Skylights flood gallery with natural light

"The [skylight] system itself was hung from an exterior, steel truss system with tension rods, and stabilized laterally with stainless steel cables. The east/west cables arched gently above the glass surface, while the north/south cables were concealed inside the skylights' frame, below the glass. The cables and rod were connected at nodes. The skylights' frame was notched and fitted to drain water around the node and carry it to the gutter."—Curtis Groeschel, project manager, Super Sky Products Inc.

The basics: Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum building, a three-story, 72,000-square-foot structure, offers a large column-free gallery space. Two vaulted skylights flood the gallery with natural, ambient light. The skylights were designed to “fit around an unusual structure with minimal visual impact,” Groeschel says. “The end result is a very clean interior appearance, more like a glass ceiling than a skylight.”

The players: Architect, Renzo Piano, Italy; skylight supplier and installer, Super Sky Products Inc., Mequon, Wis.; finisher, Linetec, Wausau, Wis.; glass fabricator, Viracon, Owatonna, Minn.

The glass and systems: The two vaulted skylights each measure 74-feet by 116-feet 8-inches and feature oversized lites of fritted, low-iron glass. The glass slopes into specially welded, stainless steel gutters that are concealed in the building’s walls. For a clean, bright and durable finish, Linetec painted both the interior and exterior aluminum framing in a Super Pure White 70 percent polyvinylidene fluoride coating.