Architecture of the night
Encyclopedia
Architecture of the night or nocturnal architecture, also referred to as illuminated architecture and, particularly in German, light architecture, is architecture designed to maximize the effect of night lighting, which may include lights from within the building, lights on the facade
or outlining elements of it, illuminated advertising, and floodlighting. With the rise of artificial lighting in the 19th and 20th centuries, architects were increasingly aware of it as an element to be integrated into design; deliberate use of it has been popular at various times, notably in the design of skyscrapers and other commercial buildings in the 1920s and 1930s, in the 1950s and 1960s, and in modern festive city architecture.
, writing in a special issue of the Bulletin of the General Electric Company, also titled "Architecture of the Night," in February 1930. He wrote:
(Glass Chain). (Louis I. Kahn held a similarly metaphysical view, saying in 1973 in his lecture at Pratt Institute
that "light is really the source of all being".) In his essay, Teichmüller distinguishes between lighting design and light architecture, which will only come about through integration of the lighting engineer's concerns with those of the architect so that the "space-shaping power of light" itself is realized: "[T]his architectural light can lead to light architecture if with it, and only with it, specific architectural effects are produced, which appear and disappear simultaneously with the light." Also in 1927, Max Landsberg wrote that commercial centers now presented such different aspects by day and night that architecture of the day and of the night should be distinguished. He argued for "not only regulations, but planning and competitions" to facilitate the development of the latter and bring order to the current chaos of advertising. That same year, Hugo Häring
foresaw the "nocturnal face" of architecture soon eclipsing the "diurnal face." And also that same year, Walter Behrendt
devoted a section in his book Sieg des neuen Baustils (translated edition: The Victory of the New Building Style) to "artificial illumination as a problem of form" and defined one of the tasks of new building as being:
's Red Cross Building in Berlin by means of tubular light fixtures placed under the corners of the flights of stairs, "underscor[ing] . . the stairs' tendency toward movement."
A British endorsement of the same concept, P. Morton Shand's Modern Theatres and Cinemas (1930), confines itself to external lighting but embraces advertising, which was to remain a point of contention:
Electrical companies promoted the integration of lighting design into architecture, beginning with the World's Fair
s of the late 19th century. In the late 1920s, General Electric was exhibiting model buildings at its Nela Park research facility in Cleveland to illustrate modern electrical advertising and building illumination as well as street lighting, and General Electric and Westinghouse both built theaters in which to display streetscapes under differing lighting conditions. Floodlighting of buildings and monuments, developed and refined by lighting engineers like Luther Stieringer and Walter D'Arcy Ryan at successive fairs, was encouraged as a way to showcase a city's most prominent buildings, particularly skyscrapers: the first attempt at floodlighting the Statue of Liberty took place in 1886, the top of the Singer Building
was floodlighted in 1908, the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. during World War I. It was soon discovered that the angle and nature of the lights distorted architectural features; in the same promotional publication as Hood's essay, Harvey Wiley Corbett
argued for the form of the building to take floodlighting into account from the beginning, in a continuation of changes that had already taken place, such as the elimination of the cornice. "The form of the illuminated portion should be so tied in with the rest of the building that it should appear as a jewel in a setting, forming a coherent part of the entire structure." The setback skyscraper shape was best from this point of view, and Hood argued that classical architecture should simply not be floodlighted. Floodlighting also influenced the materials of many buildings: at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition
in San Francisco, a rough finish was used on Ryan's advice to diffuse the light and avoid glare, and conversely the 1921 Wrigley Building
in Chicago was built with a pale terra cotta facade that becomes whiter and more reflective with increasing height, to maximize the effect of floodlighting. Lighting was an important part of the competition between scyscrapers.
Hood and André Fouilhoux's 1924 black American Radiator Building
in New York was used for experimentation with illumination. Hood wrote in 1930:
, scarlet
, and amber
color screens:
made a famous painting of it, American Radiator—Night (1927) in which she simplified the architecture and made the lighting white, and The American Architect called the illumination "one of the sights of the city. . . . The vast throngs that crowd this district at night are blocking traffic".
Floodlighting was popular in American cities in the 1920s and 1930s, all the more so as electricity prices dropped by more than half. It made cities look like a "fairyland" or a "dream city"; and it edited out ugliness, such as the power station at Niagara Falls or "poor or unsightly sections" which at night became "now unimportant blanks" in a "purified world of light". In addition to the World's Fairs, light festivals were popular in Europe beginning in the second half of the 1920s, the most important being Berlin im Licht in October 1928.
Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic had argued against the curtailment of floodlighting and lighted advertising signs during World War I despite the need to save fuel, and upon seizing power the Nazis immediately applied floodlighting as part of their program of public buildings that culminated in Albert Speer
's New Reich Chancellery of 1939, in addition to the Cathedral of light
effect wherein floodlights were used to define space themselves at the Nuremberg rallies
.
In Europe, lighting of public squares in major cities was more important than in America, primarily because American cities had fewer squares. Paris, in particular, reinforced its reputation as the City of Lights by illuminating the Place de l'Opéra
and the Avenue de l'Opéra as early as 1878, and in 1912 Edith Wharton
wrote home in distress that the city landmarks were lighted at night, "torn from their mystery by the vulgar intrusion of floodlighting." Conversely, since European cities had hardly any skyscrapers, lighting from within the building or on its facade dominated the use of light in modern architecture to an extent that it did not in America. Some buildings used glass illuminated from within; for example Franz Jourdain's 1907 extension to the Samaritaine department store in Paris, with glass domes, and Erich Mendelsohn
's 1928 Petersdorff Department Store in Breslau, with ribbon windows illuminated by over-mounted neon lighting reflected out into the street by white curtains. The emphasis on bright, flat surfaces to simplify illumination helped to spread the architectural vocabulary of modernism. Architects themselves drew attention to and embraced the greater importance of lighted advertising, rather than the American approach of floodlighting a skyscraper like "a gleaming holy grail" or "the dream castle of Valhalla" and ignoring the possibilities for lettering of the "gigantic, widely visible wall areas". Häring went so far as to welcome "the destruction of architecture" by advertising:
's remodeled facade of the "Wachthof." A larger later example is Jan Buijs
' De Volharding Building in The Hague, where the elevator shaft and stair tower are glass bricks, lighted at night, and the illuminated sign on the roof is surmounted by a lighted shaft, but in addition the spandrels between the plate glass windows are opal glass, behind which lettering advertising the advantages of the insurance cooperative was mounted to be backlighted at night. In 1932 Mildred Adams, writing in the New York Times magazine, described Berlin, which had yet to build a single skyscraper, as "the best-lighted city in Europe" because of its "display lighting [using] glass brick and opal glass". Another difference in the application of architecture of the night in Europe resulting from the lack of skyscrapers was that movie theaters, such as Rudolf Fränkel
's Lichtburg and Ernst Schöffler, Carlo Schloenbach, and Carl Jacobi's Titania Palast in Berlin, were particularly striking examples of architecture of the night, often "the most striking [nocturnal] sights" in cities. In the case of UfA
, this extended to spectacular transformations of theater facades to advertise particular movies.
