Custom Geometric Pendant Lighting Designed Around a Challenging Ceiling
Earls in Assembly Row, Somerville needed a ceiling feature with real presence across the dining room – something geometric, linear, and impossible to miss.
The catch was the ceiling itself; the site conditions in Assembly Row ruled out a standard installation from the start.
Our team at Karice worked with the Earls Design Team and a local lighting designer to turn that concept into a buildable suspended lighting system.
What we ended up building spans the restaurant overhead, casting sharp illuminated lines across the dining and bar areas.
Geometric LED Pendant Lighting Built Around Site Conditions
The original concept included twelve individual geometric pendant lights. But the ceiling on site was crowded with mechanical obstructions, and hanging each one separately just wasn’t going to work.
So our team designed a tubular support structure that could carry all twelve lights while working around those obstructions.
Kirsten Bray from the Earls Design Team helped make that possible by providing the precise site measurements we needed. With that information, we were able to develop detailed drawings for engineering review and approval.
That support system ended up being central to the whole project; it let the suspended linear lighting hold its intended geometry across a large footprint. And also gave the installers a clear, practical path to get everything into place in Assembly Row.
Seamless Acrylic Diffusion and LED Assembly
Each geometric ceiling light was built from custom aluminum channels that were formed and welded to shape.
Getting the lighting effect right meant the illumination had to read as one continuous, diffused line. No visible seams breaking up the geometry.
To achieve that, the frosted acrylic diffusers had to be cut, fitted, and sanded precisely for each geometric form.
Once the pieces returned from powder coating, the LEDs were installed into the channels. We drilled and tapped the channels for plastic retaining clips, so the LEDs had a mechanical hold rather than relying on adhesive alone.
Suspended Linear LED Lighting Structure
After the twelve geometric lights were assembled, the full structure had to come together as one 33-foot by 16-foot lighting system.
We used chain falls with HSS tubing to suspend the structure during assembly. From there, the wiring was completed as a plug-and-play system for the Assembly Row installation. Each element was labelled, and written assembly instructions were prepared for the installers.
The finished geometric lighting installation gave Earls Assembly Row a bold overhead feature. Our team solved the site’s mechanical constraints through fabrication, support design, wiring, and installation planning.
