Lighting Design dot NYC

2019 Award of Excellence

Lighting Design: Buro Happold Engineering: Chris Coulter, Gabe Guilliams, and David Smith & Transsolar Klima Engineering: Raphael Lafargue, Matthias Rammig, and Matthias Schuler

Architect: The Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Owner:Department of Culture and Tourism–Abu Dhabi

Throughout historic Middle Eastern communities, covered open-air marketplaces created vital social epicenters. This museum space by French architect Jean Nouvel is sheltered by a market umbrella that creates its own “rain of light.” Inspired by Arabic architecture, eight layers of abstracted geometric patterning clad the dome, allowing limited sunlight to pass through. Depending on time of day and year, daylight pierces the interiors, dappling light on the people and surfaces within; changing as patrons traverse from daylit gallery to daylit gallery. When it becomes humid or particularly dusty outside, the rays of light become visible – an ethereal experience. Building a full-scale mock-up early in design, the team tuned the average dome porosity to create high contrast between sunlight and the ambient surround. The team then balanced shade settings and electric lighting to achieve thermal comfort, maximum daylighting of gallery spaces, and conservation requirements. Large skylight apertures within the galleries visually connect visitors to the overarching dome. Interstitial spaces create moments of pause on the gallery journey. Views to the sea allow visitors to mentally rejuvenate and absorb more in their visit – here at the crossroads of Eastern and Western civilizations.

Photography: Thomas Drouault, Roland Halbe, Creative Family Shutterstock.com, Chris Coulter, Danica O. Kus, Mohamed Somji

2019 Award of Excellence

Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates: Suzan Tillotson, Ellen Sears, and Katherine Lindsay

Architects: Cooper Robertson: Scott Newman, Andrew Barwick, Erin Flynn, James Carpenter Design Associates Inc: James Carpenter, Joseph Welker, Kate Wyberg, McClellan Trivers Associates: Joel Fuoss, David Lott, Shawn Dodson

Owner: US National Park Service and CityArchRiver Foundation

The design team anticipated a difficult transition from the vast, unobscured daylit park of the Gateway Arch to the subterranean levels of this new museum extension. Extremely well lit interior surfaces mitigate the contrast with daylight and entice visitors to travel below grade. At night, the new entry sequence acts as a centralized beacon, with tracings of light at the curved façade drawing patrons toward the glowing museum interior. The curved tri-wire wall rings the exterior plaza and continues into the interior canopy entrance. It is softly uplit by LED grazers within a recessed trough, subtly guiding visitors as they enter and depart the museum at night. Once inside, a ceiling plane comprising a series of aluminum tubes provides indirect lighting. Carefully placed and aimed LED striplights concealed within certain tubes prevent dark zones in the ceiling structure. The painted-white vertical faces and undersides of the beams reflect light down through the tubes, creating a consistent glow for the entire ceiling plane. The result is a vibrant, uplifting experience throughout the lobby and double-height exhibition spaces, with no visible light sources. Tunablewhite LEDs and carefully managed dimming allow for beautiful day-tonight transitions.

Photography: Nic Lehoux, Sam Fentress

2019 Award of Excellence

Lighting Designer: Loop Lighting: Alina Ainza, Ruben Gonzalez, and Ryoko Nakamura

Architect: Tacklebox Architecture, PLLC: Jeremy Barbour

Owner: Claus Porto, Aquiles Brito

As the first international boutique for a 131 year-old Portuguese soap and fragrance house, this store design celebrates the company’s rich past and vibrant future. An intricate, 42 ft-long, freestanding archway milled from Portuguese cork pays homage to Portuguese architecture and fine craftsmanship. Illuminating the archway required a bold yet balanced lighting solution to highlight both the brand’s iconic packaging and the 1500 faceted cork tiles. A glowing spine of light runs down the center of the archway: a modular pendant with a triangular profile that references the diamond pattern in the cork. Suspension points are perfectly concealed. Display niches are lit from above by custom-fit, edge-lit acrylic panels held by magnets with no visible hardware. Concealed linear sources in vertical recesses at the back walls create the “light at the end of the tunnel” effect, drawing your eye through the space. The integrated lighting elements animate the architecture’s complex but honest expression of form, texture, and function – bridging the concepts of store and sculpture. Custom light fixtures precisely fitted within the pre-fab cork, and carefully timed coordination with the entire team, were the keys to success.

