25 Jun 2012
Arup’s lighting design for Washington, DC’s Sidwell Friends School meeting house has been awarded the 2012 Lumen Citation for Integration of Electric & Daylighting from the New York City chapter of the Illuminating Engineering Society.
The award was announced on June 21 during a ceremony at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers. Among the judging criteria were factors such as project complexity, architectural integration, originality, ease of maintenance, energy and environmental solutions.
The overall design for the building focuses on two themes fundamental to the Quaker faith: light and simplicity. The building’s largest space, the meeting room, features a sensitive balance of light centered around the room’s floating ceiling planes and dominant feature, the large central skylight. Electric lighting maintains the elegant design when daylight is not present. Each electric lighting fixture is controlled independently, allowing for tailoring of the architectural lighting according to varying daylight or projection onto walls.