A late example of European architecture of the night is Simpson's Department Store
in London, co-designed by László Moholy-Nagy
, who also pioneered kinetic light art; he had recently published an essay on "Light Architecture."
The first age of experimentation with architecture of the night was brought to a close by the Depression and World War II blackouts. Not until 1956 was Walter Köhler
's book on the concept, Lichtarchitektur, published, edited by Wassili Luckhardt
.
of the 1970s.
Immediately after the end of the war, lighting spectaculars were used to celebrate victory; for example in Los Angeles on October 27, 1945, a hundred searchlights each with a 16-foot color wheel attached created a "crown of light" above Memorial Coliseum
, and the following summer, the "Victory Lighting" festival turned London into a "fairyland" with floodlighted buildings, illuminated fountains, fireworks, and colored searchlight displays over the Thames. Sound and light show
s began at Chambord
in May 1952, invented by Paul-Robert Houdin, who had apparently been inspired by the pre-war use of floodlighting at the 1937 Paris World's Fair and on Paris monuments. Le Corbusier
and Yannis Xenakis adapted the idea at Expo '58
in Brussels. The use of nighttime lighting in German cities such as Frankfurt immediately after the war was a different kind of architectural application, indicating the intended form of as yet unreconstructed buildings, squares, and streets "in a town that, in daytime, still looks more like a shanty town or a huge bomb site", as Gerhard Rosenberg observed in 1953.
Lighting of new buildings was less of an architectural preoccupation at first than it had been before the war, since the uninterrupted facades of the International Style
did not have setbacks to facilitate floodlighting. New approaches were required; buildings including Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
's Manufacturers Trust bank branch building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, completed in 1954, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
, Philip Johnson
, and Ely Jacques Kahn
's Seagram Building
, completed in 1958, used glass walls and luminous ceilings to create a "tower of light," an updating of the technique of trans-illumination, that is, illuminating the building from within, that had been developed in Europe in the 1920s. Ada Louise Huxtable
wrote of the Manufacturers Hanover Building: "The whole, viewed from the outside, is no longer architectural in the traditional sense: it is a design, not of substance, but of color, light and motion." The same year, the Tishman Building by Carson & Lundin created a "tower of light" in quite a different way, updating the American tradition of exterior floodlighting: Abe Feder's lighting design used mercury vapor lamps to evenly illuminate the aluminum facade so as to recreate the building's daytime appearance, with the accent feature of the address, "666," picked out in red neon at the top. Architects and critics rediscovered the possibilities of light, apparently unaware of the pre-war discussions. For example, also in 1958 a New York Times writer declared "lighting [as] an art that combines function and decoration" to be "one of the big advances in recent years in architecture". Gio Ponti
condemned floodlighting as "primitive and barbaric" and predicted "a new nocturnal city":
in Milan was a prominent example of postwar European night architecture, using ceiling fluorescent lights in the three vertical sections into which the building is divided, and rooftop floodlights reflecting off the bottom of a cantilevered roof; Walter Gropius
and Pietro Belluschi
's Pan Am Building was influenced by its form but used floodlighting at night.
The development of sign "spectaculars" in Las Vegas also began after World War II, going beyond those in New York's Times Square
(which in any case were becoming more floodlight-dependent and less able to compete with increasing neon and backlighted signage at street level) into three-dimensionality so that the architecture on the Strip
"[became] symbol in space, rather than form in space". By 1964, Tom Wolfe
pointed out that "signs have become the architecture of Las Vegas"; he later dubbed them "electrographic architecture." Also in 1964, lighting designer Derek Phillips criticized such nighttime architecture of signage as deceptive:
There were some experiments with colored floodlighting in the 1960s, notably the 15-minute sequences of changing colors on the Theme Building
at Los Angeles International Airport
, which replaced initial static illumination with amber light.
The latest revival of interest began in 1977, with a revival of floodlighting. Color has been a major preoccupation, with computerized sequences used and, increasingly, large LED
screens. The upper stories of the Empire State Building
were floodlighted from 1964 to 1973; on October 12, 1977, using a new lighting installation by Douglas Leigh
, they were lighted in blue and white to celebrate the Yankees
' World Series
win, and since then the building has been lighted in different colors to celebrate a variety of holidays and other special occasions, despite the objections of Paul Goldberger
that the colors "turn [it] into a toy". I. M. Pei
and Harold Fredenburgh's Bank of America Tower in Miami, completed in 1987, also changes colors on holidays. Modern computerized lighting can respond to external conditions, as in Toyo Ito
's 1986 Tower of Winds in Yokohama, or execute other complex tasks, as in the installation on the facade of the Forty-Second Street Studios in New York, where the color cycling speeds up throughout the week from slow changes on Mondays to changes every few seconds on weekend nights.
Many modern instances of architecture of the night are associated with festival architecture, both in permanent environments such as Universal City Walk in Orlando, Florida, by John Johnston (1999), or in temporary installations, for example art works by John David Mooney such as Light Space Chicago 1977, involving searchlights on the Chicago lakefront, and Lightscape '89, involving lights and colored screens in the windows of the IBM Building in Chicago (on the occasion of the company's 75th birthday). Light festivals are once more popular, and in the 1980s and 1990s, such temporary illumination was popular worldwide, sometimes in combination with music performances, as with works by Jean Michel Jarre
in Houston in 1986 and in the La Défense
district of Paris in 1990. Yann Kersalé has produced both temporary installations (for example at the Grand Palais
in Paris in 1987, using rhythmically waxing and waning blue fluorescents under the glass dome to suggest a beating heart) and permanent works collaborating with architects including Jean Nouvel
and Helmut Jahn
, for example the Sony Center
in Potsdamer Platz
in Berlin (2000), where the office tower is spotlighted and the fiberglass membranes tented above the atrium are lighted in an "extension of daylight" every evening and then in a succession of sequences emulating sunset until midnight, when the lighting becomes dark blue until shortly before sunrise, when it becomes white until full daylight. There were many searchlight displays in association with the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000, and the Tribute in Light
in which the twin towers of the World Trade Center
are memorialized in twin shafts of white light is a comparable application.