Photography: Eric Petschek

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: One Lux Studio: Stephen Margulies, Elena Areshina, and Huanhai Cheng

Architect: Ted Moudis Associates: Avery Miyasato Handy, Ray Sell, Jamie Stuono

Owner: Park Tower Group: Marian Klein Feldt

Owners are pulling out all the stops to provide amenities within their office buildings to distinguish themselves against competitors. Conference centers, café spaces, and fitness centers are being constructed in found, underutilized spaces within these buildings. This imaginative fitness center is located in the second basement level of a Madison Avenue office building. The goal was to create a space that ranks with other private fitness clubs in New York. The iconic reception area includes rich materials and beautiful furnishings. The lighting of the stone feature wall was accomplished with a horizontal and vertical flat light panel that turns the corner seamlessly. In the locker rooms, soft indirect lighting filters through the wood ceiling. To preserve this valuable plenum for lighting required careful coordination with the team. The fitness area required a big idea; one that would make this daylight-starved room to come to life. We proposed several methods of direct and indirect lighting. Soffits, coves, and pendants finally led to what was later called “Light Trees”: seamless, flat light panels with wide luminous surfaces that morph throughout the space. The lighting control system produces highly differentiated morning, afternoon, and evening looks, ensuring that the space is lively and luminous.

Photography: Brent Gollnick

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates: Suzan Tillotson, Erin Dreyfous, and Megan Trimarchi

Architect: James Corner Field Operations: James Corner, Lisa Tiziona Switkin, Megan Born, Eric Becker, Snow Kreilich Architects: Julie Snow, Mary Springer

Owner: City of Minneapolis: Steve Kotke, Director of Public Works

Nicollet Mall has been Minneapolis’ civic “Main Street” for more than 100 years, so the reconstruction of the locally adored, but dated downtown thoroughfare required careful consideration. Aiming to reduce visual clutter, eliminate glare, and increase efficiency, the streetscape lighting became a unifying element for the entire downtown district. Slender, high-mast poles with low-glare LED accent lights provide the majority of the ambient light for the street and adjacent public spaces. Each pole was individually detailed and coordinated to include many additional streetscape components, such as signage, traffic signals, and decorative banners. Glowing beacons atop of the poles are programmed to respond to special events or holidays, further enhancing placemaking and a fresh identity. Pockets of seating and landscaping with uplit trees are dispersed throughout the project, in both raised and in-grade planting beds, reinforcing the greenery as a continuous and important project component. Special moments along the 12-block site provide immersive lighting experiences, including a color-changing armature structure and custom lanterns. The “reading room” includes custom, pedestrianscale outdoor floor lamps of a more intimate scale; an inviting setting for pedestrians to pause.

Photography: John Muggenborg

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: Focus Lighting: Brett Andersen, Juan Pablo Lira, Asier Mateo, and Justin Keenan Miller

Architect: Studio Libeskind

Owner: National Capital Commission

The National Holocaust Monument comprises six triangular, castconcrete volumes configured into a Star of David. The lighting concept enhances the architecture’s proportions and raw materials to create an emotional visual journey encouraging contemplation and reflection. To meet budget requirements, the lighting prioritizes the monument’s feature walls, which are embedded with monochromatic images of Holocaust sites, leaving the remaining walls darker in contrast. Working with large concrete voids with no ceilings led the Focus Lighting team to create custom armatures designed to marry with the architecture’s angular vocabulary. Tightly spaced blade louvers block nearly all views of the internal 3000K fixtures during the day and eliminate glare at night, allowing the armatures to disappear into the dark sky beyond. The monument’s tallest wall is illuminated using two rows of linear LEDs mounted inside a trough at the wall’s base. The trough is covered by a metal grill, precisely aligned with each LED to eliminate shadows, protect fixtures from harsh winter weather, and act as a louver to reduce glare. Each visit culminates by ascending the monument’s Stair of Hope, flanked by linear LEDs hidden within the railings, gently ushering visitors to a final viewing platform with views of the Peace Tower.

