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Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings in the Vatican have been brought to life with innovative light emitting diode (LED) lighting. The new installation, developed by the EU-funded LED4ART project, enables visitors to better appreciate the paintings and frescos, protects the artwork from damage and uses significantly less electricity than conventional lighting rigs.

This demonstration installation shows how museums and galleries can install flexible and effective lighting solutions that are also incredibly energy efficient. By replacing the Sistine Chapel's existing lighting system with the latest in LED technology, the project partners have been able to achieve electricity savings of up to 90 %.

LEDs based on inorganic semiconductors are incredibly efficient and offer a greener alternative to conventional lighting. They are mercury-free, have a long lifetime and could enable Europe to achieve significant energy savings if rolled out extensively.

By switching to LED lights, Europe could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use by up to 50 % in just over 20 years. Making the switch is therefore one of the most cost-effective and simple ways to tackle global warming using existing technology, resulting in a significant contribution to CO2 reduction at European level.

There was also of course an important conservation aspect to LED4ART. The project wanted to demonstrate how LED lighting can play an important role in the protection of artwork, as it is gentler than other forms of artificial light. At the same time, LED offers fantastic levels of illumination, ensuring that artwork can be fully appreciated by visitors.

This made the Vatican City's Sistine Chapel the ideal venue for LED4ART. World-famous for its 15th century frescos by the likes of Botticelli and Perugino and Michelangelo's ceiling masterpiece, the chapel receives millions of visitors every year. Ultraviolet light has been fading the colour of these 500-year old paintings for decades, so a practical solution was needed that would enable people to enjoy the paintings in a more protective environment.

The solution was to switch the chapel's lighting from conventional bulbs to LED. The LED4ART project installed around 7 000 LEDs in the chapel, concealed beneath a ledge that runs the length of the room. The colour spectrum of each light was custom-made to ensure that the light emitted was as close as possible to natural light; there are no disproportionate blues or reds that might affect viewing.

The LED installation ensures that the artwork is uniformly illuminated, and that the frescos can be appreciated in their entirety. The flexibility of the installation means that each light can be adjusted to give the impression that the chapel is continuously bathed in natural light.

Explore further: Sistine chapel dazzles after technological makeover

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LED lighting offers a cost-effective solution to protect artwork

Monday, November 10, 2014 - 6:23pm

There is a massive Arctic air mass that is going to bring frigid air impacting 230 million people north and east of the Borderland. Our area will just catch the edge of this icy air, but Las Cruces should see the first freeze of the year Thursday morning and El Paso into the chilly upper 30's. This got me thinking about how I can keep warm and save on my heating bills. I did a little research and here are some tips I found and I thought I would share.

According to the U.S.. Department of Energy, drafts can waste 5% to 30% of your energy use. Start simple and adopt that old Great Depression fixture -- the draft snake, which you can easily make yourself. Just place a rolled bath towel under a drafty door, or make a more attractive DIY draft snake with crazy eyes, felt tongues and the like. You can use any scraps of fabric even old neckties and fill with sand or kitty litter for heft. Walk around your home on a chilly night and, using bare hands and feet, feel around your doors, windows, lights, and switch plates for cold air. If you detect cold air leaking in, this means that your warm air is going outside. You need to add insulation to these areas, or seal them using weather-stripping, caulk, or spray foam.

2. Install plastic film on all your windows

Install a plastic window installation film on all windows. This type of winterization is known as window insulation. When applied, the plastic film prevents cold air from entering a home while keeping heated air inside of the home. Plastic window insulation film is available at any major home improvement retail store. To install, clean the window, and measure its height and width. Add 2 inches to the window measurements, and tape the plastic film to the edges of the window frame. Use a hair dryer to secure the plastic film to the window glass, and carefully cut away the excess film from the window.

3. Reverse Your Ceiling Fan

Reverse the rotation of your ceiling fan blades from counterclockwise to clockwise; most ceiling fans have a switch for this. When a home heater is running, hot air rises and rests at the ceiling of the room. When you reverse the blade circulation of a ceiling fan, the fan blades force heated air down the walls and circulate heated air throughout the room, according to Dan's Fan City.

