Lighting Design dot NYC

2018 Award of Excellence

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

Schreiber Studio: Matthew Schreiber

Owner: Bloomberg L.P.: Michael Bloomberg

Meticulously controlled lighting reveals the ancient Roman city of Londinium and the mysterious Temple of Mithras, the bull-slayer, “reinstated” in its original location within a new corporate headquarters. At street level, the climate-controlled display case could not incorporate lighting. Artifacts are displayed on pyramidal forms, revealing details with minimal shadows from track lighting. At the mezzanine, ghostly figures emerge among the exhibits. Concealed framing projectors illuminate resin replicas without interfering with visitors’ ability to read the interactive displays.At the lower level, “walls” of light rise over the foundation remnants of the temple. “Haze” – theatrical fog never before used in a permanent installation – gives the light beams their structural physicality. The light is aimed horizontally onto a series of concealed mirrors, and the resultant plane is interrupted by baffles to simulate portals. Technical challenges involved coordination with air systems and ceiling construction. The altar figure comprises layers of cut steel, cantilevered so that each silhouette is illuminated. Bespoke pendants, designed to be near-invisible, reveal the ruin from below eye level. The overall lighting design furnishes just enough light for visitors to examine the artifacts and ruins without distracting from the mystery and magic of the immersive experience.

Photography: James Newton

2018 Award of Excellence

Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates Suzan Tillotson, Mitul Parekh, Erin Dreyfous, Sara McElroy, and Krista Kennedy

Bloomberg’s new European HQ provides 1.1 million sqft of office space, the most sustainably designed project in the world. The exterior facades give a consistent impression of an interior glow. Indeed, a continuous uplight recessed within the interior base of the windows renders the rich bronze and stone soffits. Vertical ribbed fins, edgelit with LEDs, define the base of the buildings, while louvered accent lights provide sidewalk illumination. Stone soffits are uplit from linear LEDs regressed within the top of a continuous stone plinth.The focal point of the lobby is the “Vortex.” Continuous uplighting at the base brings the art piece to life. The spiral stair ascends six floors, with louvered slotlighting at each riser. The custom ceiling system integrates cooling, lighting, and acoustic functions within a 4 inch–deep plane. Developed with and detailed by the architect, 2 million formed-metal “petals” house individual LEDs at the panel intersections. This low-brightness system is dimmed to minimize wattage consumption while still achieving the desired 300 lx on the workplane throughout. Custom pendants add sparkle for dining, and wallwashers illuminate a commissioned felt artwork. The exterior terrace stone soffit is washed by shielded uplighting mounted flush at the perimeter.

2018 Award of Merit

Lighting Workshop: Doug Russell and Jeeyoung Park

Situated in Brooklyn Bridge Park, this new hotel embodies sustainable luxury and redefines a Brooklyn aesthetic that forsakes bare Edison bulbs for the rich textures of nature and the project’s site context. Custom lighting fixtures, and their lighting effects, exude a casual elegance throughout the project. In the lobby, a “tangle” of directional cylinders on fabric cables lights the double-height feature wall of biophilic ferns and broadleaf plants.A self-imposed rule of “No downlights!” led to simple, surface-mounted fixtures that satisfy focal and wall lighting applications. In a nod to the Brooklyn Bridge, the lobby stair appears suspended from steel cables. Here, small projectors highlight the steel cables, concrete columns, and the central art feature. Guest elevators are suffused in a warm light filtering through the cracks of rough-hewn boards, leading to guest rooms that feature four layers of illumination for a rich visual composition.Lighting in the event space lobby comprises linear grazing light integrated into the rough stone slab walls; custom, column-mounted up-down “slabs”; and surface-mounted multiheads for adjustable accent lighting. At the center of the rooftop bar, warm uplighting in the glass block vestibule creates a glowing hearth, with sweeping views of the city skyline.

