Sylvania Lights Up Baltimore's Westside
-- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 2/1/2005
THE SITUATION:
Where abandoned buildings once stood, Baltimore’s Westside is making a colossal comeback. The Stewart’s Building is one of the cornerstone developments in the rebirth of Baltimore’s Westside.
The main goal of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Owner/Developer of the Stewart Buildings, was to take the mostly-vacant remains of an old department store and create a quarter million square foot high-technology office environment and ground-level retail space. Furthering Baltimore’s efforts to retain and attract jobs in the City’s existing urban core.
The Philadelphia based lighting design firm, The Lighting Practice, enlisted the expertise of OSRAM SYLVANIA Commercial Engineer Dirk Hinterleiter and SYLVANIA lighting products to add appeal to the renovation project and to ensure that future tenants and pedestrians feel safe.
THE SOLUTIONS:
“The building’s aesthetics were our primary concern when developing our lighting scheme,” said Michael Barber, lighting designer and principal of The Lighting Practice. “The fixtures on the exterior were selected for their minimal intrusion on the decorative façade. Lobby lighting fixtures are concealed wherever possible. The expression of forms and materials were foremost in our design concept.”
A second concern was energy consumption and conservation.To extend lamp life and minimize energy consumption Barber specified a dimming system with preset scenes that coincided with specific hours of the day. For the lamps, Hinterleiter suggested installing SYLVANIA IR lamp technology to maximize lamp performance and extend lamp life. Using an energy efficient lamp together with the dimming system, energy consumption decreases while the lamp life is extended.
“SYLVANIA lamps provided the mix of convenience, aesthetics, and performance that we had to have in order to fill the unique lighting needs for the historic Stewart’s Building,” Barber said. “Accenting the building’s architectural design while keeping energy usage low was a major challenge; SYLVANIA was the best choice for the project at hand.”
The renovation of the Stewart’s Building has spearheaded a dramatic change in the landscape of Baltimore’s historic West Side.
“Before the renovation, this building, especially at night, sat as a darkened hulk that was almost hostile to the street environment,” said Tom Liebel of Design Collective, the architecture firm responsible for the project. “The subtle uplighting of the structure and the lighting of the new additions make the building seem incredibly light and ethereal at night.It has a wonderful glow that is just mesmerizing to watch.”
*This project is currently in the final stages of obtaining LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
THE PRODUCTS & APPLICATIONS:
Interior Lighting:
·The linear wall wash fixtures mounted at the top of the curving wood wall and granite wall that flanks the reception desk use SYLVANIA CAPSYLITE IRÒ 60-watt PAR 38 spots.
·The decorative glass panels at the ceiling are backlit using CAPSYLITE IR 45-watt PAR38 floods.
·Downlight cylinders in the high lobby space use CAPSYLITE IR 60-watt PAR38 narrow floods.
·To create the backlit glow above the glass canopy around the reception desk we use more of the CAPSYLITE IR 45-watt PAR lamps.
·Concealed accent lights in the exterior canopy use SYLVANIA METALARC POWERBALL 39-watt PAR20 ceramic metal halide floods, providing focus to the lobby/building entrance.
·In the future retail space on the first floor of the existing building, 4-inch aperture downlights lamped with SYLVANIA DESIGNERÒ PAR16 narrow floods provide accent on the columns.
Exterior Lighting:
·The light fixtures at the base of the larger pilasters (approximately 42’ high) are grazed with light from SYLVANIA AR111 100-watt low-voltage aluminized reflector spots.
The columns in the center decorative section are illuminated with 75-watt AR111 spots.
