SteelStacks Campus

The Steel Stacks Campus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is the former Bethlehem Steel Plant turned dynamic arts and cultural campus. For local residents, the campus also plays an important role in providing programs and services that benefit those members of the community who are underserved members of the commubity. The redevelopment focuses on the ten-acre central core that includes multiple performance venues, plazas, and parks, along with the sculpturally angular Levitt Pavilion–an open-air stage graced by the spectacular backdrop of Bethlehem’s iconic blast furnaces and the Hoover Mason Trestle (an elevated railway that carryied raw materials).

Avoiding frontal lighting would flatten the structure and creat light spill, the furnaces were, instead, lit from within, and from the side, and from behind. This underscores their voluminous presence and provides a rhythm to their layout, offering a sense of the action that took place within and through them. This placement of the lighting also highlights the materiality of the facilities and their production: “At night, we should feel the burn and see the roughness of material. We don’t want the beautification of Disneyland, or for it to be melancholic,” explains Principal Hervé Descottes.