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
or outlining elements of it, illuminated advertising, and floodlighting. With the rise of artificial lighting in the 19th and 20th centuries, architects were increasingly aware of it as an element to be integrated into design; deliberate use of it has been popular at various times, notably in the design of skyscrapers and other commercial buildings in the 1920s and 1930s, in the 1950s and 1960s, and in modern festive city architecture.
History
The term is attributed to Raymond HoodRaymond Hood
Raymond Mathewson Hood was an early-mid twentieth century architect who worked in the Art Deco style. He was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, MIT, and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the latter institution he met John Mead Howells, with whom Hood later partnered...
, writing in a special issue of the Bulletin of the General Electric Company, also titled "Architecture of the Night," in February 1930. He wrote:
[T]he possibilities of night illumination have barely been touched. . . . Eventually, the night lighting of buildings is going to be studied exactly as Gordon Craig and Norman Bel Geddes have studied stage lighting. Every possible means to obtain an effect will be tried—color, varying sources and direction of light, pattern and movement. . . . [T]he illumination of today is only the start of an art that may develop as our modern music developed from the simple beating of a tom-tom.However, architects and designers had been preoccupied with the concept for some time. The German term Lichtarchitektur (light architecture) first appears in print in a 1927 essay by Joachim Teichmüller in Licht und Lampe, another technical electrical publication, but he had used it as a wall label at an exhibition five months before, and there was a lengthy preceding history of more or less metaphysical discussion in Germany of "crystalline" architecture, the "dissolution" of cities, and the concept of the Stadtkrone (city crown), particularly among the members of the Gläserne Kette
Glass Chain
The Glass Chain or Crystal Chain sometimes known as the "Utopian Correspondence" was a chain letter that took place between November 1919 and December 1920. It was a correspondence of architects that formed a basis of expressionist architecture in Germany. It was initiated by Bruno Taut.-Names,...
(Glass Chain). (Louis I. Kahn held a similarly metaphysical view, saying in 1973 in his lecture at Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
that "light is really the source of all being".) In his essay, Teichmüller distinguishes between lighting design and light architecture, which will only come about through integration of the lighting engineer's concerns with those of the architect so that the "space-shaping power of light" itself is realized: "[T]his architectural light can lead to light architecture if with it, and only with it, specific architectural effects are produced, which appear and disappear simultaneously with the light." Also in 1927, Max Landsberg wrote that commercial centers now presented such different aspects by day and night that architecture of the day and of the night should be distinguished. He argued for "not only regulations, but planning and competitions" to facilitate the development of the latter and bring order to the current chaos of advertising. That same year, Hugo Häring
Hugo Häring
Hugo Häring was a German architect and architectural writer best known for his writings on "organic architecture", and as a figure in architectural debates about functionalism in the 1920s and 1930s, though he had an important role as an expressionist architect.A student of the great Theodor...
foresaw the "nocturnal face" of architecture soon eclipsing the "diurnal face." And also that same year, Walter Behrendt
Walter Curt Behrendt
Walter Curt Behrendt was a German-American architect and active advocate of German modernism. He was an authority on city planning and housing, editor of Die Form, and author of The Victory of the New Building Style among many other works.Behrendt was born in Metz, emigrated to the U.S...
devoted a section in his book Sieg des neuen Baustils (translated edition: The Victory of the New Building Style) to "artificial illumination as a problem of form" and defined one of the tasks of new building as being:
not only to use these new possibilities [of electric lighting] but also to design them, [whereupon] illumination is exploited in a functional sense, that is, it becomes an effective tool for designing the space, explaining the spatial function and movement, and accentuating and strengthening the spatial relations and tensions.Behrendt's examples include one interior: the lighting of a staircase in Otto Bartning
Otto Bartning
Otto Bartning was a Modernist German architect, architectural theorist and teacher. In his early career he developed plans with Walter Gropius for the establishment of the Bauhaus. He was a member of Der Ring...
's Red Cross Building in Berlin by means of tubular light fixtures placed under the corners of the flights of stairs, "underscor[ing] . . the stairs' tendency toward movement."
A British endorsement of the same concept, P. Morton Shand's Modern Theatres and Cinemas (1930), confines itself to external lighting but embraces advertising, which was to remain a point of contention:
[N]ight architecture is something more than a transient phase or a mere stunt. It is a definite type of modern design with immense possibilities for beautifying our cities, which is opening up entirely new and untrammelled perspectives of architectural composition. Publicity lighting is becoming to architecture what captions and lay-outs are to journalism—a new and integral part of its technique, which can no longer be ignored or derided with superior academic 'art for art's sake' smiles.
From the beginning to World War II
World's Fair
World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...
s of the late 19th century. In the late 1920s, General Electric was exhibiting model buildings at its Nela Park research facility in Cleveland to illustrate modern electrical advertising and building illumination as well as street lighting, and General Electric and Westinghouse both built theaters in which to display streetscapes under differing lighting conditions. Floodlighting of buildings and monuments, developed and refined by lighting engineers like Luther Stieringer and Walter D'Arcy Ryan at successive fairs, was encouraged as a way to showcase a city's most prominent buildings, particularly skyscrapers: the first attempt at floodlighting the Statue of Liberty took place in 1886, the top of the Singer Building
Singer Building
The Singer Building or Singer Tower at Liberty Street and Broadway in Manhattan, was a 47-story office building completed in 1908 as the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was demolished in 1968 and is now the site of 1 Liberty Plaza....
was floodlighted in 1908, the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. during World War I. It was soon discovered that the angle and nature of the lights distorted architectural features; in the same promotional publication as Hood's essay, Harvey Wiley Corbett
Harvey Wiley Corbett
Harvey Wiley Corbett was an American architect primarily known for skyscraper and office building designs in New York and London, and his advocacy of tall buildings and modernism in architecture.-Early life and career:...
argued for the form of the building to take floodlighting into account from the beginning, in a continuation of changes that had already taken place, such as the elimination of the cornice. "The form of the illuminated portion should be so tied in with the rest of the building that it should appear as a jewel in a setting, forming a coherent part of the entire structure." The setback skyscraper shape was best from this point of view, and Hood argued that classical architecture should simply not be floodlighted. Floodlighting also influenced the materials of many buildings: at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition
Panama–Pacific International Exposition
The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California between February 20 and December 4 in 1915. Its ostensible purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery...
in San Francisco, a rough finish was used on Ryan's advice to diffuse the light and avoid glare, and conversely the 1921 Wrigley Building
Wrigley Building
The Wrigley Building is a skyscraper located directly across Michigan Avenue from the Tribune Tower on the Magnificent Mile...
in Chicago was built with a pale terra cotta facade that becomes whiter and more reflective with increasing height, to maximize the effect of floodlighting. Lighting was an important part of the competition between scyscrapers.
