Southland Christian Church installed more than 160 Incito LED recessed downlight and cylinder luminaires from Gotham, a division of Acuity Brands, Inc. to meet theatrical house lighting needs while delivering cost savings over Southland's traditional tungsten-based house lighting systems installed in their other facilities.
A few years ago the church purchased an abandoned mall in Lexington, Ky. to serve as its third campus, which would feature classrooms, open space for public gathering and a 2,800-seat auditorium for worship. As part of the renovation and up-fit process, the church needed a house lighting system that could be both pendant-mount and recessed, and illuminate an area with a wide range of ceiling heights from 12-feet to 40-feet.
“Theatrical or performance-space lighting designers like me want full dimming,” says Matt Cooper, lighting designer for Southland Christian Church. “And, I want [dimming] to be smooth. And when I say smooth – I want it to act like tungsten [lighting]. The fact that Incito LED downlights provided dimming from 100 percent down to less than 1 percent, and the fact that [the dimming] was a smooth curve was advantage number one.” The second advantage, according to Matt Cooper, was the 2,700K color temperature of the Incito downlights, which mimics the warm feel of tungsten lighting.
According to an announcement from Gotham, the Incito LED downlights provide more performance options than its tungsten lighting counterpart, with a broader portfolio of distribution and light output features. The company says Incito LED downlights are available in lumen packages from 2,000 to 6,500, 10-beam spreads from 20- to 70-degrees, and four color temperatures from 2,700 to 4,000K.
Additionally, Incito LED downlights are fully RDM (Remote Device Management) compatible, enabling individual control of each fixture. The downlights are also DMX (Digital MultipleX) compatible and integrate with the church's theatrical lighting controls.
Incito LED luminaires “allowed us to reduce down to basically just 20-amp relays,” says Cooper. This eliminates the need for large 96-channel theatrical dimming racks that Southland's other locations use. His estimate of the costs savings for hardware and labor attributed to the lighting installation: “$50,000 to $60,000.”
In addition to Incito LED luminaires, the church installed a variety of lighting and controls solutions from the Acuity Brands portfolio, including Avante surface-mount luminaires, DOM LED downlighting and RT5 volumetric fixtures from Lithonia Lighting. Sensor Switch occupancy sensors were also installed throughout the facility to reduce energy usage in unoccupied spaces.
