When Avid decided to move their headquarters to Burlington, Massachusetts, a 200,000-square-foot office space was re-designed with a high-tech polish and bold visuals to reflect the work and accomplishments of this innovative media firm.

The public/client experience begins at the entry lobby, where visitors can watch video feeds projected onto two-story glass vitrines.

The main event is supplied by high-powered projectors; it was necessary to downplay the ambient light in the space in order to avoid conflicting with and washing out the images. A spare array of recessed linear downlights beneath the bridge indicate the beginnings of a recurring visual motif, without overpowering the displays. Incandescent furniture lighting adds warmth and creates a more intimate scale within the tall volume.

Recessed linear fluorescent fixtures define intensely colored portals connecting public areas with semi-private ones. The diffuse acrylic lenses create a crisp, flangeless outline. The corner detail was carefully coordinated, with overlapping fixture configurations ensuring that the glow would wrap uninterrupted into the corners.

The primary program for the project is open offices along the perimeter, with private offices at the core. Product training and conference rooms are designed around the latest in A/V equipment, with a focus on web-based video communication. Low partition walls and nine-foot ceilings allowed the use of a fully indirect, glare-free lighting scheme, with target light levels kept to a minimum to accommodate the high volume of work done on computer screens instead of paper.

Furniture-mounted fixtures relate to team meeting nodes. Wallwashers along the core walls highlight graphics and displays, and help balance the brightness against vast perimeter windows. The unusually wide spacing of the indirect pendant fixtures is due to high-efficiency fixture design with very wide lateral distribution; the minimalist arrangement, combined with concealed furniture-integrated lighting in core offices, puts the emphasis on illuminated surfaces rather than visible hardware.

The main conference room has a broad range of functional requirements, including video-conferencing, large rear-projection video, diverse meetings, and the occasional after-hours cocktail parties. An undulating ceiling was developed to break up the monotonous ceiling plane, and to provide functional lighting from an eye-catching structure. Efficient and economical fluorescent strips provide an ambient glow throughout the room from above stretch fabric panels.

The custom spines crossing the ceiling organize and conceal linear fluorescent downlights interspersed with adjustable halogen downlights, allowing for varying levels of illumination to enable presentations, note-taking, or special events when a little sparkle is needed.

Photo Credits: Nathanael Doak / Lam Partners (1), Andrew Bordwin (2-5)

Integrated LED steplights create a processional approach to the plaza and reinforce the bridge’s architectural rhythm.

What happens when a heavily worn piece of an urban park gets a little well-deserved attention? And what role does lighting play in all of this?

Newly renovated Lake Plaza is the crown jewel in Houston’s popular Hermann Park. Run by the Hermann Park Conservancy, a non-profit citizens’ organization, in partnership with the City, this project has attained LEED certification through energy efficiency and sensitive restoration of landscape, as well as comprehensive site water management.

New train, new station, open for business.

A new main station for the park’s miniature train railroad, a gift shop, pedestrian bridge, pedal-boat rental, café, and service buildings all support recreation and rejuvenation in the heart of the city. While the plaza is used often during the day as a staging area for school groups attending the zoo, until the renovation, it had languished at night, despite the plaza’s proximity to the Miller Outdoor Theatre and its quarter of a million annual visitors.

The existing train pavilion prior to renovation.

Lighting guides and invites movement, making visual and architectural connections. Existing pathway lighting in Hermann Park relied upon historic “acorn” metal halide post-top lanterns. While well-designed historic lanterns can work well, many of the park’s fixtures had been installed in a piecemeal fashion, and they’d been over-lamped in a well-intended attempt to increase the sense of security. The layout of the lanterns did not provide the necessary visual connection from the Miller Theatre to the plaza, and existing lanterns in the plaza were overly bright, dominating the landscape (the eye always goes to the brightest thing in the line of view). It actually created the perception of less light because distracting glare constricted visitors’ pupils.

The gift shop by day: an airy structure that relates nicely with the wooded surroundings.

The design team chose to rework the plaza without the existing lanterns, and relocated them along the winding paths, where trees could mitigate their brightness, restoring the visual connection of the pathways to the rest of the park.

At night, the illuminated pavilions take on a different character and anchor the park’s destination points.

Illuminated, not by lanterns, but by the landscape and buildings surrounding it, the plaza beckons. Transformed at night into a composition of glowing pavilions, these structures create a welcoming destination and backdrop for evening strolls. Exactingly integrated compact fluorescent uplight sconces give the structures a fixtureless appearance, revealing finely crafted architectural details that are shaded during the day.

Tree uplights highlight rhythm and textures, while LED steplights reinforce the stepped form of the water’s edge.