Hood and André Fouilhoux's 1924 black American Radiator Building
American Radiator Building
The American Radiator Building is a landmark skyscraper located at 40 West 40th Street, in midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was conceived by the architects John Howells and Raymond Hood in 1924 and built for the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company...
in New York was used for experimentation with illumination. Hood wrote in 1930:
We tried multi-colored revolving lights and produced at one time the effect of the building's being on fire. We threw spots of light on jets of steam rising out of the smokestack. Then again, with moving lights, we had the whole top of the building waving like a tree in a strong wind. With cross-lighting . . . the most unusual cubistic patterns were developed.The lighting designer, Bassett Jones, argued for a lighting scheme using rose
Rose (color)
Rose is the color halfway between red and magenta on the HSV color wheel, also known as the RGB color wheel, on which it is at hue angle of 330 degrees.Rose is one of the tertiary colors on the HSV color wheel...
, scarlet
Scarlet (color)
Scarlet is a bright red color with a hue that is somewhat toward the orange. It is redder than vermilion. It is a pure chroma on the color wheel one-fourth of the way between red and orange. Scarlet is sometimes used as the color of flame...
, and amber
Amber (color)
Amber is an orange-yellow color that got its name from the material known as amber. Due to this, amber can refer not to one but to a series of shades of orange, since the natural material varies from nearly yellow when newer to orange or reddish-orange when older.-Amber:Amber is a pure chroma color...
color screens:
My mental picture of this building at night would result from pouring over the structure a vast barrel of spectral hued incandescent material that streams down the perpendicular surfaces, cooling as it falls, and, like glowing molten lava, collects in every recess and behind every parapet.The building was eventually illuminated in amber. Even a critic who found the building "theatrical to a degree that opens it to a charge of vulgarity" said that "at night, when . . . the gilded upper portion seems miraculously suspended one and two hundred feet in the air, the design has a dreamlike beauty." Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
made a famous painting of it, American Radiator—Night (1927) in which she simplified the architecture and made the lighting white, and The American Architect called the illumination "one of the sights of the city. . . . The vast throngs that crowd this district at night are blocking traffic".
Floodlighting was popular in American cities in the 1920s and 1930s, all the more so as electricity prices dropped by more than half. It made cities look like a "fairyland" or a "dream city"; and it edited out ugliness, such as the power station at Niagara Falls or "poor or unsightly sections" which at night became "now unimportant blanks" in a "purified world of light". In addition to the World's Fairs, light festivals were popular in Europe beginning in the second half of the 1920s, the most important being Berlin im Licht in October 1928.
Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic had argued against the curtailment of floodlighting and lighted advertising signs during World War I despite the need to save fuel, and upon seizing power the Nazis immediately applied floodlighting as part of their program of public buildings that culminated in Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
's New Reich Chancellery of 1939, in addition to the Cathedral of light
Cathedral of light
The cathedral of light was a main aesthetic feature of the Nuremberg Rallies that consisted of 130 anti-aircraft searchlights, at intervals of 12 metres , aimed skyward to create a series of vertical bars surrounding the audience. The effect was a brilliant one, both from within the design and on...
effect wherein floodlights were used to define space themselves at the Nuremberg rallies
Nuremberg Rally
The Nuremberg Rally was the annual rally of the NSDAP in Germany, held from 1923 to 1938. Especially after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, they were large Nazi propaganda events...
.
In Europe, lighting of public squares in major cities was more important than in America, primarily because American cities had fewer squares. Paris, in particular, reinforced its reputation as the City of Lights by illuminating the Place de l'Opéra
Place de l'Opéra
The Place de l'Opéra is a square in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, at the junction of boulevard des Italiens, boulevard des Capucines, avenue de l'Opéra, rue Auber, rue Halévy, rue de la Paix and rue du Quatre-Septembre. It was built at the same time as the operahouse , which is sited on it and...
and the Avenue de l'Opéra as early as 1878, and in 1912 Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
wrote home in distress that the city landmarks were lighted at night, "torn from their mystery by the vulgar intrusion of floodlighting." Conversely, since European cities had hardly any skyscrapers, lighting from within the building or on its facade dominated the use of light in modern architecture to an extent that it did not in America. Some buildings used glass illuminated from within; for example Franz Jourdain's 1907 extension to the Samaritaine department store in Paris, with glass domes, and Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...
's 1928 Petersdorff Department Store in Breslau, with ribbon windows illuminated by over-mounted neon lighting reflected out into the street by white curtains. The emphasis on bright, flat surfaces to simplify illumination helped to spread the architectural vocabulary of modernism. Architects themselves drew attention to and embraced the greater importance of lighted advertising, rather than the American approach of floodlighting a skyscraper like "a gleaming holy grail" or "the dream castle of Valhalla" and ignoring the possibilities for lettering of the "gigantic, widely visible wall areas". Häring went so far as to welcome "the destruction of architecture" by advertising:
It is a fact that commercial buildings don't have an architectural facade anymore, their skin is merely the scaffolding for advertising signs, and lettering and luminous panels. The rest are windows.His article, like other publications of the period, contrasts day and night views of sample buildings. One of his examples was Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn was a German-born physicist, mathematician and inventor, who was of Jewish ancestry...
's remodeled facade of the "Wachthof." A larger later example is Jan Buijs
Jan Buijs
Jan Willem Eduard Buijs, sometimes written Jan Buys was a Dutch architect, best known for his De Volharding Building. His works include manufacturing, commercial, residential and municipal buildings...
