Creating Light Wonders: Our Collaboration with Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival
Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival is one of the most influential cultural lantern festivals in North America, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. As an important partner of this year’s festival, we provided a full set of large-scale lantern design and production services for this cross-cultural night art event, integrating modern lighting technology with Oriental aesthetics to make traditional Chinese art shine in the North American night sky.
What is Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival?
Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival is a large-scale night lantern event held by the Columbus Zoo from late summer to autumn every year. More than just a festival, it is a large-scale public project integrating art, culture, leisure, and education. The exhibition typically lasts nearly two months, featuring over 70 groups of customized lantern installations, including animal shapes, natural landscapes, mythological themes, and traditional Chinese cultural elements. It is one of the most popular cultural events in the American Midwest.
The 2025 event runs from July 31 to October 5, open Thursday to Sunday evenings, attracting thousands of visitors each night and greatly boosting the cultural tourism economy of the park and surrounding areas. During the event, visitors wander through a magical world of light and shadow—appreciating stunning lantern sets, experiencing rich cultural atmospheres, tasting special foods, and participating in interactive activities for an unforgettable time.
Our Role: One-Stop Lantern Festival Solutions from Design to Implementation
As a professional large-scale lantern production enterprise, we deeply participated in the planning and execution of Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival. In this project, we provided the following services to the organizer:
Creative Design Output
Our design team tailored a series of lantern solutions based on the characteristics of the zoo, North American aesthetic preferences, and Chinese cultural elements:
Traditional Chinese Cultural Lanterns
- The majestic Chinese dragon lantern draws inspiration from traditional dragon patterns, with its scales refracting ever-changing lights; the lively lion dance lantern changes 光影 (light and shadow) in sync with drumbeats, recreating festive scenes; the Chinese zodiac lanterns transform the Ganzhi culture into perceivable visual symbols through anthropomorphic designs. For example, when designing the dragon lantern, the team studied dragon patterns from the Ming and Qing dynasties and folk shadow puppetry, resulting in a design that balances majesty and agility—2.8 meters tall, with dragon whiskers made of carbon fiber that sway gently in the breeze.
North American Endemic Wildlife Lanterns
- The grizzly bear lantern replicates the muscle lines of Ohio’s wild grizzlies with a steel skeleton for a sense of strength, covered in faux fur; the manatee lantern floats in a pool with a semi-immersed design, simulating ripples through underwater lighting; the bighorn sheep lantern combines the arc of its horns with Native American totem patterns for cultural resonance.
Dynamic Ocean Lanterns
- The jellyfish lantern uses silicone to mimic translucent texture, with programmable LED strips inside to achieve breathing-like flickering; the 15-meter-long blue whale lantern suspends above the lake, paired with an underwater sound system that emits blue whale calls when visitors approach, creating an immersive deep-sea experience.
Interactive LED Lanterns
- The “Forest Secret Realm” theme features sound-activated sensors—when visitors clap, the lanterns light up squirrel and firefly shapes in sequence, while ground projections generate dynamic footprints, creating a fun “light follows human movement” interaction.
Each lantern’s structure, proportion, material, and color underwent multiple optimizations: the design team first simulated night lighting effects through 3D modeling, then produced 1:10 prototypes to test material light transmittance, and finally conducted field weather resistance tests in Columbus to ensure sculptural beauty during the day and optimal light penetration at night.
Factory Manufacturing and High-Standard Quality Control
Our production base has mature processes for lantern welding, modeling, painting, and lighting, using international-standard environmentally friendly flame-retardant materials. For Columbus’ humid and high-temperature climate, all lantern frames undergo galvanized anti-rust treatment, surfaces are covered with three layers of waterproof coating, and the circuit system is equipped with IP67-grade waterproof connectors. For example, the base of the Chinese zodiac lanterns features a specially designed drainage groove structure, capable of withstanding 48 consecutive hours of heavy rain to ensure zero failures during the 60-day outdoor display period.
Overseas Logistics and On-Site Installation Team
Lanterns were transported via customized sea shipping crates filled with shock-absorbing foam, with key components designed for disassembly to reduce transportation damage. Upon arrival on the U.S. East Coast, we collaborated with local engineering teams, overseen by Chinese project supervisors throughout installation—from lantern positioning to circuit connection, strictly following domestic construction standards while adapting to U.S. electrical codes. During the festival, an on-site technical team conducted daily lighting adjustments and equipment inspections to ensure 70 lantern sets operated synchronously without failure, earning the organizer’s praise of “zero maintenance complaints.”
Cultural Value Behind the Lights: Letting Chinese Intangible Heritage Shine Worldwide
Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival is not only a cultural export but also an important practice for Chinese lantern craftsmanship to go global. Hundreds of thousands of North American visitors directly experienced the charm of Chinese lantern culture through details like the dragon lantern’s scale carvings, lion dance lantern’s mane craftsmanship, and zodiac lantern’s glaze treatment. We combined intangible heritage lantern-making techniques with modern CNC lighting technology, transforming traditional lanterns originally limited to festivals into long-term cultural landscape products. For example, the control system of the dynamic ocean lanterns in this project has applied for dual Chinese and U.S. patents, achieving standardized output of “intangible heritage craftsmanship + technological empowerment.”
Post time: Jun-11-2025