L.A. Cty. Museum of Art (LACMA)

In the heart of Los Angeles, halfway between the ocean and downtown, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) displays over 100,000 objects dating from ancient times to the present. The seven-building complex - which represents the largest art museum in the western United States - is undergoing a 10-year expansion and renovation dubbed "Transformation."

Phase 1 of the project, which is being directed by Pritzker Award-winning architect Renzo Piano, was unveiled in early 2008. It introduces the long-awaited Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), 60,000 square feet of contemporary gallery space on three floors, along with an open-air pavilion.

Piano created an interior plan with galleries on all three levels, so that visitors could experience a vertical gradient of conditions. He wanted daylight to illuminate the top galleries, but merely to provide orientation on lower levels. This created the challenge of using as much natural light as possible for optimal viewing, while protecting invaluable collections from exposure to direct sunlight.

To meet the project requirements, Hunter Douglas Contract developed a system of 160 exterior motorized tension roller shades that they fitted to metal sunshades extending from the angular spires. The vertical shades were positioned on the north side of each metal sunshade panel. When deployed, they control the amount of light penetrating through to the gallery space below. A custom hardware headbox was designed to hold the motor and wires in one neat location, rendering a view clean of wires from the 3rd floor gallery up through the glass ceilings.