Dazzle Digest

Fisher Marantz Stone describes this private home, designed with Lupo/Rowen Architects and completed in 1995, as a Zen-like oasis in a hectic city. Only a few fixtures are allowed to be seen, while the diffuse effect of light is everywhere.

By day, all the daylight entering the apartment is filtered through a shoji-like screen material. At night, hidden coves keep the same effect going: a hierarchy of overlapping, softly luminous planes that model the rooms.

This private apartment needed lighting that could adjust to feature its owners’ artwork and displays. Adjustable downlights bathe the warm wood walls and pick out the glazed stone, balancing materials of different colours and contours.

Pendants display the art lining the hallways, a clean line of pendants lights the dining area, and an internally lit onyx wall gives the living room a warm glow.

The lighting at the historic Tavern on the Green was designed to be more authentic and classic, relying less on layers of technique and flourish. Its centrepiece is a canopy of 500 handmade crystal chandeliers over the courtyard, a nod to the ‘nature wrapped in light’ feeling the restaurant made popular more than 100 years ago.

The architects credited are Richard H. Lewis and John Lee Beatty; the photographs are by Ryan Fischer.

The East River Waterfront, with SHoP Architects and Ken Smith Workshop, is a 500-foot stretch of esplanade between Wall Street and the South Street Seaport. It starts at the edge of South Street, runs under the elevated FDR Drive and out to the river.

Continuous fluorescent sources hidden under a steel beam light the east-facing girder indirectly, so the girder itself guides people to the waterfront without interrupting their sight lines.

The New York Aquarium’s Ocean Wonders: Sharks! exhibit is designed to spread a message about ocean conservation. Its lighting tries to create the illusion of complete immersion.

To get there, Focus Lighting worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society to understand the natural light in each of the environments the exhibit recreates, and then replicated each one with artificial sources.

The Civilian is a ground-up hotel in the heart of the theatre district, designed on a tight budget to celebrate the history of theatre design and to feel as if it had always been there.

As guests come into the glittering lobby, Focus Lighting says, they are meant to feel transported into a Broadway theatre, and every space, from pre-show dinner to post-show nightcap, is meant to feel like a stage set or an industry insiders’ hangout.

The Royalton’s lobby renovation, by Roman and Williams, set out to be as memorable and dramatic as Philippe Starck’s original design. Two teakwood beaded screens flank the main entry and are dramatically uplit to show their geometry.

Throughout the lobby, hand-blown glass pendants seem to bathe guests in their glow, while carefully concealed fittings actually do the lighting.

The hotel’s core values are environmental, and Focus Lighting says it layered light from energy-efficient LED fittings to match, bringing out the richly textured natural materials and live botanical elements.

The architect is AvroKO, and the photographs are by Ryan Fischer.

Moynihan Train Hall’s food hall, with its fast-food counters and a bar, is lit by warm LED sources, and the lighting changes through the day: bright and energetic in the daytime, softly dimmed after dark.

At the centre, the bar sits under a light well that brings daylight into the hall. RLM fixtures on custom arms add a decorative industrial touch and pick out the bar’s structure.

R/GA wanted its workspace to show off its use of technology, so Tillotson designed indirect lighting that tracks the shifts of daylight through the day. Every coffer in the waffle-slab ceiling is uplit with a retrofit PAR38 LED lamp.

A DMX control system runs the lamps through a circadian rhythm: 2700K in the morning, shifting to 4000K at noon and warming again in the evening.

The photographs speak for this project: pale, ribbed columns rise and fan out into a ceiling of lit ribs, and the light comes from between them rather than from visible fittings. It reads as calm and even, the right light for a building full of students all day.

One Lux Studio credits the project to Stephen Margulies, Yon Choy, Huanhai Cheng and Tilbe Ozrenk.

Inspired by Bloomberg’s brand and culture, the architect LSM and Fisher Marantz Stone designed lighting that supports the company’s open-plan philosophy. The lighting is built into the architecture to reinforce visual order.

Perimeter linear lighting and rigorous downlight grids carry the open floors, while cove lighting adds depth by picking out the changes in the ceiling. The project was completed in 2015 and is LEED Platinum.

Carnegie Hall was designed by William Burnet Tuthill and built by Andrew Carnegie in 1891. Its main hall seats 2,800; Zankel Hall, originally called Recital Hall, seats 268.

For the renovation by James Stewart Polshek & Partners, completed in 1987, Fisher Marantz Stone designed the lighting for four parts of the landmark: the facade and the new canopy, the new lobby and hallways, the main and recital hall interiors, and the stage lighting.

The American Museum of Natural History’s 19th-century granite facade on 77th Street, designed around 1890 by Cady, Berg & See, had deteriorated, and the museum commissioned a full renovation. FMS first surveyed the existing lighting and then designed a new scheme covering the towers, the porte-cochère, the circular plaza and the park.

The veteran trees along the south side get in the way of the view, so the studio ran calculations and renderings for summer, when the trees are in full leaf, and for winter, when they are bare. That let it set the amount of light precisely, adjust it with the seasons and save energy.

Tillotson’s lighting for Lincoln Center’s North Plaza and South Campus, with Diller Scofidio + Renfro and others, is meant to heighten the anticipation of the people arriving. Glowing glass canopies and stainless-steel poles stacked with light fittings flank the new Grand Entry Stairs, bathing patrons in warm, sparkling light as if they were on stage.

The difficult part, the studio says, was lighting the people and the stairs as evenly as possible.

The east facade of Lincoln Square Synagogue is made of undulating ribbons of glass that represent a Torah scroll and the five books of the Torah; stone ends suggest the scroll’s protective covering.

Linear LEDs are built into the top and bottom of each glass facet. The top extrusion blocks every sightline to the LEDs from the congregation, and at the bottom an acrylic diffuser protects them and keeps dirt out.

For more than a hundred years, the tower of the New York Edition Hotel, formerly the home of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, has been part of the city’s skyline. FMS was hired to upgrade its exterior lighting and bring out the tower.

The new night scheme introduces new technology while refurbishing and reusing existing fittings where they still made sense.

The Mansfield Hotel, built in 1903, got a contemporary facelift that kept its history intact. Its facade needed subtly placed fittings that would not detract from the formal composition.

The lighting brings out the colour of the stone, the elaborate masonry and the rhythm of the repeated windows and columns, giving the exterior warmth and sparkle.