I don’t think most people understand the challenge of what we did with the sails. The request from the client was to provide shade, interest, and scale to the massive space.
Today, the installation of sails looks like the obvious solution, which means we devised a good solution, but we did a lot of field-testing to get there.
Mike Tillman
Executive Vice President, CMH Architects
Riverchase Galleria Renovation
CMH developed a comprehensive renovation of the Riverchase Galleria, including the mall’s central food court, parking deck lighting and bridges, stair renovations, mall office, police substation, and elevator relocation. But most notably, CMH engineered a striking installation of color-changing LED lights illuminating massive, custom-made textile sails in the glass skylights of the mall’s atrium. The massive, 100-percent recyclable textile sails were custom-made from the English company Fabric Architecture that, at the time, claimed the Galleria had “the largest interior sails in the world.”
Location: Hoover, Alabama
Completion: 2013