' De Volharding Building in The Hague, where the elevator shaft and stair tower are glass bricks, lighted at night, and the illuminated sign on the roof is surmounted by a lighted shaft, but in addition the spandrels between the plate glass windows are opal glass, behind which lettering advertising the advantages of the insurance cooperative was mounted to be backlighted at night. In 1932 Mildred Adams, writing in the New York Times magazine, described Berlin, which had yet to build a single skyscraper, as "the best-lighted city in Europe" because of its "display lighting [using] glass brick and opal glass". Another difference in the application of architecture of the night in Europe resulting from the lack of skyscrapers was that movie theaters, such as Rudolf Fränkel
Rudolf Frankel
Rudolf Fränkel, often anglicised as Rudolf or Rudolph Frankel was a German-Jewish architect who was among the leaders of the pre-war avant-garde movement in Berlin...
's Lichtburg and Ernst Schöffler, Carlo Schloenbach, and Carl Jacobi's Titania Palast in Berlin, were particularly striking examples of architecture of the night, often "the most striking [nocturnal] sights" in cities. In the case of UfA
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
, this extended to spectacular transformations of theater facades to advertise particular movies.
A late example of European architecture of the night is Simpson's Department Store
Simpsons of Piccadilly
Simpsons of Piccadilly was a large retail shop which traded at 203-206 Piccadilly in central London, England, and was built as a quality clothing store for men in 1935–36...
in London, co-designed by László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
, who also pioneered kinetic light art; he had recently published an essay on "Light Architecture."
The first age of experimentation with architecture of the night was brought to a close by the Depression and World War II blackouts. Not until 1956 was Walter Köhler
Walter Köhler
Walter Friedrich Julius Köhler, was Minister President of Baden, Germany during the Nazi regime. Köhler was born in Weinheim, Baden. He was known as a talented speaker and strict anti-semite...
's book on the concept, Lichtarchitektur, published, edited by Wassili Luckhardt
Wassili Luckhardt
Wassili Luckhardt was a German architect. He studied at the Technical University of Berlin and Dresden. Luckhardt and his brother Hans worked closely together for most of their lives...
.
Postwar
There was renewed exploration of exterior lighting in architecture in the 1950s and 1960s, this time brought to a close by the Energy Crisis1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
of the 1970s.
Immediately after the end of the war, lighting spectaculars were used to celebrate victory; for example in Los Angeles on October 27, 1945, a hundred searchlights each with a 16-foot color wheel attached created a "crown of light" above Memorial Coliseum
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, at Exposition Park, that is home to the Pacific-12 Conference's University of Southern California Trojans football team...
, and the following summer, the "Victory Lighting" festival turned London into a "fairyland" with floodlighted buildings, illuminated fountains, fireworks, and colored searchlight displays over the Thames. Sound and light show
Son et lumière (show)
Son et lumière , or a sound and light show, is a form of nighttime entertainment that is usually presented in an outdoor venue of historic significance....
s began at Chambord
Château de Chambord
The royal Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France is one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinct French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures.The building, which was never...
in May 1952, invented by Paul-Robert Houdin, who had apparently been inspired by the pre-war use of floodlighting at the 1937 Paris World's Fair and on Paris monuments. Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
and Yannis Xenakis adapted the idea at Expo '58
Expo '58
Expo 58, also known as the Brussels World’s Fair, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling or Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, was held from 17 April to 19 October 1958...
in Brussels. The use of nighttime lighting in German cities such as Frankfurt immediately after the war was a different kind of architectural application, indicating the intended form of as yet unreconstructed buildings, squares, and streets "in a town that, in daytime, still looks more like a shanty town or a huge bomb site", as Gerhard Rosenberg observed in 1953.
Lighting of new buildings was less of an architectural preoccupation at first than it had been before the war, since the uninterrupted facades of the International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
did not have setbacks to facilitate floodlighting. New approaches were required; buildings including Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...
's Manufacturers Trust bank branch building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, completed in 1954, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
, Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
, and Ely Jacques Kahn
Ely Jacques Kahn
Ely Jacques Kahn was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscrapers in New York City in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film...
's Seagram Building
Seagram Building
The Seagram Building is a skyscraper, located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with Philip Johnson. Severud Associates were the structural engineering consultants. The building...
, completed in 1958, used glass walls and luminous ceilings to create a "tower of light," an updating of the technique of trans-illumination, that is, illuminating the building from within, that had been developed in Europe in the 1920s. Ada Louise Huxtable
Ada Louise Huxtable
Ada Louise Huxtable is an architecture critic and writer on architecture. In 1970 she was awarded the first ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for "distinguished criticism during 1969."...
wrote of the Manufacturers Hanover Building: "The whole, viewed from the outside, is no longer architectural in the traditional sense: it is a design, not of substance, but of color, light and motion." The same year, the Tishman Building by Carson & Lundin created a "tower of light" in quite a different way, updating the American tradition of exterior floodlighting: Abe Feder's lighting design used mercury vapor lamps to evenly illuminate the aluminum facade so as to recreate the building's daytime appearance, with the accent feature of the address, "666," picked out in red neon at the top. Architects and critics rediscovered the possibilities of light, apparently unaware of the pre-war discussions. For example, also in 1958 a New York Times writer declared "lighting [as] an art that combines function and decoration" to be "one of the big advances in recent years in architecture". Gio Ponti
Giò Ponti
Gio Ponti was one of the most important Italian architects, industrial designers, furniture designers, artists, and publishers of the twentieth century.-Early life:...
condemned floodlighting as "primitive and barbaric" and predicted "a new nocturnal city":
Lighting will become an essential element of spatial architecture. . . . By a predesigned self-illumination this architecture will present formal night effects never yet imagined—illusions of spaces, of voids, of alternations of volumes, weights, and surfaces. . . . We artists will create luminously corporal entities of form.His 1960 Pirelli Tower
Pirelli Tower
The Pirelli Tower , is a skyscraper in Milan, Italy.-History:...
in Milan was a prominent example of postwar European night architecture, using ceiling fluorescent lights in the three vertical sections into which the building is divided, and rooftop floodlights reflecting off the bottom of a cantilevered roof; Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
and Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi was an American architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings....
's Pan Am Building was influenced by its form but used floodlighting at night.
The development of sign "spectaculars" in Las Vegas also began after World War II, going beyond those in New York's Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
(which in any case were becoming more floodlight-dependent and less able to compete with increasing neon and backlighted signage at street level) into three-dimensionality so that the architecture on the Strip
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
"[became] symbol in space, rather than form in space". By 1964, Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
pointed out that "signs have become the architecture of Las Vegas"; he later dubbed them "electrographic architecture." Also in 1964, lighting designer Derek Phillips criticized such nighttime architecture of signage as deceptive:
There are few disappointments as real as entering some towns after dark and experiencing the sense of scale and vitality given by the facades of neon signs, only to find the following morning one has been in a shanty town of huts at low level, above which large sign frameworks have been erected. The nighttime appearance need not be the same, but it should bear sufficient correlation with the day appearance to be appreciated as the same building.
