PG enlighten Selects Acclaim Lighting to Assist with "Billie Jean"-Inspired Floor at Pandora's Chicago Office

	Pandora, with the help of PG enlighten and Acclaim Lighting, actually replicated the floor in Michael Jackson's famous video.

Visitors just might "feel like a beauty queen from a movie scene" when they dance around the floor at Pandora's office on the eighth floor of Chicago's One Prudential Plaza. Pandora, one of the leading personalized internet radio providers, has made it its mission to reward the musically curious.

Now Pandora has taken its mission to a new level with the replication of the dance floor used in Michael Jackson's hit "Billie Jean" music video at its Chicago sales office.

For the musically uniformed, Billie Jean topped the charts of the best-selling singles in 1983 and remains one of the best-selling singles worldwide. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song in the 58th spot on its list of the "Greatest Songs of All-Time."

It's no wonder such an iconic, and highly recognizable song, took center stage as design inspiration at Pandora Chicago's eighth floor office. To create the floor, the company turned to Chicago-based Eastlake Studio, which focuses on designing great workplaces and exceptional residential and retail environments.

Eastlake's architecture and design professionals dedicated themselves to providing the highest level of service possible and understand the importance of working with people who are both intelligent and enjoyable. This mission has helped Eastlake Studio earn design awards for its work and captured Pandora's attention.

Prior to Pandora's One Prudential Center project, Eastlake Studio first assisted the company with its office in the Chicago Tribune Tower. That 9,000-sq.-ft. project's design references a variety of music genres, personalities, and places through integrated artwork and streaming music in public areas. The space even includes whimsical phone booths that provide nooks for conference calls and heads-down work, while meeting rooms with fully-glazed walls ensure that staff has full access to the spectacular views.

When Pandora approached Eastlake Studio to design its new office in One Prudential Center, leadership provided the design firm with a rough budget and timeline. Eastlake took those parameters and led Pandora to the concept of paying homage to the music of the 1980s. Eastlake maximized the design by creating a replica of the "Billie Jean" dance floor within the space. The team even incorporated sophisticated lighting controls and color-changing LEDs in key areas.

"We produced a strong design concept that the team could anchor to -- the music of the 80s," said Kevin Kamien, principal at Eastlake Studio. "With this approach, the lighting and design elements throughout the space were based on characteristics and themes from that era. The most evident element is the light-up dance floor."

Working within the budget range, Eastlake designed several iterations and solutions for the dance floor at different tiers of pricing. Each tier met the ultimate goal for the "Billie Jean" floor and covered image, function, time, and budget parameters.

The design envisioned by Eastlake Studio helped Pandora achieve its goal to bring enjoyment to the company's staff and visitors. Pandora wanted the "Billie Jean" walkway to cover the 10'-by-40' hallway connecting meetings rooms, its IT lab, and storage area.

Eastlake worked with lighting expert PG enlighten on the project, tapping the Elk Grove Village, Illinois-based firm's expertise in creating a unique combination of unique lighting and controls for a variety of design results. PG enlighten seeks to provide its clients with integrated lighting and control solutions to meet creative and energy savings objectives.

Taking a personalized approach to serving the Pandora project, PG enlighten took the project's special needs into account when developing lighting specifications. The company's professionals specified Catwalk Light Panels from Acclaim Lighting in Los Angeles. The product was developed by Acclaim based on its technical knowledge and advanced lighting products to create reality for the customer's vision.

"A main goal for the project was to be able to show the footprint and then have it disappear in a timely manner," said Patti Geier, principal at PG enlighten. "Based on our objectives, we had to develop inherent controls so that we could coordinate the background and trace colors with a time-delay function. The colors had to be bright enough to create a striking effect and be able to revert quickly back to the original background colors."

Acclaim's Catwalk Light Panel is an RGB LED pixel display. The nominal 8"-by-8" panel is designed to adhere to the back side of translucent surfaces with an easy-peel stick attachment. The fixture features infrared sensors that register touch on the surface material. The result? A fantastic color-change effect in the RGB pixels that's activated by the inductive touch technology.

The Catwalk Light Panel is built with standalone programming capability to provide standing color selection, activated color selection, and reaction delay time setting. The fixture can also be set up for DMX control. This configuration of the panels and controls enables pixel control and mapping of a fixture. This control configuration enables pixel control and mapping of the fixture array, with the outside DMX programming acting as the standing color selection.

In creating and installing the floor, Eastlake Studio developed a custom acrylic panel solution, which would accept the Acclaim light panels and also offer future installations or maintenance to occur by lifting the floor pieces and adding panels. The design enabled the installers and signage team to start on the floor infrastructure and fabrication of the acrylic, while the Acclaim light panels were reviewed for ETL certification.

The floor was fabricated and installed prior to receiving the fixtures on site. According to Carl Cindric, control specialist for PG enlighten, nine light panels are installed in each of the 16, 2'-by-2' acrylic floor tiles. These panels are wired to two switch legs per tile. Each leg switch is powered with an independent transformer.

When the light panels arrived, the contractors were able to simply lift the floor panels, wire, and install the light panels, and snap them back down into place.

"Each team member worked individually and in unison to achieve the overall desired solution," Kamien said. "Good team communication and thoughtfulness were the keys in ensuring Pandora would have a unique design element that speaks to its brand, help them recruit and retain talent and, most importantly, give the company a place where its employees can have fun at work."

With the coordination of the general, electrical, and building contractors, the floor was completed in March 2016.

"The collaboration allowed us to achieve the functionality and the look in the video within the budget parameters to create enjoyment and amazement for Pandora's guests," Geier said. "Now, dancing is not only allowed, but it is encouraged on the eighth floor."