It was built in 2007 and that was a time when stringent energy efficiency codes required buildings to keep out hot summer sun to cut down on electricity and gas use for air conditioning and heating. Thus library has  large, sun blocking eves on these clerestory windows.

Some notes on how I made it.

This is a librarian multitasker Pat Lynch, who is also the town planner as another job. Very welcoming and helpful. So once we had a chance to chat with him, and describe the 100 libraries project.

Chet and I went outside and start taking pictures of the exterior.

Inside we discovered this beautiful entry with these high south facing clear story windows, and that narrow space up there it’s only about 12 feet wide. This would make a great installation.

We came back a year later to install and here I am rough riding the lift into the building in picture

We got the lift inside.

I am installing the first Prism which we had made last month which we made in December in the studio. This is one of the first libraries where we put we hung the prisms from high hooks rather than installing the prisoner material on the glass like a decal as a number of advantages.

First, it’s removable if they need to wash the windows. Second, it’s a physical object so we can relate to it more as art and I actually sign the aluminum channel that it’s hanging from and we put a stick around it about how to handle it and clean with the QR code going to our website and I can also put an insurance evaluation on it and these are about $2500 apiece. 

Three prisms out of four are installed. Was very tricky to get this last prism installed because there was very little space around the circulation desk, maybe about an inch, on each side get the lift into position to install the prism. Then, we had to put the platform extension out on the lift basket so it could reach the window. It worked OK.

The photo above was taken about an hour later the Earth had turned. The projection is now on the east wall as well as the north wall. You can see that the prism of the spectrum angle is sloping as the Earth turns, rather than just being vertically above and below the white light of the window.

The video taken at 3:28 in the afternoon on January 26 we’ll get this wonderful curving sweep of the spectrum as the angle between the sun and theprism becomes more acute. 

This prism has an angle of acceptance of about 150° laterally and we’re almost at that edge when the sun is too much of an oblique angle the spectrum will start to shrink and curve in this beautiful way and then finally disappear.

Below video 3:36 PM.

Sutherland had two beautiful locations to install prisms the lobby and the east reading room. This video shows the completed installation in the south and southeast reading room, where we put the eye hooks directly into the vinyl frame of the window and then suspended the Pre-determined or pre-cut length of the prisms for Sutherland had the hanging wires made it the correct length in the studio. This made it much easier to install. I had already determined the worst case scenario of June noon sunlight to see how long this strings need to be so the prism could have light all year long. 

This Video shows the completed installation in the east southeast Reading room. You can listen to my narration describing the less light of the day in the lobby the last spectrum light in the day in the lobby.