Jersey Shore State Bank, Williamsport, Pa.
Retrofit Team
Shading Installers: Master Contractors, Williamsport
Materials
This contemporary bank was built in the early 1980s and features a large sloping 3-story façade terminating in a single story “skylight canopy”. The retail portion on the first floor featured a live tree, growing up through an opening in the second floor. The tree recently was removed because it had outgrown the space, and the opening in the second floor was closed to provide a location for a new corporate boardroom. Unfortunately, the space was subject to severe heat gain because the unshaded west-facing glass façade was exposed to direct sun.
The solution is the Skyliter Shading System, which includes 54 rotating fabric lightshelves, each 30-inches deep and around 65-inches wide. The lightshelves, which are connected and motorized in banks of six, consist of Alkenz 3000HT (3 percent) fabric mounted in a custom powder-coated aluminum frame. External motorized tubes above each bank of lightshelves control the system through a series of stainless-steel wires. Each of the nine tubes contains a Sonesse 50 RTS motor hardwired and commissioned to operate as three individual “stories” of 18 lightshelves.
Lightshelves Manufacturer: Indoor Sky LLC
Fabric Manufacturer: Rollease Acmeda
Motor Manufacturer: Somfy
The Retrofit
The Skyliter Shading System is designed to block direct solar heat gain while allowing glare-free, diffused daylight to bounce between the fabric lightshelves and deep into the space. For late afternoon sunlight penetrating at low angles, the lightshelves may be rotated closed to fully protect the space; in winter, they might be left open to allow warmth from the sun to contribute to heating the building. Occupants may elect to close just the lower band of lightshelves or any combination.
The shading system was flexible enough to overcome the fact that the large structural tube framework supporting the glazing was 2-1/2 inches off center. The fixed “canopy” portion of the system capped off the installation from an aesthetic viewpoint and a functional shading viewpoint.
Photo: Indoor Sky LLC