Photo Credits: Overland Partners, except #3 by Lam Partners

Rhode Island Hall, the fourth-oldest building on the main green at Brown University, was built in 1840 and is now the new home for the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Its massive granite block construction features a basement level, first floor, and double-height second floor with substantial skylights. A large connecting stair links each floor, with display cases, lighted with concealed linear LED fixtures, presenting interesting artifacts.

The basement contains several offices and a classroom, all with large windows so that daylight-harvesting linear fluorescent pendants were used. LED task lights at each desk can boost light levels per each person’s preferences.

The first floor is where full-time faculty and administration offices are located. Fully automatic daylight harvesting fixtures respond to sunlight that streams in through the nearly eight-foot-tall windows. The main lobby has more artifact exhibit space incorporated into the stair as well as two separate display rooms on either side of the entry vestibule. Low-wattage ceramic metal halide recessed adjustables provide crisp illumination without major heat or energy concerns.

The second floor is dominated by the double-height library space/reading room and graduate student studios. Centered in the middle of the library is a freestanding object containing six faculty offices topped with a study mezzanine. It’s accessed by a decorative stair accented with LED button fixtures just above the risers.

Above the mezzanine is a large barrel-vaulted ceiling that cleverly baffles a series of skylights that would have otherwise made the space too hot and bright.

Automatically dimming linear fluorescent cove uplights tucked into large sculptural openings in the ceiling supplement natural light on overcast days and replicate it at night, creating a spacious and ethereal quality of light.

The perimeter walls are almost completely covered with twelve-foot-tall bookcases, illuminated by elegant linear fluorescent wallwashers that cantilever from the upper fascia. In keeping with the theme, these fixtures also dim automatically based on ambient daylight.

An interior core wall was stripped back to expose the original stone construction and provided an opportunity to fit in a linear fluorescent strip, grazing the coarse material for a striking effect.

The adjacent reading room employs a dramatic sculptural wood slat wall that undulates across it’s length to creatively baffle the massive skylight above.

At the other end of this floor is the equally tall grad studio with its own skylight. A similar wood slat element snakes and twists its way up from the floor and on into the deep skylight opening to provide an innovative and interesting means of controlling daylight.

The building shows an interesting contrast between inside and outside; it clearly reflects the actual renovation process of completely stripping the interior down to the stone blocks and constructing something new inside. The architect’s keen understanding of materials and detailing provides wonderful opportunities to integrate lighting into the building language, so that light sources and fixture hardware are largely hidden.

Location: Providence, Rhode Island

Architect: Anmahian Winton Architects

Photo credits: John Abromowski (1) Justin T. Brown / Lam Partners Inc (2-9)

Lam Partners was asked to submit a concept for an upcoming Boston Globe article seeking creative, temporary lighting installations to spruce up four stalled construction sites throughout Boston. We chose to undertake the former Filene’s site, located right in the middle of Downtown Crossing.

To celebrate the urban basin that has been created by the construction process, we proposed draping a series of super-sized LED video screens over the exposed steel.

Using rental equipment often used on concert tours, we would create a dramatic digital canvas of large fabric drapes with integrated LED video pixels, which can be quickly hung off the steel structure. Color-changing LED floodlights would accent the remaining structure.

A variety of stunning digital compositions could be shown, including massive ten-story-high waterfalls. Local artists could be commissioned to produce animations reflecting the spirit of Downtown Crossing.

Our concept is based on LED curtains from a company called Main Light. Main Light takes LED strings from Color Kinetics (which actually used to be located right in Downtown Crossing) and integrates them into the “fabric” curtains for rock concerts and events. They could be quickly hung from the steel frame of the building. So, surprisingly given the dramatic effect, the concept is actually quite realistic to accomplish.

Our proposal suggests installation-specific advertising, which could be readily sold to compensate for the cost of the project. Macy’s, DSW, and H&M all run major national advertising campaigns, and each has a location flanking the site. It is easy to imagine the creative possibilities – each company could use the screens for really unique advertising. How about the waterfalls turn into a cascade of shoes for DSW? Or maybe Macy’s or H&M engage with an artist like Julian Opie for ten-story-tall “walking people” animations?

We estimate that the cost of a four-week-long installation could range from $350,000 to $650,000, depending on the quantity and the resolution of the screens used.

Image Credits: Brad Koerner / Lam Partners Inc (1), Main Light Industries Inc. (2-4)

Custom House after lighting restoration

In the Fall of 2008, Boston’s oldest skyscraper was showing its age. Originally completed in 1849, the twenty-year-old façade lighting on the 1915 tower addition was in disrepair. The building maintenance budget could not keep up with the required frequency of re-lamping in such precarious locations, and only a few of the lights were still operating, as seen below.

