Reunion Tower (Dallas, Texas)
Posted by: 
Raven
N 32° 46.521 W 096° 48.540
14S E 705212 N 3628507
Reunion Tower -- sometimes locally just referred to as "The Ball" -- is an observation tower and restaurant in Dallas, Texas. It's an iconic landmark of the city's downtown district and often included in commercial skyline photographs.
Waymark Code: WMWYBF
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 10/29/2017
Views: 8
"Reunion Tower is a 561 ft (171 m) observation tower and one of the most recognizable landmarks in Dallas, Texas. Located at 300 Reunion Blvd. in the Reunion district of downtown Dallas, the tower is part of the Hyatt Regency Hotel complex, and is the 15th tallest building in Dallas. A free-standing structure until the construction of an addition to the Hyatt Regency Dallas in 1998, the tower was designed by the architectural firm Welton Becket & Associates.
It consists of three floors with circular floor plans on top of four shafts of poured-in-place concrete. A central cylindrical shaft houses stairs and mechanical equipment. Three rectangular shafts, containing elevators, rise parallel to the central shaft. Each shaft's outfacing wall is made up of glass panels, affording views of the city during the 68-second elevator ride to the top. Before the 2008 renovations, the first level housed the observation deck, the second a revolving restaurant called Antares, and the third level a club called The Dome. [Since 2009, the revolving area in now on the top level, it is a new restaurant called "Five Sixty" opened by famous chef Wolfgang Puck. The middle level can now be reserved for special/private events, and is managed by Wolfgang Puck Catering).
The top three floors are encased in an open-air sphere. The sphere is a geodesic dome formed with aluminum struts. Each of the struts' 260 intersections is covered by aluminum circles with lights in the center.
At night, the globe at the top of the building is illuminated with 259 custom LED fixtures, manufactured by Altman Lighting and Color Kinetics, a division of Philips Solid State Lighting. Wiedamark, a Dallas-based LED lighting company, led the development, installation and programming of the lights. The original lighting fixtures were conventional incandescent and every unit used 130 watts of electricity. For comparison, the new LED lighting system with all of its color and animation capabilities requires less than 1/5th of the electricity of the old system. In fact, each point on Reunion Tower is using only as much electricity as an average nightlight and as much electricity as 2 nightlights at its brightest setting.
Every fixture has a combination of multiple red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs that are diffused behind a 3/4-inch thick opaque glass cover. While each fixture is very large at nearly 16 inches in diameter, they function the same way as a pixel on your mobile phone screen. By varying the intensity of red, green and blue, the system is able to create every visible color from pinks and purples to white. By moving these colors around the globe at a fluid rate, animations and movement is perceived. All 259 fixtures are controlled by Color Kinetics hardware to execute various computer-generated patterns and colors along the surface of the sphere. The DMX512 lighting protocol is used to communicate with the fixtures. Each fixture is manufactured from solid cast stainless steel and weighs over 20 pounds.
As an iconic landmark on the Dallas skyline, lighting on the globe is also used for special events and holidays across the city. For example, the winter season will feature seasonal colors and animations; for St. Patrick's Day it will be illuminated in green; for patriotic events it will be lit in red, white and blue, and so on. The globe was lit up in rainbow colors on June 26, 2015 to celebrate the supreme court ruling which legalized same sex marriage."
Source:
Wikipedia