Claudio Ramos, Hiram Banks, Erin Sudderth and Matt Landl of BANKS|RAMOS Architectural Lighting Design won top honors in the 2014 GE Edison Awards for lighting Square Inc.’s headquarters in San Francisco. The project also received an Award for Environmental Design, reflecting exemplary energy efficiency and environmentally sensitive design. This is the third time since this award was first instituted in the 2002 competition that this has occurred. A personalized Steuben crystal award for the winner of this 32nd annual lighting design competition was presented by GE Lighting on May 4 in New York, New York.
The new headquarters for Square Inc., a mobile payments startup company, is designed to be open and collaborative. With 175,000 square feet of useable space that spans the length of an entire city block, the design team’s challenge was to make the space feel hospitable while accommodating future growth and expansion. By using a variety of high-performance fluorescent and LED solutions, BANKS|RAMOS was able to reduce lamp quantity and energy usage.
General lighting throughout the open-office area and team rooms is provided by GE 21W and 28W T5 fluorescent lamps. Custom linear suspended pendants with dimmable LEDs create an elegant cadence down the main building corridor, and continue through floating wood ceiling slats which also conceal GE 7W LED MR16 lamps that illuminate art and signage. An upper level dining area, commercial kitchen and servery are illuminated with 12-foot dimmable T5 fluorescent pendants and continuous LED track lighting, again detailed within a floating wood ceiling.
Daylight harvesting reduces electric lighting consumption to 65 percent in open office areas during bright daytimes. The lighting power density is 0.64 watts per square foot, 29 percent below ASHRAE 90.1 throughout the entire project to ensure LEED Gold® certification.
For details on other projects winning GE Edison Awards, click here.
All images provided by GE Lighting