4. Check Your Furnace Filter

Before you start running your furnace, check the filter it may need to be replaced. If your furnace filter looks dirty, then definitely replace it. During the winter months, I change my furnace filter every 4 to 6 weeks. Having a clean filter helps your furnace run more efficiently, which can save you energy and money. According to Planet Green, a clean filter can save you 5% to 15% on your heating bill. Also if needed, consider upgrading your thermostat to a programmable thermostat. Installation is easy, and the ability to program your thermostat to only work when you need it can save more money on heating during the long winter months.

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Cold Air is on the Way! Winterizing Tips for your Home

The new East Library is slated to open on Saturday, Nov. 22. One of three works by artist Ray Chi is in. Another arrives this week and the third will be installed in spring. kathryn e. martin's installation uses re-purposed wood from trees that stood on Cramer Street. The service desk is a question mark. Artist Santiago Cucullu used photos submitted by the public for his two adhesive murals. The kids' area will have a Duplo table and the windows will have a film that lets in light but softens the view of the adjacent parking lot. You'll be surprised how little book shelving is in the new library. The teen area has marker boards on the wall. There is comfy -- and easy to clean -- seating throughout. A fireplace makes it feel even more like home. The laptop bars are made of wood claimed from the old library on the site. Lots of natural light in this new library. The community room serves as a reading room but is also available for events and meetings. The channel glass walls will glow at night. The library has plenty of seating. The Standard has four floors of apartments above the library. The one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments have terraces. The building has a number of interesting textures on the exterior. Like this one... ...and this one. The East Library is currently in a temporary location at 2430 N. Murray Ave. Published Nov. 10, 2014 at 1:05 p.m.

When we visited the new East Library space on the ground floor of The Standard on North Avenue in July, the space was mostly undefined.

Despite a few half-finished walls and the shell, there was little to see but drawings and a few nascent details. A quick peek last month showed quite a bit of progress, but nothing quite like how the place looked when we got a tour last week from branch manager Rachel Collins.

One of three installations by Ray Chi is taking shape nicely. Chi's bike rack arrives this week and his third piece will be installed in spring. Insidem kathryn e. martin's art installation using honey locusts cut down outside on Cramer Street -- along with a slice of re-purposed stump from another site -- is in, and so is the time capsule in the wall behind it.

The curvilicious service desk, shaped like a question mark (you get to be the dot), is in place and so is nearly all of the shelving for books. The ceiling above the stacks re-uses ceiling decking from the old East Library building.

"This is definitely part of being green," Collins says. "We were happy to be able to repurpose quite a bit of the ceiling wood."

But what's most interesting, perhaps, is how little shelving there actually is.

"As I'm seeing it unfold I'm really seeing that 21st century library emerge," says Collins. "We aren't a place of just storage anymore. A majority of our library is seating, collaborative space. We've really reduced (the stacks).

"We have three meeting spaces now. I have a feeling the study room nearest to North Avenue is going to be a hot spot.

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Ultra-modern East Library reaches the home stretch

Credit Photograph by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty

This week, Flannery OConnor was inducted into the American Poets Corner at St. John the Divine, the only shrine to American literature in the country (or so a church representative told me). Upon entering the cathedral for the small induction ceremony, attendees were greeted by two gigantic, sparkling sculptures suspended from the ceilingthey are phoenixes, part of an installation by the Chinese artist Xu Bing, but at first glance you might mistake them for peacocks, like the ones that OConnor raised on her familys Georgia farm, Andalusia. Few of the previous Poets Corner inductees were as suited to the ecclesiastical setting as the deeply religious OConnor. (Last years inductee was John Berryman; before that were Katherine Anne Porter, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath, and Tennessee Williams.) Those who spoke during the ceremony stood in front of a shining cross, towering choir stalls, and giant pillars illuminated with glowing yellow lights. A booming echo made them sound like somewhat unintelligible voices from beyond. The effect was fitting, evoking simultaneously OConnors keen sense of the ominous, the numinous, and the ironic.

The first speaker, a priest named George Piggford who wore black robes, gave an erudite talk about OConnors commitment to the sacrament of the Eucharist (she once wrote that it was the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable) and her debt to the Jesuit mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He discussed a passage that OConnor underlined in her copy of de Teilhards The Divine Milieu, which argues that the great sacramental operation does not cease with the transformation of bread into flesh and wine into blood during mass, but continues out through time and space to transform all earthly matter into divine substance. The cosmic Eucharist, Piggford called it. It pictures the worlds corrupt bulk as the starting point of a miracle that will result in a universe that is tangible but pure. (OConnors work is full of nothing if not corrupt bulk.) The Divine Milieu carries the dedication Sic deus dilexit mundum:For those who love the world. Its an ambiguous line. Is it pointing to reform for those who, against Biblical orders, love the things below more than the things above? Or is it offering validation of that love and a way that it might be turned into something holy?

