Brief: Mick Granlund travels to Quebec City to learn about LUMCA lighting products and study the amazing capabilities of “architectural ice.”
Back in February, I was invited to the Lumca manufacturing facility in Quebec City, Canada. Lumca is a Canadian based exterior lighting manufacturer whose feature product is the innovative “Smart Pole”. The pole itself has no intelligence, but easy-to-install rail sections allow you to add a wide variety of accessories, including cameras, data terminals, digital banners, speakers, electric chargers, as well as benches, bike racks, and much more in an architecturally pleasing way.
After our factory tour in the morning and new product presentation in the afternoon, our host took us to visit “Hotel de glace” which is French for “Ice Hotel”. Yes, it is a real hotel with 42 guest rooms and you can spend a night there if you reserve one year in advance and are willing to pay $250 per person. Since it melts every summer, the hotel is reconstructed every year in December and opens for tours and guests in January. The ice foundation is 5’ thick and the walls are 3’ thick. The bed is a 6” mattress on top of a solid block of ice, and at night the hotel becomes deathly quiet.
Our hour long visit concluded with a drink from the bar, served from a shot glass made of…ice. It did not warm the toes as the temperature was minus 3 degrees and on its way down to minus 13 degrees. According to our guide, even though the sleeping bags are good to minus 40 degrees, most people are ready for a hot shower in the morning. What a way to spend $250!
Although we are not using the Smart Pole at Grandscape, we will be using a beautiful decorative pole and light fixture manufactured by Lumca along the boardwalk. You can go to this link to see a short video that shows how the Smart Pole works.
http://lumca.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=174&Itemid=365&lang=en