There were some experiments with colored floodlighting in the 1960s, notably the 15-minute sequences of changing colors on the Theme Building
Theme Building
The Theme Building is a landmark structure at the Los Angeles International Airport within the Westchester neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles. It opened in 1961, and is an example of the Mid-Century modern influenced design school known as "Googie" or "Populuxe."The distinctive white building...
at Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles International Airport is the primary airport serving the Greater Los Angeles Area, the second-most populated metropolitan area in the United States. It is most often referred to by its IATA airport code LAX, with the letters pronounced individually...
, which replaced initial static illumination with amber light.
Recent night architecture
Light-emitting diode
A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting...
screens. The upper stories of the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
were floodlighted from 1964 to 1973; on October 12, 1977, using a new lighting installation by Douglas Leigh
Douglas Leigh
Douglas Leigh was an American advertising executive and lighting designer, and a pioneer in signage and outdoor advertising. He is famous for making New York City's Times Square the site of some of the world's most famous electric billboards...
, they were lighted in blue and white to celebrate the Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
' World Series
1977 World Series
-Game 1:Tuesday, October 11, 1977 at Yankee Stadium in Bronx, New YorkThe Dodgers drew first blood off Don Gullett in the first when Davey Lopes walked and scored on a Bill Russell triple. Ron Cey made it 2–0 on a sacrifice fly...
win, and since then the building has been lighted in different colors to celebrate a variety of holidays and other special occasions, despite the objections of Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...
that the colors "turn [it] into a toy". I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei , commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou...
and Harold Fredenburgh's Bank of America Tower in Miami, completed in 1987, also changes colors on holidays. Modern computerized lighting can respond to external conditions, as in Toyo Ito
Toyo Ito
is a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" city, and has been called "one of the world's most...
's 1986 Tower of Winds in Yokohama, or execute other complex tasks, as in the installation on the facade of the Forty-Second Street Studios in New York, where the color cycling speeds up throughout the week from slow changes on Mondays to changes every few seconds on weekend nights.
Many modern instances of architecture of the night are associated with festival architecture, both in permanent environments such as Universal City Walk in Orlando, Florida, by John Johnston (1999), or in temporary installations, for example art works by John David Mooney such as Light Space Chicago 1977, involving searchlights on the Chicago lakefront, and Lightscape '89, involving lights and colored screens in the windows of the IBM Building in Chicago (on the occasion of the company's 75th birthday). Light festivals are once more popular, and in the 1980s and 1990s, such temporary illumination was popular worldwide, sometimes in combination with music performances, as with works by Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and...
in Houston in 1986 and in the La Défense
La Défense
La Défense is a major business district of the Paris aire urbaine. With a population of 20,000, it is centered in an orbital motorway straddling the Hauts-de-Seine département municipalities of Nanterre, Courbevoie and Puteaux...
district of Paris in 1990. Yann Kersalé has produced both temporary installations (for example at the Grand Palais
Grand Palais
This article contains material abridged and translated from the French and Spanish Wikipedia.The Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées, commonly known as the Grand Palais , is a large historic site, exhibition hall and museum complex located at the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France...
in Paris in 1987, using rhythmically waxing and waning blue fluorescents under the glass dome to suggest a beating heart) and permanent works collaborating with architects including Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture...
and Helmut Jahn
Helmut Jahn
Helmut Jahn is a German-American architect, well known for designs such as the US$800 million Sony Center on the Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, the Messeturm in Frankfurt and the One Liberty Place, formerly the tallest building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Suvarnabhumi Airport, an international...
, for example the Sony Center
Sony Center
The Sony Center is a Sony-sponsored building complex located at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany. It opened in 2000.-History:The site was originally a bustling city centre in the early 20th century. Most of the buildings were destroyed or damaged during World War II...
in Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about one kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag , and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park...
in Berlin (2000), where the office tower is spotlighted and the fiberglass membranes tented above the atrium are lighted in an "extension of daylight" every evening and then in a succession of sequences emulating sunset until midnight, when the lighting becomes dark blue until shortly before sunrise, when it becomes white until full daylight. There were many searchlight displays in association with the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000, and the Tribute in Light
Tribute in Light
The Tribute in Light is an art installation of 88 searchlights placed next to the site of the World Trade Center to create two vertical columns of light in remembrance of the September 11 attacks. It is produced annually by The Municipal Art Society of New York...
in which the twin towers of the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
are memorialized in twin shafts of white light is a comparable application.
Notable examples
- Singer BuildingSinger BuildingThe Singer Building or Singer Tower at Liberty Street and Broadway in Manhattan, was a 47-story office building completed in 1908 as the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was demolished in 1968 and is now the site of 1 Liberty Plaza....
, New York (1908): roof outlined with lights, tower floodlighted from base. Building design: Ernest FlaggErnest FlaggErnest Flagg was a noted American architect in the Beaux-Arts style. He was also an advocate for urban reform and architecture's social responsibility.-Biography:...
. Lighting design Walter D'Arcy Ryan and Charles G. Armstrong. - Gas & Electric Building, Denver, Colorado (1910): building facades covered with 13,000 incandescent bulbs, called "The Best Lighted Building in the World." Building design: Frank E. EdbrookeFrank E. EdbrookeFrank E. Edbrooke , also known as F.E. Edbrooke was an early architect in Denver, Colorado who has been termed the "dean" of Denver architecture. Some of his works survive and are listed on the U.S...
. Lighting design Cyrus Oehlmann. - General Electric Company BuildingElectric TowerElectric Tower, or General Electric Tower, is a historic office building and skyscraper located at Buffalo in Erie County, New York. It is the seventh tallest building in Buffalo. It stands and 13 stories tall and is in the Beaux-Arts Classical Revival style. It was designed by James A. Johnson...
, Buffalo, New York (1912; new lighting scheme 1927): multi-level floodlights, purple lights on tower, revolving searchlights. One of the first color lighting schemes, and one of the first to use large lamps instead of outlining with many small ones. Often lit in particular colors for seasonal and other special displays. Building design: Esenwein & JohnsonJames A. Johnson (architect)James Addison Johnson was a Buffalo, New York architect known for his design of various architectural landmarks and his use of decorative work that many consider a foreshadowing of art deco design....