The writer and poet Alfred Corn spoke about letters he exchanged with OConnor when he was in college. After seeing OConnor speak at Emory University, Corn wrote to her to ask about his struggles with unbelief, and she not only responded but carried on a correspondence with him. I dont know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience that you are having right now of unbelief, she wrote to him. She told him to cultivate Christian skepticism. He was nineteen years old at the time; she was thirty-seven. She walked on crutches because of the lupus that had plagued her for almost half her lifeshe would die two years later, at the age of thirty-nine. The chronology of OConnors life in the Library of America edition of her collected works sometimes reads like a list of literary triumphs alternating with medical defeats: Completes story Everything That Rises Must Converge is closely followed by Proposes operation to insert steel hip joints, but Dr. Merrill forbids it. But Corn described her as a person who seemed not much interested in accidents that happen to the body without choice. She was interested, rather, in weighty moral questions, and not much concerned with anything outside the business of soul-making.

Marilyn Nelson, the cathedrals current poet in residence, began her remarks with a tribute to the strength of OConnors mother, Regina, who ran the farm at Andalusia and watched her only child endure the same painful disease that had killed her husband. She sustained Flannery through the difficult years and never lost her faith, Nelson said. The world owes her a debt of thanks. Flannery was close to Regina and dependent on her, but their relationship was complicated and vexed. In Brad Goochs 2010 biography of OConnor, he reports that Regina initially kept Flannerys lupus diagnosis from herFlannery found out she had the disease only after a friend let the secret slip. Dont ever tell Regina you told me, Flannery told the friend. Because if you do she will never tell you anything else. I might want to know something else sometime. Robley Wilson, the former editor of theNorth American Review,once described meeting Miss Regina, who came from an old Catholic family of some social standing, a few years after the OConnors death. On the visit, he and his wife sat one Sunday afternoon in her mansion (one of the few Milledgeville homes not destroyed by Sherman on his march to the sea), drinking sherry and nibbling dainty, thin mints; then joined her the next morning at Andalusia, where we met the famous peacocks and an old couple Regina referred to as my darkies. Many of OConnors most famous stories (A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Good Country People) feature mothers who are intrusive, embarrassing, obliviously racist, and meet unfortunate ends. I wonder what Regina made of them.

Not that the mothers are exceptional. As Nelson pointed out, one of the most consistent features of OConnors fiction is the ugliness of her characters. Nelson quoted Alice Walkers observation, in an essay, that OConnor wrote about the South, and in particular Southern whites, with not a whiff of Magnolia. Black, white, male, and female, OConnors characters, Walker says, are miserable, ugly, narrow-minded, atheistic, and of intense racial smugness and arrogance, with not a graceful, pretty one anywhere who is not, at the same time, a joke. The characters and the world they inhabit are fundamentally twisted, unable to move in a straight line.

Dark is a word often used to describe OConnors fiction. But darkness can have many hues; in twentieth-century literature, it often means emptiness, the horror a nothingness that cant be filled. In OConnor, the looming darkness isnt a void that threatens to swallow you; its the shadow of a piano thats about to fall on your head. OConnors work is dense with corrupt matter in need of a chemical changethe horror isnt in whats missing but in whats there, the evil lying in the earth beneath your feet and in your own bones. Her characters are murdered, cruelly abandoned, or meet with freak accidents. One old woman is gored by a bull. OConnor painted finely textured portraits of the time and place she knew, but she was also writing about prehistoric forces and eternal destinies. In her prayers, which she recorded in adiary, she asks God for goodness and help with her writing she put it in terms of a cosmic realignment: You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earths shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon.

