Lighting Design dot NYC

2017 Award of Excellence

Lighting Designer: Brandston Partnership Inc: Scott Matthews, Daniel Haas, and Naomi Freedman

Architect: SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP): Roger Duffy, Frank Mahan, Thierry Landis

Owner: United States Air Force Academy

Theater Consultant: Fisher Dachs Associates

The US Air Force Academy Honor Code is succinct: “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” The academy’s Center for Character & Leadership Development is both a symbol of the institution’s commitment to that code and an academic center devoted to its integration within all aspects of academy life. The distinctive structure marks the direction to Polaris, a familiar navigational beacon and symbol of the institution’s unwavering moral code. The center’s gathering space, the Forum, lies beneath the 105 ft sloped skylight structure, where a truss system of horizontal plates acts as both sunshade and light reflector. At night, LED floodlights ringing its base uplight the structure and reflect light off an array of suspended mirrors to provide the Forum’s house illumination.The Wing Honor Board Room, directly south of the Forum, is the venue for fact-finding concerning infractions of the Honor Code. Proceedings center on a hearing table beneath an LED-backlit laylight, whose beveled planes culminate in an elliptical aperture. This aperture provides the witness a perfectly aligned view of the oculus at the top of the skylight structure and, in concept, Polaris sighted 434 light years beyond.

Photography: Magda Biernat, OTTO

2017 Award of Merit

Lighting Design: L’Observatoire International: Hervé Descottes, Wei Jien, Jeff Taylor, Jessica Jie Soo Tchah, Kristy Philp, and Oliver Huang

Architect: WRT, LLC (Wallace Roberts & Todd)

Owner: Bethlehem Redevelopment Authority

The SteelStacks Campus in Bethlehem, PA, is the former Bethlehem Steel plant turned dynamic arts and cultural campus. The redevelopment focuses on the 10 acre central core that includes multiple performance venues, plazas, and parks.The lighting installation brought new life to an old factory that hasn’t been active in 20 years. L’Observatoire’s design gives a visceral sense of the action that once took place within the furnaces, creating a dynamic lighting scheme using saturated colors that highlight the various functional elements of the steel factory.Elements closest to the visitors are lit first, then a layer further back, and so on until all of the elements of the factory are visible. The first sequence at sundown uses red lighting, the second a deeper red, and following sequences gradually turn to blue, echoing the fires of the furnaces being ignited and then cooling down. At the end of each sequence, which lasts an hour, the lights flicker in a dynamic “sparkle” effect, and the entire factory comes to life.

Photography: Halkin Mason Photography, Studio Dubuisson

Lighting Designer: Lighting Workshop
Steven Espinoza, Doug Russell, and Juhee Woo

Lighting Designer: Lighting Workshop
Doug Russell and Courtney Yip

2017 Award of Merit

Lighting Desiger: KGM Architectural Lighting Moritz Hammer, Charlotte Cantillon, and Martin van Koolbergen

Architect: Gensler: Philipe Paré

Owner: Hyundai Capital Services/Hyundai Card Co. Ltd.

The Hyundai Capital Convention Hall located in Seoul makes a huge statement for the tech giant. Glowing arches in the pristine white ceiling and walls evoke the white backdrop used in photo shoots or a James Turrell installation.The space is used for presentations, training, video projection, and events, so lighting and controls had to be flexible enough to support different uses. In collaboration with Gensler, a “shell” concept was developed to provide a modern, dynamic-looking space without visible direct light sources. Adjustable downlights, stage lights, ambient cove lighting, and linear accents on walls are carefully layered and individually controlled to provide balanced environments for different uses. The recessed screen surface is softly framed by a knife-edge cove, hiding the light source from view even at the shallowest viewing angles. Mock-ups were studied in-house to determine the best placement of fixtures, hiding within light. The arches themselves augment the perspective view as they get shorter toward the back of the hall. An adjacent screening hall is designed as a black box with minimal downlights and accents at bench risers, enhancing the stark design.

Photography: Nacasa & Partners Inc.KGM

2017 Citation for Excellence in Exhibition Lighting

Lighting Designer: Dot Dash: Christopher Cheap, Isabel Sanchez Sevillano, Brian Cheap, and Jelisa Blumberg

Architect: OMA New York: Shohei Shigematsu, Scott Abrahams, Christine Noblejas

Owner: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Spring 2016 Costume Institute exhibition, OMA designed translucent white volumes to transform a postmodern interior into a “Ghost Cathedral.” Fixtures in catwalks above create ghosted views of the stone and brick interior of the Robert Lehman Wing and reveal silhouettes of the temporary structure supporting the scrims.The central, domed “cocoon” and four surrounding “chapels” display dresses exemplifying handmade and machine-made details, using projections to magnify the construction details of each garment. Fixtures controlled by DMX dim in response to the projection sequences, maintaining the 5 fc maximum. Signage, case lighting, and projections are all tuned to preserve the white balance throughout the exhibition.After testing a range of available halogen and LED fixtures, Dot Dash determined that a custom LED fixture and mounting system was the best solution. A zoom lens and integral dimmer adjust both beamspread and output based on the throw distance. In display cases around the perimeter of the central dome, custom, polished stainless steel fixtures integrate within the millwork to light each book. Inside niches, theatrical fixtures are cross-aimed to achieve a mysterious, shadow-free gradient of light across the back wall.