Lighting in disrepair before restoration

Motivated by the lighting festival, IlluminaleBoston 08, and the promise of reduced building maintenance costs, the design team and building ownership endeavored to restore the landmark’s night image to prominence in the Boston skyline – but more than a few obstacles stood in our way, and chief among them were budget and time. Though planning for the event began in February 2008, design for the Custom House site did not begin until May. This left less than five months to complete the site analysis, design documentation, and installation. The majority of project funding would come from donations and sponsorship, so the budget was both modest and unpredictable.

To maximize the impact of the project, the team focused available resources on the top of the tower, which is visible all over the city. The main shaft of the tower, up through the 16th floor, was softly illuminated from below with ceramic metal halide floodlights to keep the tower grounded. Narrow-beam LED spotlights with clear lenses uplight the colonnade above from the sides of each column, spilling light onto the entablature above and revealing the granite dentils that confirm its precedent in classical architecture. Two additional fixtures highlight each corner to complete the tower’s form.

Custom House after completed renovation

Linear LED wall-grazers are concealed to wash the balcony-level façade below the clock, and adjustable LED spotlights extended on rotating outriggers light the sculpted eagles and highlight the corners of the clock tower. The outriggers swing over to the accessible balcony for maintenance.

The clock face retained its original lighting. A low pressure sodium lamp in each number provides an orange glow, and blue compact fluorescent backlights the minute marks. At the observation deck above, the columns are silhouetted with LED spotlights behind the base of each column to add depth to the façade and hide the fixtures from visitors’ view. Additional outriggers are located at the corners to accentuate entablature ornaments.

Lighting at the peak was restricted by FAA requirements, but LED floodlights with frosted lenses were concealed at the base of the crown to graze the towers’ cap and expose the pyramid of dormer windows. These fixtures are accessible from the windows at the base of the pyramid.

The completed project has successfully restored the Custom House Tower to its rightful place as one of the crown jewels of the Boston skyline, while drastically reducing the lighting energy consumption and maintenance costs. The building is expected to save 19,000 kWh annually, and to use only 30% of the energy consumed by the previous design over its expected 20-year lifespan.

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Project size: 496 feet, overall height of tower

Project cost: $75,000 labor and installation / $160,000 donated lighting equipment

Photo Credits: Brad Koerner / Lam Partners Inc (1, 4, 5), Lam Partners (2), Brandon Miller (3)

Can translucent polycarbonate panels be transformed to become a glowing, iconographic element in a metaphorical landscape? Certainly, the challenge was there from the start, when the early physical model straddled the architect’s office and the architect’s desire to evoke the rushing rivers of nearby foothills was our mandate. But how does one move forward from concept to execution?

Planned for the Central Gallery circulation zone serving the second floor galleries, the luminous ceiling spans between the Atrium entry and a terminal skylight, with a branch entering the soaring Contemporary Gallery. For the central spaces, pendant uplight fixtures would be used to indirectly backlight the suspended panels, activated in effect by daylight at the Atrium and skylight ends.
A clerestory window above the panels in the Contemporary Gallery was to provide a diffuse ambient glow. Physical daylight model testing was employed to verify that the daylight from above would light the sloping translucent panels in the gallery, while still meeting artwork conservation standards of no direct sunlight on surfaces displaying artwork.

A scale model of the gallery was mounted to a heliodon outside in sunlight, adjusted to correct for latitude and season, and tested for perceived visual brightness of the translucent panels as well as absolute illumination levels within the gallery.
The luminous ceiling system not only provides the ambient lighting for Central Gallery circulation, but supports its use as exhibition space as well. Strategically integrated into the panel layout, sparely used surface-mounted track can light sculptural displays; optimum track placement was coordinated with the accessible panel system’s design. Small-profile tapered T5 pendant indirect fixtures above with symmetrical reflectors are used to minimize shadows and contrast of lit fixture housings.

Before the construction documents were completed, it became apparent that cost-saving strategies would need to be pursued. The panelized ceiling had been planned to temper daylight from clerestories, but budget constraints eliminated all gallery skylights, elevating the importance of the luminous ceiling system as a source of energy-efficient ambient light. A selection of translucent multi-cellular polycarbonate panel products were evaluated for their luminous appearance and their ability to minimize the appearance of supports, light fixtures, pipes and beams from below.

The mock-up clearly underscored the importance of painting out all surfaces above the panels with white paint to improve lighting uniformity.

Four years of thoughtful teamwork and disciplined coordination result in a architectural element and ambient lighting system that transcends materiality and function, to animate a modern museum.

Location: Roanoke, Virginia
Architect: Randall Stout Architect, Inc., with RRMM Architects
Project size: 81,000 square feet
Project cost: $66 million
Photo credits: Timothy Hursley (1), Randall Stout Architects, Inc. (2-3, 5, 7), Lam Partners Inc (4, 6)