Marilyn Nelson told me that inducting OConnor this year was a fairly easy consensus decision. More contentious was the selection of the quotation for her plaque. The challenge was to tread a line between what Nelson called OConnors grand pronouncements and what Alfred Corn called her southern cracker-barrel humor. The quote they settled on is from a 1953 letter that OConnor wrote to Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, to whom she became close after meeting them at Yaddo. Describing her fathers contracting of Lupus, she writes, there was nothing for it but the undertaker. Her own disease could be controlled somewhat with medication, but its clear she must have frequently been in pain. She has enough energy to write, though, she says, and then she sums up her tussle with her body in the line thats now on her upper-Manhattan memorial: I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.

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Flannery OConnors Manhattan Memorial

(PRWEB) November 06, 2014

Cambridge Architectural, the leader in flexible woven wire mesh for interior and exterior building applications, is expanding its product portfolio and is now offering anodized aluminum mesh in eight colors for interior applications such as ceiling canopies and architectural drapery. Cambridge now offers the largest variety of anodized aluminum mesh patterns and colors in the architectural products industry.

Cambridge anodized aluminum mesh is available in five patterns traditionally offered in stainless steel (Shade, Mid-Shade, Mid-Balance, Diamond and Windsor). Available colors are: light bronze, medium bronze, nickel, black, pearl, blue, red and gold.

We believe this is a game-changer for architects and designers who are looking for a broader selection in lighter weight mesh, said Cambridge Architectural Brand Manager Gary Compton. When you look at whats currently offered in aluminum mesh by other manufacturers, its limited to a single pattern or two with only a couple choices in anodized colors.

More than one-third lighter in weight and requiring less structural support than stainless steel, Cambridge anodized aluminum also provides a warmer finish to the metal, according to Compton, and can be used as a decorative accent, canopy or curtain divider for a variety of interior design uses.

The lighter weight also offers the potential for lower overall costs depending on the project specifications, Compton said.

In addition to offering mesh, Cambridge can provide several sophisticated attachment systems for architectural drapery and ceiling canopies. The choices include Cambridges Curtain Attachment System that attaches flexible metal fabric to carriers and allows the curtain to roll smoothly along the track length as a window treatment or draping space divider. Flexible metal fabrics are hung sideways to maximize a draping effect.

The company plans to further expand its aluminum product line in 2015 to include new attachment systems for tension mounting.

As we continue to build and expand our portfolio of products, customers can expect the same craftsmanship and high quality standards that have been associated with our metal mesh for the last 103 years, Compton said.

Cambridge has produced aluminum mesh previously for custom jobs, including the elevator cabs at Carnegie Hall in New York.

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Cambridge Architectural Rolls Out Anodized Aluminum Mesh for Interior Applications; Available in Five Patterns and ...

Vector Accessories
Are you about to install a Armstrong Vector Ceiling? Watch this video to make sure you are up to speed on the clips accessories that will ensure your Vector Ceiling installation looks ...

By: Armstrong Ceilings

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Vector Accessories - Video

Published: Thursday, 11/6/2014 PEACH WEEKENDER | COVER STORY

BY JANET ROMAKER BLADE STAFF WRITER

Overhead in a Toledo Museum of Art gallery, thousands of silvery gray boxes take flight on origami wings, tucked alongside what creator Pinaree Sanpitakcalls breast clouds.

On view through Jan. 4 in a portion of Canaday Gallery, Anything Can Break is a ceiling installation made up of a steel superstructure and mesh from which the flying cubes and clear glass clouds dangle in what the artist calls accurate randomness. The sculptural work, which took several days to install, is embedded with fiber optics and speakers linked to sensors.

As visitors move around in the space beneath the installation, the space comes alive with soundscapes.

Anything Can Break was first shown at the 2012 Biennale of Sydney in the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and the installation at the Toledo Art Museum is downsized for space reasons.

The exhibition here has about 60 percent of the 5,700 origami boxes made by Sanpitak and an assistant who folded sheets of wrapping paper some silvery shiny with delicate patterns, others plain with a grayish tone into the work of art. About 200 breast-shaped glass pieces were made for Anything Can Break.

The Thai artists focus on the female form in metal, fabric, glass, or ceramic is designed to prompt admiration, rather than shock, and her artwork has earned her accolades and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, including in Los Angeles and Singapore.

Another of her installations will be on display for a year, from this month to next November, at the Toledo Museum of Art where finishing touches to the transparent glass sculpture were being made a few days ago in the Glass Pavilion where staff artists made 632 bubble-within-a-bubble beads that have been tied together to create a hammock, playing on a theme Sanpitak explored in the aftermath of the 2011 flood in her native Thailand.

