Q-View: Jellyfish Playground Lighting Interview

Welcome to Seattle’s Pier 58, the luminous result of the city’s $800 million investment that added 50,000 square feet of public space to the central waterfront. The star of the new sea-themed play area is a 25-foot-tall jellyfish climbing tower. The installation featuring swooping tentacles, climbable nets, 18-foot slide, and even a cluster of crab wobble boards, is a colorful example of urban lighting that helps kids reach new heights of delight.

Lighting designer, Stephanie Wood, Associate Principal of Seattle’s Dark Light Design, used her extensive design experience to create enlightened ways to enhance and inspire the central waterfront space that sits in the shadows of the beloved Great Wheel Ferris Wheel.

With some assistance from QTL lighting, Pier 58 is an immersive nighttime destination that creates new social spaces and highlights a series of unique design elements. “Lighting played a key role in the design,” commented Stephanie. “When the sun goes down and nighttime falls, lighting transforms the park. The north end is activated with color-changing fixtures to create some fun, so people are drawn to it and want to walk out there and play.”

QTL’s flexible Q-CAP BOXA RGBW with its up/down bending capability helps the jellyfish glow with a seamless line of colorful lights in the structure’s tentacles. The decision to use a durable outdoor fixture was easy. BOXA is a flexible fully encapsulated fixture with consistent light as well as an IK10 impact rating (the highest level of protection) that helps the structure’s lighting fixtures resist damage from vandalism, accidents and severe weather.

Lighting is crucial to shape the waterfront’s variety of spaces after dark. Stephanie aimed to craft a lighting design that not only supports safety but also enhances the user experience. She understood lighting would play a pivotal role in redefining the waterfront’s identity. She appreciated QTL’s lighting fixtures and power supplies that offered top reliability and quality to help her complete her mission.

“We specified QTL mainly because we've used QTL on many projects in the past,” she commented. “We have QTL fixtures in other parts of the waterfront, so it made sense to continue into the park with the luminaires, drivers and Q-VAULT.” Stephanie then reinforced her feeling about working with QTL, “They're all products we rely on, can stand behind and trust,” she shared.