Landscape Architect Articles

Austin Landing - Site & Landscape Lighting Enhancements06-04-20 | Feature

Austin Landing - Site & Landscape Lighting Enhancements

Miamisburg, OH
by Tim Ryan, Lighthouse Outdoor Lighting

The landscape lighting of The Park at Austin Landing, located in Miamisburg, Ohio, was designed by Lighthouse Outdoor Lighting. The company illuminated this lower pond from within via a series of underwater lights around the perimeter, grazing the rocky bottom of the pond. The team of Lighthouse designers and Lighthouse installation technicians completed the site and lighting enhancements in early 2015.

Linear lighting was used under the handrails of the upper bridge to help illuminate the walkway across to some of Austin Landing's restaurants. The red, white, and blue color scheme was in celebration of Independence Day. The lights are normally a warm white - 3000K, during the majority of the year.

For the middle and lower falls of the site, accent lights were placed directly under the falls to call attention to the motion of the water. Blue and red LEDs were used to highlight the trees with a festive, Independence Day flare. There are 16 lights in the waterfall, with an average of 2-3 uplights per tree, plus the lights integrated into the bridge. The string lights pictured in the back of the image are permanent bistro lights that are in a gathering area to the north side of the property.

Low voltage wash lights were spread out at the base of the stone wall to graze the stone and create an interesting interplay of light and shadow. Micro lights were used to highlight the "Austin Landing" signage above the wall.

A view through dual, trellised arches leading away from the park and out to the main parking lots. Caf???(C) bistro lights were suspended on braided steel cable, which was tightly suspended between buildings.

The exterior of the gathering pavilion was softly illuminated with gentle uplights to add drama to the texture of the fa????ade and bring height and definition to the wooden beams in the roof.

This view is looking back across the upper bridge towards the park and upper waterfalls. The stream of falling water glows under the direct illumination of the luminaires placed directly below.

The large "A" for Austin Landing was a prebuilt, backlit sign that was already there when the company began looking at the overall design. The team accented the overall stone wall around the "A" with low voltage wash lights.

Park signage greets visitors as they enter the Austin Landing development - lit from below with 400 lumen, low voltage wash lights to create a warm and even tone. As the park readies for their Independence Day celebration, the overall project is awash in red, white and blue colors.

Small spotlights were placed on the flagpole to directly light the American flags while minimizing distraction from glare and over-sized lighting hardware.

An overview plan of The Park at Austin Landing, which was designed by Bayer Becker - Cincinnati.

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Lighthouse Outdoor Lighting was sought out by RG Properties to conceive and implement a supplemental lighting design for the park and specific amenities of the Austin Landing project with the purpose of creating enhanced visual impact and user experience for patrons of the adjoining businesses, restaurants and entertainment venues. The project, located in Miamisburg, Ohio, was completed by the design team in 2015.

The Park at Austin Landing

The park consists of eight fully landscaped acres, which include adjoining walkways, bridges, waterfalls, ponds and a large gathering pavilion. It was designed by Cincinnati landscape design firm, Bayer Becker, and is located centrally at the heart of the Austin Landing property. The park is central to restaurants, shopping and entertainment, which naturally promotes traffic through the park space.

The primary illumination focus for the park was to ensure safe passage in and around the park's amenities after dark through the use of site lighting, such as bollards and concealed strip illumination under the bridge hand rails. Our secondary focus was to create an evening viewing experience that would cause guests to linger and treat these outdoor spaces as a destination point instead of merely just passing through. One of the main features of this park is its extensive series of waterfalls and tri-level ponds, which flow under two wooden bridges and create a great deal of sound. Our goal was to visually connect sight to sound by directly illuminating the sections of falling water at each set of falls to draw the eye to the motion and movement of falling water. This was achieved by using submerged luminaries directly under the individual sections of waterfalls. It was also important to softly illuminate the rock outcroppings and landscape features in and around the falls to help set the visual context in the overall landscape scene. Many trees throughout the park were also illuminated to further enhance the visual context of the space. The illumination of trees in the landscape space are akin to light bouncing off of walls inside an interior space - both help to visually define a space while increasing the visual comfort and familiarity within these spaces at night. Energy efficient, commercial -grade, low-voltage luminaires are most commonly used in order to minimize the visual impact of physical lighting equipment whenever possible. Low voltage fixtures with interchangeable modules were selected for this project due to the owner's request to be able to easily and affordably change the color theme of the park's lighting as desired for specific holidays (such as Independence Day) without the large up-front expense of an integrated RGB luminaire.

The pavilion and gathering spaces were illuminated with a combination of luminaires integrated into the built structure, as well as overhead lighting in gathering spaces provided by low voltage, caf???(C) style lighting, which was suspended between upright steel poles and fastened on braided cable to keep the strands taught. These soft output, Edison-style LED lamps were carefully selected to create a warm and inviting ambiance for these gathering areas without over-lighting the space and causing a source of nuisance glare and sky glow.

Entryway Monuments
The front entryway monuments were originally lit with only the back-lit "A" logo, but because of the need to make the entrance more visually captivating, additional low voltage LED lights were employed to gently graze the stone walls to stretch the visuals of the entry much farther across the face of the entrance on both sides. The diminutive luminaires are discreet and do a fabulous job at evenly washing the walls across the face of the stone. The trick with this type of illumination is to use a greater number of fixtures with lower lumen outputs with a form of optical diffusion to manipulate and soften the beam spreads. This eliminates "hot spots" on the walls and creates a more appealing look overall.

Austin Landing was a tremendous project to be a part of insomuch that we were able to craft out a space from the dark that thousands of people would be able to enjoy night after night. Lighthouse Outdoor Lighting is a lighting design company that specializes in collaborating with architects and engineers to help them realize the full potential of their built spaces in the evening hours and assisting them in crafting unique lighting designs that help showcase their landscape and architectural projects in the best possible light.Lighthouse offers services nationwide from consulting, design & product specification, as well as complete end-to-end solutions for those seeking a turn-key product.

As seen in LASN magazine, April 2020.