Lantern Ceiling Warms Etihad Airways Lounge

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A swim shop inside the Great Wolf Adventure Park offers items guests may need to enjoy the resort’s 50,000-sq.-ft. indoor water park. Great Wolf Lodge Colorado Springs also features 311 spacious guest suites and a meeting and events center. CA

Geometric design reflects shapes found in Arabian architecture and delivers warm, diffused light to a JFK airport lounge.

Top. A lantern-ceiling design vision was realized by installing triangular-shaped MetalWorks torsion-spring ceiling panels in a faceted geometric pattern above the bar.

Inset. The round metal panels around the high-hat light fixtures were incorporated into the ceiling design to give the fixtures a clean look. W hen guests enter the new Etihad Airways lounge at JFK International Airport in New York, they find themselves in a private world of indulgence designed to be the ultimate expression of 21st century Arabian modernism. As the national airline for the United Arab Emirates, Etihad wanted the lounge to reflect the design of its new brand image, which draws on the geometric shapes found throughout the architecture of Abu Dhabi and its desert landscape.

“This was an opportunity for us to translate the two-dimensional Etihad brand into a three-dimensional built environment and share a little bit of the culture of Abu Dhabi with the world,” said Gensler, New York, design-team manager Matt Johnson.

DESIGN VISION Anchoring the design is the ceiling showcased above the bar. The vision Gensler designers had in mind for the ceiling called for a modern interpretation of an antique Persian lantern with a warm glow emanating from within. The concept featured triangular-shaped metal ceiling panels installed in a faceted geometric pattern above the bar. To create the lantern visual, the panels would feature triangular-shaped perforations and translucent infill panels. The perforations would allow light to penetrate the space from fixtures behind the ceiling, and the translucent panels would filter the light to provide a lantern-like glow.

While the designers had a clear vision of what they wanted the ceiling to look like, they needed a ceiling manufacturer that could help bring the concept to life. The design team turned to the You Inspire Solutions Center at Armstrong Ceiling Solutions, Lancaster, PA. The center is a free service to architects, designers, and contractors, designed to help turn one-of-a-kind ideas, such as the lantern ceiling, into reality.

After reviewing the initial drawings, the design team at Armstrong Ceilings realized that the Armstrong MetalWorks torsion-spring ceiling system could be customized to create the de

Above. The ceiling panels were manufactured in triangular pods of three-to-six panels each with each pod representing a different plane or facet in the ceiling. Each pod had its own suspension system and was pre-assembled with the suspension system attached.

Left. To prevent light from leaking through the corners where the ceiling pods intersect, star shapes were cut out of gasket material and installed above the intersections to make sure light only comes through the perforations.

sign required for the 600-sq.-ft. ceiling. “This was a complex geometric design,” stated Armstrong design engineer Dan Holdridge, who worked with Gensler on the project. “There were approximately 160 ceiling panels with different sizes and shapes and each pod had its own custom suspension system.”

The lantern visual was created by cutting triangular-shaped perforations into the aluminum panels, powder-coating them with a bronze finish, and backing them with custom Armstrong Infusions infill panels in a golden-brown color. The Infusions panels have a paper-thin ghost layer inside to help diffuse the light coming from LED fixtures behind the ceiling and provide the desired warm glow.

The panels were manufactured in triangular pods of approximately three to six panels each with each pod representing a different plane or facet in the ceiling. Each pod was 6 to 8 ft. in size. The ceiling is made up of about 50 pods.

KEY TO SUCCESS Key to the success of the project was the 3D model the You Inspire Solutions Center created to help the architect and client visualize what the ceiling would look like. The model also provided installation solutions by making it easier to understand how the ceiling would be suspended.

To facilitate installation, the ceiling pods were pre-assembled with the suspension systems attached. “That made our job a whole lot easier,” said Robert Doxey, project manager for Cord Contracting Co. Inc., Woodbury, NY, who worked with Armstrong Ceilings to achieve the best finished installation. “Then, basically, all we had to do was bolt the pods together.”

The pre-assembled ceiling pods were designed to automatically hang at the proper slope angles when bolted together, greatly reducing the number of hanging points the installer would need to locate. “Instead of having to worry about a multitude of hanging points and building a spider-web ceiling grid, one piece at a time, the contractor only had to worry about the elevations where a group of pods joined together,” explained Holdridge.

Months in advance of the actual installation, the contractor installed a plywood ceiling below the deck and asked Solutions Center designers to plot every point of suspension in AutoCAD. “[Armstrong Ceilings] indicated where every drop needed to be to suspend the ceiling and put it in the drawing,” explained Doxey. “Then, using our rotary-laser system, we were able to plot every hanging point on the floor and transfer them to the plywood ceiling. That took out a lot of the layout time. As a result, we had all of our anchor points already secured through the plywood three months before we installed the ceiling.”

When installing the ceiling, the contractor suspended the pods with a threaded-rod system and made adjustments to the heights as needed. “At that point, all we had to do was crank the pods up and down until we got them to the height on the drawing,” added Doxey.

At the contractor’s request, the You Inspire Solutions Center designers also incorporated 6-in.-dia. round metal panels into the ceiling-panel design where high-hat light fixtures would be installed. “We were able to drill through the solid material and center the light fixture on that,” explained Doxey. “That way, we wouldn’t have the effect where the fixture is half on a perforation or not. Instead, the fixture has a nice half-inch border of the solid panel material around it, which gives it a cleaner look.”

To prevent light from leaking through the corners of the ceiling pods, the contractor installed extra gasketing. “We cut star shapes out of the gasketing material and installed them above where the corners of the triangles intersect to make sure the light only comes through the perforations.”

At one end of the bar, the lantern ceiling drops down to meet a structural column encased in bronze millwork. “That was probably the most difficult part of the project,” said Doxey. “The ceiling comes down and creates a reveal around the millwork. We were working with an existing structure that could not be moved so we had to make sure the ceiling would coordinate with it.”

JEWEL OF A CEILING Etihad was so pleased with the result that it replicated the ceiling design in its lounge at Los Angeles International Airport and plans to make the lantern ceiling a hallmark of its lounges in other destinations around the world. The lantern ceiling won Gold in the Ceilings category, East Region, in the 2017 Ceilings & Interior Systems Construction Association (CISCA) Construction Excellence Awards. “The lantern ceiling has become the jewel—the showcase piece within the lounge—that ties together the different elements in the Etihad brand,” stated Johnson. “This is what we set out to accomplish in our design vision. The team worked really hard to make sure the actual installed piece maintained the integrity of that vision.” CA

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