those systems is to allow generating different lighting scenes (programs), which can be activated in autonomic way by presence sensors, crepuscule ones, or by time sensors, through programmed events or by users with control keyboard or remote control, Smartphone's, digital screens or wall-pushers simply.