Cleveland botanical garden glasshouse | Cleveland, Ohio

The Cleveland Botanical Garden is one of the many jewels of University Circle in Cleveland, and now it sparkles again! Tec Studio completed full lighting design and control system design for the 18,000 square foot Glasshouse originally constructed in 2003. The Glasshouse is divided into an arid Madagascar habitat and a tropical Costa Rican habitat complete with 350 species of exotic plants and 50 different types of butterflies, birds, reptiles and amphibians within the space.

The new LED system includes both upper level color-changing luminaires as well as new midlevel and low level LED landscape lighting. Lighting controls that are simple on the user side allow the staff to set scenes - visitors may experience sunrise or sunset, take a moonlit stroll, or walk through the dark of night. Other scenes can be set for holiday and special events.

Challenges included careful fixture selection that could withstand the corrosive reverse osmosis system built into the Costa Rican habitat. Finally, the landscape lighting didn’t always get placed in the intended location due to the tree roots, but alternate locations worked just as well.

The new system has a connected load of only 0.41 watts/sq. ft., far below the allowed 1.06 watts/sq.ft. per the current energy standard in the State of Ohio. The project was completed within a 6 month time frame to allow continuing operation within the space and completion by the holiday GLOW event in 2017.

Garden of Cleveland | LD+A, July 2018 (p.37)

Project Profile: Cleveland Botanical Garden; Putting a Regional Jewel in a New Light | Properties Magazine, March 2018 (p. 68)

Photos by: Scott Pease, AIAP | Pease Photography