Photography: JP Lira

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: Melanie Freundlich Lighting Design, LLC: Melanie Freundlich and Pei-Yun Chang

Architect: Workshop for Architecture: John Lee

This Pool House is a reconstruction, renovation, and expansion of an existing pool structure located within a private residential estate. The lighting design strikes a balance between reflection (glass) and luminosity (acrylic and stone); with underwater lighting adding quiet drama. Both above and below ground in the spa, the lighting enhances the materiality of each surface and provides an overall relaxed ambiance. Dropped pendants within the fin structure, along with several other integrated lighting solutions, meet code-required light levels on the deck and at the water’s surface without obstructing views to the expansive landscape and sky. During the day the glass-walled “wet” area is lit primarily via the clear skylight, and reflected light filters through the acrylic fins. Viewed from the exterior at twilight, the glass walls reflect the surrounding countryside, but light levels allow a view into the space. In the evening, integrated electric lighting and underwater lighting are balanced via a dimming control system to provide adequate illumination for swimming or lounging. Continuous slot wallwashing and recessed downlights in the underground spa extend the project’s vocabulary of softly glowing paces.

Photography: Scott Frances

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates: Suzan Tillotson, Erin Dreyfous, and Megan Trimarchi

Architec of Record: Montroy Anderson DeMarco, Steven Andersen, Daniel Terebelo, Christopher White

Owner:The Four Seasons Restaurant: Kerri Rogers, Director of Private Events

The primary objective of the lighting for the iconic Four Seasons Restaurant relocation is to create a high-end dining experience for patrons where everyone “looks and feels beautiful.” The bar and tunnel are dramatic, with darker finishes and small-scale accent lights emphasizing the moody ambiance. The intimate bar space features a central sunken bar highlighted with table lamps and anchored by a graze of light from under the bar top. The windows are lined with curtains of gold-flecked glass beads; grazing creates an animated sparkle within the dark interior. Proceeding from the bar, a dimly-lit tunnel of oxidized brass with miniature point-lights acts as a reflective runway for the guests. The corridor opens up to the expansively lighted main dining room. A custom system of intersecting bronze tubes provides soft, diffuse lighting during the day and a dramatic sculptural element to dine under in the evening. Collaboration with the custom fixture designer ensured that color temperature and dimming aesthetics are appropriate. Gold-threaded mesh window treatments act as a scrim. LEDs integrated into their bottom support frames graze the mesh from the outside, providing privacy for diners at night, as well as highlighting the luxe material from the exterior.

Photography: John Muggenborg, Fernando Guerra

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: Lighting Workshop: Steven Espinoza

Architect: James Corner Field Operations: Lisa Tziona Switkin, Karen Tamir, Sanjukta Sen

Owner: Two Trees Management

Domino Park has redefined how Brooklynites (and visitors) connect with their waterfront. It is a unique, 6 acre public park, part of a multi-use development on the edge of the former Domino Sugar Refinery. Remnants from the refinery have been salvaged and repurposed to preserve and honor the site’s history. The lighting design celebrates the age and decay of the industrial artifacts with shades of white light. To emphasize scale, color temperatures shift based on elevation. Human-scale lighting near the ground is warm, while grander elements are illuminated with gradually cooler color temperatures. The result is a unique composition and gradient when viewed from across the East River. Two cranes, along with steel columns from the old refinery, stand along the 5 block–long Artifact Walk. Continuous rail lighting is 3000K, while upper portions of the columns are emphasized with 3500K LED accent lights. The highest, most prominent objects in the park, two turquoise cranes, glow with 4000K sources, discreetly located within the structures to emphasize their skeletal qualities. The dancing water feature provides a dramatic lighting energy, as it’s purposely the only location where color-changing light is found. It attracts children and pets on hot summer days.

Photography: Daniel Levin

2019 Award of Merit

Lighting Designer: Arup: Brian Stacy, Joe Chapman, Christoph Gisel, and Star Davis

Architects: KieranTimberlake, Urban Engineers, OLIN

Owner: Center City District

The plaza at Philadelphia’s beloved City Hall, a civic icon, interfaces to a major transportation hub below. But walking through the heart of Center City at dusk used to bring an edge of uneasiness to pedestrians. Today, the plaza-become-park includes a reimagining of urban lighting. In September of 2018, after the completion of upgrades, phase one of Pulse, by artist Janet Echelman, was revealed. This artistic installation into the park’s infrastructure features a dynamic, interactive line of fog and light that live-traces the subway path below. As the first transit activated public art piece, Pulse attracts a diverse group of visitors and offers an uplifting, playful, and personal interaction with Philadelphia’s transportation infrastructure. The line of fog creates a stunning wall that blasts into the surrounding landscape, racing across Dilworth Park. The line traces the path of the underground trolleys – traditionally depicted in green on transit maps – using custom, linear LEDs below grade. Fog and lighting are simultaneously triggered, giving a seamless effect. Using existing poles from the initial landscape phase of the design, additional RGBW fixtures with gobos add layered color and dimensionality to the ethereal fog. The experience stops pedestrians in their tracks and encourages playful interactions.