. Lighting design Walter D'Arcy Ryan. - Woolworth BuildingWoolworth BuildingThe Woolworth Building is one of the oldest skyscrapers in New York City. More than a century after the start of its construction, it remains, at 57 stories, one of the fifty tallest buildings in the United States as well as one of the twenty tallest buildings in New York City...
, New York (1914): multi-level floodlighting, lighting in lantern on automatic increase and dim cycle. Building design: Cass GilbertCass Gilbert- Historical impact :Gilbert is considered a skyscraper pioneer; when designing the Woolworth Building he moved into unproven ground — though he certainly was aware of the ground-breaking work done by Chicago architects on skyscrapers and once discussed merging firms with the legendary Daniel...
. Lighting design H. Herbert Magdsick, reworked with similar appearance by Douglas LeighDouglas LeighDouglas Leigh was an American advertising executive and lighting designer, and a pioneer in signage and outdoor advertising. He is famous for making New York City's Times Square the site of some of the world's most famous electric billboards...
. - Wrigley BuildingWrigley BuildingThe Wrigley Building is a skyscraper located directly across Michigan Avenue from the Tribune Tower on the Magnificent Mile...
, Chicago (1921): floodlighting with revolving beacon, building clad in grey and cream terra cotta of increasingly pale shade with rising height; Chicago's first major floodlighted building and at the time the world's most completely illuminated structure. Illumination increased in 1933 because of advertising effectiveness; more powerful lights installed in the 1980s. Building design: Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. Lighting design: James B. Darlington. - McJunkin Building, Chicago (1924): first building to be permanently illuminated in color, design modified to facilitate lighting. Building design: Marshall & Fox, Arthur U. GerberArthur U. GerberArthur Uranus Gerber was a commercial architect who resided in Evanston, Illinois and whose designs included a number of transit stations in the greater Chicago, Illinois area, at least five of which have since been placed onto the National Register of Historic Places.-Styles:Gerber was known for...
. Lighting design: Edwin D. Tillson. - San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation BuildingSan Joaquin Light and Power Corporation BuildingThe San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation Building is a historic building in Fresno, California, in the United States of America. It opened in 1924 for the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation. Currently, the building is known as the International Trade Center.-External links:*...
, Fresno, California (1924): multi-colored floodlighting defining different building levels, roof corner lights, lighted rooftop sign, steam jets. Lighting design: H.H. Courtright, Walter D'Arcy Ryan, and Carl F. Wolff. - American Radiator BuildingAmerican Radiator BuildingThe American Radiator Building is a landmark skyscraper located at 40 West 40th Street, in midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was conceived by the architects John Howells and Raymond Hood in 1924 and built for the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company...
, New York (1924): amber floodlighting, following a series of experiments. Building design: Raymond HoodRaymond HoodRaymond Mathewson Hood was an early-mid twentieth century architect who worked in the Art Deco style. He was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, MIT, and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the latter institution he met John Mead Howells, with whom Hood later partnered...
and André Fouilhoux. Lighting design: Bassett Jones. - Pacific Gas and Electric Company Building, Market StreetMarket Street (San Francisco)Market Street is an important thoroughfare in San Francisco, California. It begins at The Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building at the northeastern edge of the city and runs southwest through downtown, passing the Civic Center and the Castro District, to the intersection with Corbett Avenue in...
, San Francisco (1925): floodlighting from adjacent buildings and on setbacks as part of a lighting festival commemorating the 75th anniversary of California statehood. Lighting design: C. Felix Butte, Hunter and Hudson. - Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company BuildingPacBell BuildingThe PacBell Building or 140 New Montgomery Street in San Francisco's South of Market district is a Neo-Gothic, office tower located close to the St. Regis Museum Tower and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The 26-floor building was completed in 1925 and was San Francisco's first significant...
, San Francisco (1925): floodlighting of top segments and lower corner setbacks; terra cotta selected to facilitate lighting and building much publicized as an example. Lighting design: Simonson and St. John, Arthur Fryklund, C. Felix Butte. - Paramount Building1501 Broadway1501 Broadway, also known as the Paramount Building, is a 33-story, 131.5 m office building located between West 43rd and 44th Streets in the Times Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It once housed the Paramount Theatre....
, New York (1926): designed as a "ziggurat" with many setbacks to conceal floodlights; clockfaces with illuminated hands and minute points near the top; glass ball flashed white to indicate the hour, red on the quarter hour, and could be seen from New Jersey and Long Island; described by The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
as "an incinerator for the ashes of departed movies." Setback floodlighting and ball illumination resumed in 1998. Building and lighting design: Rapp and RappRapp and RappThe architectural firm Rapp and Rapp was active in Chicago, Illinois during the early 20th century. The brothers Cornelius W. Rapp and George Leslie Rapp of Carbondale, Illinois were the named partners and 1899 alumnus of the University of Illinois School of Architecture...
. - Wachthof (headquarters of Berliner Wach- und Schließgesellschaft, Berlin Association of Watchmen and Locksmiths), Berlin (1926): facade renovation of contiguous commercial premises unified by large horizontal sign by day, by lighted protruding vertical sign by night. Building and lighting design: Arthur KornArthur Korn (architect)Arthur Korn was a German Jewish architect and urban planner who was a proponent of modernism in Germany and the UK.-Life and career:...
. - Tauentzienstraße 3, Berlin (1927): renovation and floor addition to a 19th-century commercial building with illuminated light-colored strips with brass lettering installed above each floor, much cited as an example of modernization and purification from ornament. Renovation and lighting design: Luckhardt Brothers and Anker (Wassili LuckhardtWassili LuckhardtWassili Luckhardt was a German architect. He studied at the Technical University of Berlin and Dresden. Luckhardt and his brother Hans worked closely together for most of their lives...
, Hans LuckhardtHans LuckhardtHans Luckhardt – October 8, 1954 in Bad Wiessee) was a German architect and the brother of Wassili Luckhardt, with whom he worked his entire life. He studied at the University of Karlsruhe with Hermann Billing and was a member of the Novembergruppe, the Arbeitsrats für Kunst, and the Glass Chain...
, and Alfons Anker). - Lichthaus Luz, Stuttgart (1927): multistory downtown store with bay window, illuminated horizontal bands of white glass, rooftop rotating star outlined in two-color neon. Building and lighting design: Richard DöckerRichard DöckerRichard Döcker was a German architect and professor associated with the functionalist style in architecture.-Biography:...
