Architectural Lighting: Daylighting

Commendable Achievement, Whole Building: Tenley-Friendship Library

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:17:10 EST

The Tenley-Friendship Library, part of the DC Public Library system, was designed inside-out by way of a collaborative process. The Freelon Group and Horton Lees Brogdon Lighting Design worked together to develop architectural, electric lighting, and daylighting systems with an eye toward creating a healthy building that consumes 31 percent less energy than is standard for a 21,472-square-foot structure.

Commendable Achievement, Whole Building: Frick Chemistry Laboratory, Princeton University

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:16:51 EST

The Frick Chemistry Laboratory at Princeton University rationally organizes office and laboratory space on either side of an open, central atrium topped by 216 photovoltaic-equipped skylights. The architecture indulges its mechanistic aspects with exposed-steel structural members and mechanical ducting, while also providing warmer touches in the form of wooden screens on the interior.

Best Use of Daylighting: The Sidwell Friends School Meeting House and Arts Center

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:49:19 EST

A Quaker institution, the Sidwell Friends School wanted to transform an old gymnasium into a meeting and worship space. The school hired architects KieranTimberlake to deliver a design that would embody the Quaker ideals of light and simplicity.

Postscript - Sunrise Yard Dept. of Transportation Maintenance Facility, Queens, N.Y. & North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, N.C.

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:52:57 EST

Daylighting is one of the most challenging lighting strategies to implement. This year, the jury was torn between two projects that it felt exemplified different thinking about daylighting design—the poetic and the functional.

GSA Regional Field Office Building

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:19:42 EST

A secondary glass façade provides sun shading and softens visual boundaries.

Sun-Kissed

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:12:40 EST

Additions to two of Israel's leading art museums open up to the vibrant daylight of the Mediterranean.

The Chartwell School, Seaside, Calif.

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:09:38 EST

Sited on the decommissioned Fort Ord military base in Seaside, Calif., the Chartwell Campus is composed of multiple buildings and connecting outdoor spaces overlooking Monterey Bay.

Berkshire Beauty

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:10:15 EST

Nestled in the Berkshires sits an understated jewel—the Stone Hill Center at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, a public art museum and research center established in 1955 by Singer sewing machine heir Robert Sterling Clark and his wife Francine.

Happy Landings

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:54:17 EST

Madrid airport's terminal 4 may be high-tech, architecturally, but the effect is humane

Glowing Glass

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:02:32 EST

It's not difficult to pinpoint which building along 15th Street Northwest in downtown Washington, D.C., is the Columbia Center. Completed in 2007, its glass curtain wall façade and glowing “lightbox” lobby stand out amid the surrounding drab 1970s precast concrete office buildings—which is exactly what the architect and client wanted.

Precious Metal

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:54:13 EST

The anchor tenant of a light industrial park in Topeka, Kan., Cox Communications (CC) was in need of more space for its growing inventory—a new distribution center to respond to increased sales in the greater Topeka area. This was just the opportunity for CC's landlord, the owner of the office park who had inherited the outdated site from his father, to rewrite its architectural landscape by updating one building at a time.

Westminster Academy

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:13:44 EST

best incorporation of daylight | daylight

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:22:47 EST

From its inception to its realization, light permeates every aspect of the Bloch Building, the new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

Art Plus Light

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:10:22 EST

Architect Renzo Piano has a way with light. It is what has kept museum directors and trustees beating a path to his offices in Paris and Genoa since the 1987 opening of The Menil Collection in Houston.

Cabin Fever

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:37:09 EST

A research facility in the smoky mountains utilizes its surroundings to provide a sustainable design.

(Un)strictly Ballroom

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:36:35 EST

Ranked among the 10 largest convention center ballrooms in the nation, Kansas City, Missouri's Bartle Hall Ballroom is, needless to say, enormous, encompassing a vast 46,450 square feet.

Solar Strategies

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:40:49 EST

The first implementation of a daylighting system in a Latin American high-rise office tower puts this Mexico City project on the map.

Amazing Glass: Part Three, Creative Potential

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 07:34:44 EST

This is the third article in a three-part series about the most important light-managing medium, glass. In this final installment, design ideas involving glass and light are reviewed.

Light and Shadow

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 07:33:25 EST

Started as a studio project and then continued as her Master Thesis, Marta Felizardo's work explores the dynamic quality of light, the interplay of light and shadow, and how these same qualities might be applied to electric sources.

Private Equity Office, Menlo Park

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 07:38:58 EST

Working in the financial services industry is a stressful, highly charged experience in which 15-hour workdays are the norm. When one quickly growing northern California equity firm needed to move its operations to accommodate its personnel expansion, it hired Gensler to transform two unconnected floors in a typical suburban office park building into an interconnected open-planned space that both defied the traditional Wall Street aesthetic (dark woods and indistinct partitioned interiors) and created a hospitable and luminous working environment that encourages dynamic activity, cross-collaboration, and enables private meetings with clients.