At New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, the Audubon Zoo opened a new exhibition named “Criaturas de la Noche” (Creatures of the Night) which is a transparent flyway installed with Altman’s Chalice LED series to create a night environment as a home for more than 200 bats.

The exhibition hoped to build an area which mimics the natural environment to make the visitors feel as if they are walking through the Mayan ruins on a dark night. The Chalice LED Series from Altman Lighting offers a diverse range of downlights with mounting options that include pendant, recessed, aircraft cable, wall and yoke mount. It could also be dimmed with choices ranging from Mains Dimming to DMX. Moreover, the variety of LED color or white light options allows the designer to transform an artificial tunnel into a habitation for wildlife.

(Image: Altman)

“Inside the actual bat enclosures, we have a total of 13 recessed Chalice 50W LED RGBW fixtures. We then have 12 pipe-mounted Chalice fixtures for the walkways, and they are all controlled via a DMX lighting control system. It was a design necessity that we have an RGBW recessed fixture for the bat enclosures, and the Altman Chalice LED stood alone as the lighting technology that could meet the specification,” said Mike Gonzales, the Controls Specialist of LEA-Inc., the lighting control supplier who provides LED luminaires from Altman Lighting.

With the installation complete, the programming of the lighting design became an integral part of the exhibition’s success. Understanding that the animal activity inside the bat house would be essential to giving visitors the desired effect, the circadian rhythms of the nocturnal creatures is cued by the programming.