2018 Award of Merit

L’Observatoire International: Hervé Descottes, Jason Neches, and Natalia Priwin

Longwood Gardens is one of the premier horticultural display gardens in the United States, comprising 1077 acres of gardens, woodlands, and meadows. The Main Fountain Garden combines classical landscape design with music, art, innovation, technology, and spectacular fountains. The architects designed a major rehabilitation for the 80 year–old complex, including restoration; mechanical, electrical, and plumbing upgrades; and entirely new features and enhancements. L’Observatoire’s lighting concepts for the restoration and redesign subtly enhance and shape the visitor experience by concealing light fixtures and using small LED sources wherever possible.The lighting enhances the garden architecture and dynamic fountains at night, leading the eye toward the spectacle of the grand fountains. Strategic spotlighting renders garden features without drawing attention to itself. Visitors marvel at the fantastical garden elements without explicitly noticing the light source.The Main Fountain Garden is experienced from multiple vantage points. The varied lighting scheme gives an overview of the fountain garden as grand tableau, while simultaneously creating intimate spaces within the garden to reveal pathways, lawns, and fountain areas up close. The control system ties the garden to natural cycles, lunar and seasonal, so the lighting evolves in parallel with the seasons, offering a rich experience for visitors.

Kugler Ning Lighting: Jerry Kugler, Burr Rutledge, Junrui Wang, and Jackson Ning

The dining room for this private club was designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1899. Characteristically dark for more than 100 years, the wood-walled space relied solely on chandeliers, sconces, and table lamps. A 1990s intervention added theatrical lighting and an architectural layer – cylindrical halogen uplights behind the original sconces – but the overall gloominess remained.The 2017 renovation introduced a multilayered design. New, concealed lighting highlights important features and reveals the restored ceiling. Mockups helped determine aiming angles, optical distributions, and color-matching for many layers of 2700K LEDs. Historical fixtures were all cleaned and restored, and uplight cans were removed from the sconces, returning them to their original elegant proportions. No longer necessary for ambient illumination, the chandeliers, sconces, and table lamps are shrouded. Opaque shades control brightnesses and allow improved visibility of the room’s details.From the musicians’ gallery, well-shielded, narrow-beam trackheads highlight displays and podium positions. Custom rigging concealed within the gallery pivots into the space for theatrical needs. The lighting control system provides presets for day and night, and flexibility for special events. Exempted from energy codes due to landmark status, the warm and welcoming design nevertheless achieves 48% below ASHRAE 90.1-2013.

2018 Citation for Ceiling Fixture

Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design

Pelli Clarke Pelli’s Eccles Theater — Salt Lake City’s premier performing arts venue — celebrates the city’s architecture and the landscapes and starry skies of Utah. The lighting becomes a unifying element, imparting a welcoming street presence and articulating the building’s design themes. The 2,500-seat performance hall’s lighting recalls the dramatic landscape surrounding the city, with its evenly washed perimeter walls evoking the striated mountains. The theater’s showpiece is the re-creation of the starry sky that blankets the city at night.The design of the ceiling had to dramatically evoke the feeling of the night sky, while accommodating the functional demands of the theater itself. LED strings are stretched across frames and arranged in layers two-deep. Within each ceiling section, the strings are separated into nine different dimmable zones, allowing for random control and cross-fading. Using differently sized LEDs with varying on-center spacings, and then offsetting the panels at unequal distances from each other, creates a three-dimensional sense of depth. Tilting the frames at an angle enhances this effect and helps to avoid nearby theatrical equipment.The architecture sets the stage, and the lighting completes the picture: a grand amphitheater under a clear, starry night sky, nestled among the mountains.

