Japanese American Memorial

This intimate Memorial in Washington DC is dedicated to the memory of the Japanese Americans who fell in service to the Allies during the Second World War. It features a burnished gold sculpture, massive engraved walls, paired maples, and a Zen rock garden in its reflecting pool.

The lighting brief undertaken was one of the most technically rigorous ever, with all fixtures being of bespoke optical design.

Inset paver fixtures featured dioptric dispersion lenses to cast heavily-diffused light along and up the engraved wall to highlight all the names. Partially-fritted glass covering highly focused lights distributed light up the column of the central sculpture whilst not detracting from the intense beam of lighitng illuminating the entrapped Crane on the top.

Particularly complex was the imaging and intensity-control system used to illuminate the site-carved rocks, each of which was washed as if by moonlight from optical lightheads that contained imaging graticules that were individually shaped from photographs of the rocks themselves.