Photography: Albert Vecerka, ESTO; Dot Dash, Brett Beyer

Lighting Design: SBLD Studio: Attila Uysal, Amy Ruffles, and Jorge Ruiz

Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle: John H. Beyer, Margaret Kittinger, Brett Gaillard, Miriam Kelly

Owner: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fifty years after opening as the Whitney Museum, Marcel Breuer’s mid-century masterpiece welcomed a new tenant, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The restoration commissioned by The Met focused on the building’s signature attributes, including iconic lighting created by Breuer and his close friend Edison Price.The famous array of glowing discs in the lobby had fallen into disrepair with an unsightly mix of silver-bowl lamps with different light sources. The discs were relamped with a custom LED, its properties modeled on the original 60W incandescent. Iterations of the lamp were mocked up, and the final result is a beautifully uniform array delivering 87 percent energy savings.Original sconces, downlights, and steplights were also lovingly restored and relamped with LED. Photographs of the original façade lighting were studied and the vision carefully re-created with 3000K LED floodlights to enhance the resplendent granite and compliment the warm interior tone. This holistic approach extended to new, historically sensitive lighting interventions at the lower lobby level.SBLD approached the project with a great sense of responsibility to preserve the original lighting design while updating it for the 21st century. Breuer’s masterpiece can now shine bright for another 50 years.

Photography: Peter Aaron, SBLD Studio, Corrado Serra

Fisher Marantz Stone, Inc.Paul Marantz, Hank Forrest, and Carla Ross Allen

Completed in 1881, the Veterans Room at the Park Avenue Armory was designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. In the Gilded Age of open gas flames and cigars, the coal-driven New York Central Railroad ran directly in front of the building. Originally both a military armory and men’s social club, the building’s primary function today serves cultural, arts, and special events.The overall goals of the lighting restoration were to reveal the room’s beauty, maintain the historic drama, and create the flexibility needed for the wide array of programming. Much of the work focused on sensitive reuse of the original gaslight-era fixtures. Glass elements with concealed LEDs were incorporated into the room’s existing gas chandeliers and sconces to evoke the original flame sources. Sources were fine-tuned to allow stray light to be emitted in a controlled manner, gently highlighting the light fixtures’ intricate metalwork and the room’s exuberant wall and ceiling finishes.

Citation for Transformation of a Space Through Lighting

Tillotson Design Associates Suzan Tillotson, Mitul Parekh, and Shan Jiang

Boston Properties wanted to upgrade the existing public spaces at 599 Lex to appeal to new, young tenants, while establishing a strong street presence. Tillotson’s suspended vertical fins glow with appropriate luminosity, filling the lobby volume with light and blending with the architecture by connecting visually to the existing fins on the glass façade.Previously, the 50 ft high glass façade showed reflections during the daytime and evening; and the north face with its extended canopy limited daylight penetration, exacerbating the daytime contrast problem. Complicating matters further, the rear wall features a large, commissioned bas-relief that needed to stand out.Edge-lit with linear, dimmable LED fixtures at top, the clear glass fins have translucent frit that lends a diaphanous appearance. There is visibility through the fins, creating a fresh take on the concept of a luminous ceiling. To punch the polished stone floor with light and add elements of sparkle, a grid of LED pendants, in a de-materializing polished chrome finish, are interspersed between the fins. This pendant vocabulary extends into the lower-height elevator lobbies.Carefully placed framing projectors with custom gobos created in-situ make the art wall pop, even during the daytime.

2017 Citation for the Lighting of an Art Installation

Arup: Jake Wayne, Brian Stacy, Anthony J. Cortez, and Liberty MacDougall

Architect: Studio Echelman: Janet Echelman

Arup’s lighting design for this immersive art installation blurs the line between the art and the illumination. Echelman’s layers of twines, knotted together in vibrant hues, interplay with colored light and “shadow drawings” on the walls of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.With such a unique art form, the lighting installation details were carefully considered to achieve proper aiming angles, without creating undesirable glare or distractions to visitors. The design process was necessarily collaborative and iterative, with lighting visualizations representative of the intent reviewed and critiqued first by the artist, but also by the curatorial staff.The dedicated gallery space afforded the opportunity to explore the nature of shadow, creating a second “palette” for the artist and allowing her to consider the large blank walls as additional canvas.Seven-color LED theatrical fixtures scripted via DMX create a dynamic, vibrant 9 minute choreographed sequence of light that takes visitors on an experiential journey through the artistic narrative. The lighting expresses every elemental piece of the art, responding in kind to each flowing gesture.Intricately woven into moments of air, sound, and motion, the lighting sequence is simultaneously symbolic and abstract, allowing viewers to draw their own reflective interpretations.

Photography: Arup, Ron Blunt