Lighting Reformation

The Cathedral of Siena is one of Italy’s most important Gothic buildings. Inside, visitors are amazed by the unique mosaic floor consisting of more than 50 ornately decorated marble surfaces. In this new century, the church wished to highlight these treasures with more modern technology, specifically discreet, but powerful lighting fixtures that could throw light from distances more than 80 ft.—and be controlled in a more user-friendly fashion. Lighting designer Marco Nereo Rotelli was awarded the task and specified high-precision ERCO lighting tools for the purpose. The latter, in turn, employed Bluetooth Casambi technology to enable the lights to be simply controlled wirelessly

Advances

Lighting & Controls

Crowd Pleaser

Adjustable heights and general positioning, shading options and customizable choices when it comes to ambiance and bulb finishes with dimming availability, Buster+Punch is known for attention to detail and aesthetic appeal, and their entrance into lighting should bring no surprise as being as elegant as before. This lighting application excels in giving the installer full control over the trajectory of light.

Case Study

Exterior Panels/Cladding

Side-Swiping Surfaces

ALTA Long Island City, a 43-story residential tower in Long Island City, N.Y., needed an update. After glass curtainwall and window wall pricing for an acoustically challenged sight came back as cost prohibitive, the redesign by Stephen B. Jacobs Group Architects and Planners (SBJ Group) prescribed a Porcelanosa exterior tile system to clad the building.“We used two colors—Cubica, the dark one, and the other was Extreme White,” recalls SBJ principal, Isaac Daniel Astrachan. “We decided to do punched openings on lower floors and transition to window walls on the upper floors. In between the two, they are staggered as it transitions.” Astrachan was so pleased

Advances

Lighting & Controls

Noise-Averse Texas-Sized Project Inspires the Dallas Design Community

Focused on serving as a resource for those interested in architecture and design in the Dallas area, AIA Dallas and the Architecture and Design Foundation converged in a new space to form “AD EX.” With the intent to deliver a multi-use environment AIA Dallas commissioned Omniplan to redesign the approximately 26,000-sq.-ft., 2-story space. To mitigate reverberation issues and address the lighting needs in the first-floor training room and event space, Omniplan selected Focal Point’s Seem 1 Acoustic luminaire and baffle system. An acoustic analysis yielded a 0.85 second reverberation time (RT) in the training room and a 1.05 seconds RT in the event-space area. Using this inf

Case Study

Stone/Masonry

Driven by Data

The University of Rochester, in Rochester, N.Y., began accepting students to its new Goergen Institute of Data Science program in fall 2015, and two years later the school opened the doors to an ambitious new facility to house the effort.The building features a creative façade design by Kennedy & Violich Architects (KVA) that plays with the theme of a data-centric mission, offering a “coded” indicator of the work going on within its walls. At the same time, it also ties this very modern building to the larger campus, with its roots back to the 1930s.The campus is the university’s third home and was originally built as its College for Men in 1930. Its oldest buildings fe

Advances

Contract Products/Accessories

Bring Office Amenities Home

You’ve grown accustomed to the tools that keep you connected at the office, now take those same conveniences home for work and leisure to make your living space more functional. Power Grommets like Mockett’s PCS82B/U1 mount anywhere to provide accessible power and USB charging—in a home office, in a nightstand, on a kitchen island or integrated into living room furniture. Having power grommets strategically positioned in specific zones of the house in your furniture will allow you to comfortably stay connected. Wireless chargers allow you to rest your phone directly on the surface for added convenience. Enjoy Mockett’s selection of hundreds of styles and configur

AP ProductWire

March 25, 2020 by Jim Crockett

Preparing for the Surge

With COVID-19 coming hard to bear on the United States, radical measures have occurred over the past couple of weeks from cancelations of sports and entertainment, to implementation of social distancing, to outright orders of sheltering in place. That said, some services must go on, not the least of which is healthcare and emergency care. With that in mind HKS Architects’ Jason Schroer, the firm’s director of Health, posted a piece on measures (full story here), those who design healthcare spaces, can suggest to their clients in dealing with this dangerous virus, now and in the future. One of the more interesting suggestions for dealing with the surge, when it arrives, is the creation of temporary structures within parking garages and shell spaces. Several hospitals are also setting up tents near their emergency departments so they can screen patients for respiratory illness and separate them from the other hospital patients. Another measure is to create airborne isolation units and isolation floors that are dedicated for patients that have tested positive. This will reduce the need for caregivers to don/doff personal protective equipment, and lower the chance of transmission to patients without the virus. Following are a handful of products that might help with in creating such emergency facilities.

Advances

Flooring

A Walk on the Mediterranean Side

Available in luxurious Carrera marble or pristine limestone, Medina tiles from StoneImpressions lets you create an extraordinary design space with a taste of Mediterranean culture. The line shines with onyx and turquoise jewel tones. The tiles are sealed with a three-part acrylic topcoat that is durable and an ideal choice for kitchens, bathrooms, backsplashes and light traffic flooring. The tiles come in both 6-in. × 6-in. and 12-in. × 12-in. sizes.

Case Study

Landscape Products

Nature Making a Comeback in Chicago's Concrete Jungle

A challenging urban infill benefits from broad expertise and material certainty in geofoam. Laura Solano, landscape architect and principal at Michael Van Valkenburgh Assocs. (mvva), Cambridge, Mass., has a reputation for solving landscape challenges in complex urban contexts through innovative approaches to stormwater management, incorporating sustainable soils and native plants, and the resourceful use of landscape materials.Solano has high praise for an often-unsung hero in her tool kit—molded polystyrene geofoam, used as a lightweight fill beneath landscapes. Molded polystyrene is a cellular plastic material used to produce incredibly strong geofoam blocks, which are easi

Case Study

Thermal & Moisture Control

This is Huge.

Largest historic adaptive reuse project in the world. Once abandoned, this 90-year-old former Sears-Roebuck Catalog Distribution Center was transformed into more than 1.4 million sq. ft. of mixed living space. That said, making the old envelope energy efficient was crucial, as the building included 3,200+ expansive window openings—some as large as 33 square feet—that had to replicate the structure’s historic look. At the same time, as a mixed-use facility with nearly 300 loft-style apartments, the windows had to impress developers with thermal-efficiencies for their future tenants. "Through extensive research regarding Crosstown Concourse's size and sco

Architectural Products

Lighting Reformation

Read the Digital Edition

Mar ’20

Crowd Pleaser

Side-Swiping Surfaces

Noise-Averse Texas-Sized Project Inspires the Dallas Design Community

Driven by Data

Bring Office Amenities Home

AP ProductWire

Preparing for the Surge

A Walk on the Mediterranean Side

Nature Making a Comeback in Chicago's Concrete Jungle

This is Huge.