Sanpitak, 53, who finished high school in the United States, said the glass hammock is an extension of her Hanging by a Thread art work that featured printed material from relief bags delivered during the flood crisis. Fabric, that had been used to fashion cradles in which to carry babies or used as blankets, was cut and tied by the artist to create hammocks.

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Breast artist brings exhibit to art museum

Reesa Potash

A truss is a prefabricated rigid framework used for roof and floor construction. Designed by an engineer, its factory-built, and shipped directly to the building site. Most new homes are built with roof trusses because its efficient and expedient. But plan ahead--you need to order them weeks in advance from your local building company or truss manufacturer.

Parts of a roof truss

Wood members, formed by rafters and ceiling joists, form a roof truss. Think of a triangle--the three sections forming the triangle are the chords. The two upper chords, the rafters, form the upside-down V, and are attached to the bottom chord, the ceiling joist. The structural members, rafters and ceiling joists, of the truss are generally 2-by-4s or 2-by-6s. The diagonal connecting pieces that transfer the weight from one wood element to the next are connected by gussets, a flat metal or plywood plate.

Roof trusses

Roof trusses are designed to carry the load of both the roof and ceiling to the outside walls. Placement is spaced at 24 inches on center. Many types of trusses are available and can be fabricated to fit different roof styles. The W-type truss is the most common. As the name implies, the interior portion of the truss, or the webbing, is shaped in a W-pattern. Also popular: the king-post truss, (which has a limited span,) and the scissors-type truss used for architectural designs that call for sloped ceilings.

Advantages of roof trusses

Using a pre-assembled roof truss is a good framing option if you want to avoid the cumbersome task of cutting rafters and joists from scratch. It saves both time and labour. Trusses span greater distances than standard rafters, allowing for more flexibility in the interior planning of the home because fewer load-bearing walls are needed.

Floor trusses

In lieu of framing a floor with common floor joists, prefabricated floor trusses are available. Generally made from 2-inch-thick composite wood material, they are extremely strong and lightweight. They also span a wider distance than a traditional floor truss. The initial cost may be more per lineal foot, but youll save from faster installation and less wasted material.

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What is a Truss?

A new Code of Practice for the seismic design and installation of ceilings and in-ceiling services will reduce the risk of air conditioning, sprinkler systems, and suspended ceiling tiles from swinging and colliding during earthquakes and collapsing onto the heads of office workers.

During the Christchurch and Wellington earthquakes unrestrained and haphazardly planned and designed ceiling infrastructure smashed itself to pieces and sprinkler pipes burst. The BNZs Harbour Quays office block has only just been fully occupied again, 15 months after the 6.5 magnitude Wellington quake. The BNZ estimate repairs at $10 million. The flailing ceiling infrastructure can cause substantial structural weakening and was responsible for a number of Christchurch buildings being demolished, that otherwise might have been saved.

Suspended ceilings hide plumbing and fire sprinkler pipes, air conditioning units and ducts, electric and computer cabling systems and in older systems they are constructed from heavy fibrous plaster panels. There was no life lost or injury from falling infrastructure or heavy fibrous plaster ceiling tiles in either the Christchurch or Wellington quakes, but the potential risk remains high.

The executive officer for the Association of Walls and Ceiling Industries (AWCI), Mr John Parkin said the industry recognised the problem and has proactively worked with the major install and supply companies and BRANZ to establish a Code of Practice.

"There is a need for greater awareness from design and coordination through to final sign-off. If you are a designer, engineer, project manager, ceiling supplier, building contractor, installer, insurer, building owner or compliance official this is very important for your work," Mr Parkin said. Presentations on the draft code start in Hamilton this Wednesday (10am Waikato Stadium), Auckland (13 November, Alexandra Park), Wellington (19 November, Macs Function Centre) and Christchurch (20 November, Riccarton Park). The AWCI is looking for comment and submissions on the draft Code of Practice before the end of November.

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New code of practice to reduce ceiling collapses in quakes

Ceiling Contractor Freehold NJ
Ceiling Contractor Freehold NJ Ceilings By Us Inc. Suspended Ceilings and Spray Textured Ceilings (732) 462-5711 http://ceilingsbyusnj.com/ Your Commercial and Residential Suspended Ceiling...

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Ceiling Contractor Freehold NJ - Video