Office Building Third + Shoal

Third + Shoal is a 29-story Class AA office building located in the center of Austin’s “New Downtown“ district surrounded by restaurants, residences and entertainment. Overlooking historic Shoal Creek, Third + Shoal blends indoor and outdoors to create a true ecosystem for work and life.

Archiluce International was hired to design the iconic facade illumination. The XOOLINE IP67, with its discreet profile and versatility was chosen to illuminate this unique building exterior. The project called for fixtures to be incorporated directly into the external louvers that shade the glass curtainwall of the building. The Lighting Designer also incorporated DMX control of the XOOLINE™ fixtures to facilitate a subtle dynamic lighting scene, further enhancing Austin’s already beautiful skyline.

This task proposed to the design team was to light the exterior façade of the client’s commercial office tower in a way that was completely different than the standard crown or cornice lighting, or the LED “outlining” of a building edges. To make matters more challenging was that the tower’s architectural design was that of a smooth glass curtainwall façade; and the building was also attempting LEED certification. The solution was to create a reinterpretation of classical “uplighting” with a gradient of light that “fades to black”. To achieve this effect, the design team chose to embed DMX controlled LED linear lighting directly into the curtainwall of the building. The placement of the narrow vertical lines of light were positioned to match the changes in the “texture” of the expression of the window-wall mullions. The lighting is not visible from the interior of the tower.