2018 Citation for Humanitarian Action

PhoScope: Nathalie Rozot

In the Martissant district of Port-au-Prince, informal settlements are home to about 50,000 residents. Falls in darkness cause many health casualties, and FOKAL – the nonprofit in charge of the area’s development for the government – undertook an electrification project that required lighting expertise. The lighting proposition included off-grid lighting solutions on three distinct scales: streetlights for major streets and public areas; solar kits for pathways (normally intended to illuminate building interiors); and portable lights for inside and outside homes. The proposal was approved by FOKAL and residents, and sample products were purchased following diligent market research and analysis, product testing, and vendor vetting.The community identified all locations and provided contractors. In the pilot phase, a dozen streetlights were installed in three playgrounds and one road, along with 30 pathway systems. A loan-based “Solar Library” was also launched with 30 portable solar fixtures for youth and children to borrow from the local library.The initial budget furnished about 500 installed products altogether, through 2017. Vandalism is minimal and satisfaction ratings are high. The 2018 project expansion includes additional products and lighting workshops to support the knowledge and artistic needs of Martissant’s residents of all ages.

OWNER: La Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL): Michèle Pierre-Louis, President

SUPPORT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Concepteurs Lumière Sans Frontières (cLSF): Isabelle Corten, Nicolas Frapolli, Rafaël Girouard; FOKAL: Lorraine Mangones, Lucie Couet, Thierry Chérizard, David Dérosier, Rolando Etienne, Wad Frénélus; Centre Culturel Katherine Dunham (CCKD) Library: Islande Baptiste; Residents COGEBAT (utility)

2018 Citation for Design Preservation

L’Observatoire InternationalHervé Descottes, Wei Jien, and Jenny Ivansson

The iconic Seagram Building is a mid-century landmark designed by renowned architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. It was often called “The Tower of Light,” acknowledging the groundbreaking work of Richard Kelly, the pioneering architectural lighting designer. L’Observatoire was engaged by owner Aby Rosen of RFR Realty in collaboration with leaseholder Major Food Group and designer William T. Georgis to develop a respectful lighting scheme for The Grill and The Pool, formerly The Four Seasons.Kelly’s original concept and mood are preserved and simultaneously refreshed with improved lighting technology, including the use of LEDs and a new, modern controls system. Added layers of light accent the space’s historic architectural features. More control and precision are provided for settings between day and evening. Dynamic lighting for events and special occasions modernize Kelly’s lighting design intent.The lighting design enhances the intimacy of the dining experience by creating resonance between darker and brighter areas, highlighting tabletops, and playing with layers of light and shadow, all while keeping the original lighting theme. The lighting celebrates the dining experience of today while preserving the beauty of the space’s legendary past.

Citation for Art Installation

PHT Lighting Design: Peiheng Tsai and Mariana Basilio Verdeja

Architect: SHoP Architects: Christopher Sharples, William Sharples, Sameer Kumar, Andrea Vittadini

OWNER: Interni/Gruppo MondadoriMichelangelo Giombini, Special Projects Architect

SHoP Architects developed this 60 ton outdoor sculpture, fabricated from custom terracotta blocks, for the 2017 Milan Design Week. Designing the terracotta modules, negotiating an ideal location within the exhibition ground, and developing a viable assembly process while maintaining structural integrity challenged the design, fabrication, and installation teams. The sculpture’s final configuration was concluded just 3 months before installation began, leaving a compressed 8 week timeline for lighting design. Lack of information on the surrounding ambient light level – due to concurrent artwork installations – presented additional demands on an already-constrained timeline.Lighting was strategically focused on the sculpture’s central structure, allowing the perimeter “walls” to act as both filter, blocking the surrounding incidental light, and reflector, dispersing the core lighting. A single, low-wattage spotlight fixture type was used on the entire project, streamlining the tight production and installation process.As night fell, light emanated from the core and reflected outward, revealing the intricate patterns of the terracotta blocks. Narrow-beam, 2700K LED uplighting enhanced the richness of the clay-based material, then softly dispersed within the groupings. The glowing center invited passersby to pause, reflect, and slow the hectic pace of our contemporary life – just for a moment.

Construction Management and Installation: Metalsigma Tunesi s.p.a. Adriano Capuozzo, Technical Director

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: ArupDaniela Azzaro, Associate

Photography: Peiheng Tsai