Photography: Sean O’Neill

2019 Citation for Integrated Ceiling Feature

Lighting Designer: Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design

Architect: Stephen Yablon Architecture

Owner: Angelo Gordon

Twin Brook Capital’s Chicago office shows off spectacular views and an extensive art collection, while also providing a unified, comfortable workspace. The lighting solution fulfills this vision, and at the same time establishes an architectural vocabulary used throughout the project. Deep beams resulted in low ceilings throughout the space. The lighting design adds height by creating a series of pop-ups between these beams. Each angled, perforated metal ceiling section is lit indirectly from a knife-edge cove on one side. The soft glow draws attention to the ceiling, while the repetitive sequence draws the eye to the window wall and city views beyond. The ceiling lighting design is architecturally appealing and highly effective in providing a comfortable quality and amount of light. Consequently, the same cove solution is applied at corridors and then continued in work areas, creating a cohesive design motif across the range of open areas in the office. The company’s credo stresses transparency and openness. This integrated ceiling lighting solution establishes continuity among a variety of different spaces, making this transparency literal. Despite its adherence to strict organizing principles, the office’s lighting conveys an easy elegance, a modern openness, and a comfort that staff and visitors readily enjoy.

Photography: Steve Hall

2019 Citation for Interactive Facade

Lighting Designer: upLIGHT: Michael Stiller, Caroline Trewet, and Amanda Clegg Lyon

Sensing Change is a peaceful, reflective experience in the middle of Chicago’s concrete jungle, drawing inspiration from the natural world. The installation is powered by live data feeds, creating unique and ever-changing visuals that can be enjoyed both day and night. The luminous trellis projects animations influenced by local weather. Wind speed acts as a disruptive layer superimposed over base states that include: Cloudy, Sunny, and Precipitation. ESI Design conceived the dynamic light sculpture, which was further developed and executed by upLIGHT and the project fabricators. The trellis comprises brushed metal fins housing linear 4000K fixtures facing the viewer and RGB fixtures facing the wall; a textured structure that plays with animation and light. By combining line-of-sight and reflected lighting effects, the sculpture alternately reads as a single- or multilayer surface, generating a complex and organic experience. The abstract patterns of light are inspired by images of water traveling through leaf veins, rays of sunlight, and the flow of oxygen in and out of the atmosphere. Over time, the LED trellis will support lush ivy growth. Together, the trellis and vines embody a juxtaposition of technology and nature that is as organic and contemplative as dappled light through trees.

Photography: Caleb Tkach, AIAP

2019 Citation for Kinetic Facade Treatment

Lighting Designer: Focus Lighting: Paul Gregory, Brett Andersen, Christine Hope, Hilary Manners, and Kenneth Schutz

Architectural Design: The Portico Group (now MIG | Portico)

Owner: Wildlife Conservation Society

Much like a real ocean dive, a visitor’s journey through the New York Aquarium’s new 57,000 sqft Ocean Wonders: Sharks! exhibit begins outside, where artist Ned Kahn’s shimmering wall uses wind and light to create a mesmerizing visual, reminiscent of ocean waves. Each night, a curated 5 hour lighting display triggers automatically as sunset approaches over the beach, with bright cyans and undulating whites painted dramatically against a pink- and orange-streaked sky. As night falls, deep blues and purples slowly replace the pastels, ebbing and flowing in a rhythm of bioluminescent tides. When wind ripples through the sculpture, flashes of white backlight dance through like a school of iridescent fish. A 20 by 20 ft mock-up built on the Coney Island Boardwalk confirmed the team’s decision to use two rows of linear LEDs at the wall’s base. White uplights behind the wall bounce off its 33,000 swinging panels and directly into viewers’ eyes as a quick sparkle, while LEDs in front paint the surface with colored light. Visible for miles up and down the boardwalk, the shimmer wall serves as a public display of light and art that captures the curiosity of everyone who sees it.

Photography: Ryan Fischer