M.C. Dean celebrated the opening ceremony of the M Street underpass lighting installation known as “Rain” on October 25, 2018. The NoMa Parks Foundation selected M.C. Dean to serve as the lead designer and contractor on the project, responsible for the electrical design, modular design-build, LED programming, and installation.
The M Street underpass was previously an uninviting structure that divided the rapidly expanding NoMa district in D.C. With the help of M.C. Dean, it is now a dynamic and beautiful public attraction that will encourage community engagement and development in the area.
“We wanted to create something beautiful, sustainable, and functional while supporting NoMa’s community development requirements,” says Mike Keatley, senior vice president of Electrical Systems. “This project is a great representation of the innovative work M.C. Dean delivers.”
The design features 4,000 sustainable LED lights attached to polycarbonate tubes hung along the underpass. The light shifts as vehicles and pedestrians move through the space, simulating rainfall. The programmable lighting patterns even differ according to the time of the day and the traffic levels.
M.C. Dean is Building Intelligence®. We design, build, operate, and maintain cyber-physical solutions for the nation’s most recognizable mission critical facilities, secure environments, complex infrastructure, and global enterprises. The company’s capabilities include electrical, electronic security, telecommunications, life safety, automation and controls, audio visual, and IT systems. M.C. Dean is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia, and employs more than 5,800 professionals who engineer and deploy automated, secure, and resilient power and technology systems; and deliver the management platforms essential for long-term system sustainability.
