Solar Light Pipe, Washington D.C., USA, Carpenter / Norris Consulting, 2001

Light Tube
Regent Street, London
Client: Apple Computers
Building architect: Adaptation of existing by Gensler, London
2005 (project)

Above the Apple Store is the headquarters of Apple Computers in the UK, on a floor of a building completely transformed within an Edwardian shell. A deep atrium drops five floors within the building bringing daylight to the deep plan.

The light-tube proposal builds on the earlier heliostatic light-tube project by Carpenter/Norris Consulting that was completed in 2001 in Washington DC, USA, in which a 36m long light tube with a tapering internal cone of prismatic glass and an external diffuser of stretch fabric effectively introduced daylight deep within a new office space, (a heliostat is a computer controlled powered mirror that tracks the path of the sun to produce a constant beam of daylight at a specific angle).

The suggestion in London was to install a heliostat on the roof of the building to reflect daylight down within the atrium, distributing it to the intermediate floors, and ultimately to a focal element on the Apple floor. This tube was to use interlocking bent diffused glass panels to construct a structural glass tube approximately 1.8m in diameter and 15m high.