The beacon serves as an invitation to campus and is symbolic of enlightenment
“Cycles” as seen from rear of library during the day
UH West Oʻahu’s iconic glass tower is back to glowing at night, thanks to many hours of work bythe campus to get the library tower’s light system re-programmed and fixed.
Problems with the work of art date back about two years, when problems with lights and the lighting computer program were noticed. Dr. Richard Jones, an associate professor of education, said he observed the tower’s erratic performance in November 2015 and that the lights finally went dark the following spring. Others took note.
“Why is the light for the stained glass off?,” wrote one local resident on UH West Oʻahu’s Facebook page. “I miss not seeing it.”
The beacon atop the James & Abigail Campbell Library was designed to elicit just such notice, according to a 2011 planning document from the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (SFCA), which owns the artwork known as “Cycles.”
Carol Bennett
Plans called for the glass tower to serve as an invitation to campus, with the beacon visible from Kualakaʻi Parkway, the entrance to campus and other nearby places. The planners also believed the glass tower could serve as a symbol of enlightenment and “as a visual celebration of the values of higher education.”
Koloa, Kauaʻi artist Carol Bennett won an international competition to design the tower by proposing Cycles, which uses a simple, abstract circular organic and geometric shapes that symbolize personal, community and generational relationships to the University. It consists of painted and gilded glass squares assembled in panels that are 33 feet tall.
Workers getting ready to install glass
Bennett, who has done commissioned work for the Honolulu Convention Center, Beverly Hills Hotel, Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas Hilton, and Hilton Hawaiian Village, used colored vitreous enamels fired on float glass, gold and silver leaf, and LED lights with computerized components including an astronomical clock moving nighttime illumination.
Prysm Enterprises was brought in as project lighting consultants to help achieve the desired lighting effect. Prysm’s website notes each of the 96 five-foot square glass panes were individually lit and controllable with more than 360 LED channels. The firm designed a lighting scheme as a new take on a clock tower, with a lighting show occurring every 15 minutes and a larger show on the hour.
During daylight hours the glass beacon’s gold leaf, glass beads, colors and frosted glass are designed to capture the eye, while at night the LED lights illuminate the artwork but also can produce pulses and waves of color that flash across the tower in purples, blues, yellows and reds.
The lights were already off when Bonnie Arakawa, UH West Oʻahu director of planning, facilities, CIP and Land, arrived on campus in the Fall of 2016. She said some repair work related to water damage had been done, but that reprogramming of the computer running the lights needed to be fixed. With the artwork being the property of the SFCA, UH West Oʻahu could not pursue a solution on its own.
Arakawa and her staff worked with SFCA to reach out to Prysm who came out in March 2017 to make the adjustments. However, the lights were later discovered to be cycling on an irregular basis. They were shut off while renewed efforts to contact the contractor were made. In late October 2017 Prysm returned to adjust the software programming and the tower has been turned on at night ever since.
The lights are timed to come on at dark and change as the sunset times change. They are switched off at 10:30 p.m. each night to coincide with and signal the closure of campus.