. - Philadelphia Electric Company Edison Building, Philadelphia (1927): an early use of mobile washes of color, with floodlights fitted with special caps and lenses and separate reactors for each setback to facilitate color changes, and variable dimmer cycles so that colors grew more intense and then faded; initial activation by Thomas EdisonThomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
by telegraph relay from his home. Building design: John T. WindrimJohn T. WindrimJohn Torrey Windrim was an American architect.He trained in the office of his father, architect James H. Windrim. He was elected to the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1901, and became a Fellow of the Institute in 1926...
. Lighting design: Arthur A. Brainerd. - First Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago, Chicago (1927): "revenue church" with church on ground floor of skyscraper surmounted by Gothic steeple floodlighted behind the buttresses and pinnacles, and bright floodlighting on top of steeple and cross, visible up to 12 miles away. Building design: Holabird & RocheHolabird & RocheThe architectural firm of Holabird & Root was founded in Chicago in 1880. Over the years, the firm's designs have changed many times — from the Chicago School to Art Deco to Modern Architecture to Sustainable Architecture.-History:...
. Lighting design: W. A. Beile and Co. - C. A. Herpich Sons, Furriers, Berlin (1928): New facade and two set-back upper storeys on three older buildings, with ribbon windows alternating with travertine bands illuminated from above by lights behind opal glass. Replaced with blue neon in 1930. Building and lighting design: Erich MendelsohnErich MendelsohnErich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...
. - Titania Palast, Berlin (1928): movie theater with the highest degree of night lighting in Berlin, designed with lighting in mind. Concealed colored floodlights, backlighted translucent glass bands including on 100-foot light tower, outline lighting at roof edge, name in blue neon on red background. Building design: Ernst Schöffler, Carlo Schloenbach, and Carl Jacobi. Lighting design: Ernst Hölscher.
- De Volharding Building, The Hague (1928): insurance cooperative headquarters clad entirely in glass, with glass-brick elevator stairway towers; light tower above illuminated rooftop sign; strips of plate-glass windows alternating with opal glass strips behind which lettering was mounted to form night-time advertising. "[T]he most famous of all luminous buildings." Building design: Jan BuijsJan BuijsJan Willem Eduard Buijs, sometimes written Jan Buys was a Dutch architect, best known for his De Volharding Building. His works include manufacturing, commercial, residential and municipal buildings...
and Joan B. Lürsen. Lighting design: Jan Buijs with Osram Lichthaus. - Rudolf Petersdorff Department Store, Breslau (1928): on one facade of the corner building, terminating in a cantilevered semicircular corner section, ribbon windows illuminated by neon behind the transoms, reflected outwards by white curtains. Building and lighting design: Erich Mendelsohn.
- Lichtburg, Berlin (1929; demolished 1970): movie theater as centerpiece of commercial center for new housing development, with half cylinder atrium building pierced by 15 lighted columnar windows contrasting with horizontal strip windows on adjacent building; 4-foot red neon sign and 3 rotating searchlights on roof; lobby had glowing pilasters. Building and lighting design: Rudolf FränkelRudolf FrankelRudolf Fränkel, often anglicised as Rudolf or Rudolph Frankel was a German-Jewish architect who was among the leaders of the pre-war avant-garde movement in Berlin...
. - KarstadtKarstädtKarstädt is a municipality in the Prignitz district, in Brandenburg, Germany....
Department Store, Hermannplatz, Berlin (1929): at the time the largest department store in Europe, with the many bays of the facade outlined and the two towers with setback floodlighting and light towers. Building design: Philip Schaefer. Lighting design: unknown. - Palmolive BuildingPalmolive BuildingThe Palmolive Building, formerly the Playboy Building, is a 37-story Art Deco building at 919 N. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Built by Holabird & Root, it was completed in 1929 and was home to Colgate-Palmolive-Peet....
, Chicago (1929): Chicago's first illuminated setback skyscraper, in Indiana limestone and entirely illuminated as a "monument to cleanliness," with three vertically lighted indented sections in the center of the facade creating a pattern of light and dark stripes; the white lighting gave the building the nickname "La Tour d'Argent." Revolving light on mast at top was a navigation beacon, originally named for Charles LindberghCharles LindberghCharles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...
. Building design: Holabird & Root. Lighting design: unknown. - Chicago Tribune Tower, Chicago (1929): the winning design in the 1922 international competition noted that the upper part was designed with a view to lighting; Bassett Jones envisaged a complex scheme of rose-colored light and silhouetting, giving the "effect [of] Walhalla burning in the skies," but the building was only lit in 1929, five years after completion, and only with gold floodlighting on the crown. Building design: Raymond Hood and John Mead HowellsJohn Mead HowellsJohn Mead Howells was an American architect. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the son of author William Dean Howells, he studied architecture at Harvard and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met his future partners, I. N. Phelps Stokes and Raymond Hood...
. Lighting design: Bassett Jones. - Union Trust BuildingGuardian BuildingThe Guardian Building is a skyscraper at 500 Griswold Street in the downtown of the city of Detroit, in the state of Michigan, in the United States of America. The Guardian is a class-A office building owned by Wayne County, Michigan and serves as its headquarters...
, Detroit (1929): nicknamed the "Cathedral of Finance," a multi-colored skyscraper with a golden crown, from which a motorized "scintillator" (developed for World's Fairs) of eight moving searchlight beams in magenta, green, orange, and yellow formed patterns in the sky. Building design: Wirt Rowland. Lighting design: William D'Arcy Ryan. - Chanin BuildingChanin BuildingThe Chanin Building is a brick and terra-cotta skyscraper located at 122 East 42nd Street, at the corner of Lexington Avenue, in Manhattan. Built by Irwin S. Chanin in 1929, it is 56 stories high, reaching excluding the spire and including it...
, New York (1929): a prominent skyscraper planned with illumination in mind, the crown formed of buttresses over a promenade was illuminated from behind, in white light on yellow terracotta, to produce a golden glow that reversed the daytime aspect of the building. Building design: Sloan & Robertson. Lighting design: WestinghouseWestinghouse Electric (1886)Westinghouse Electric was an American manufacturing company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...
and Edwards Electrical Construction. - BataBata ShoesBata Shoes is a large, family owned shoe company based in Bermuda but currently headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, operating 3 business units worldwide – Bata Metro Markets, Bata Emerging Markets and Bata Branded Business. It has a retail presence in over 50 countries and production...
Store, Wenceslas SquareWenceslas SquareWenceslas Square is one of the main city squares and the centre of the business and cultural communities in the New Town of Prague, Czech Republic. Many historical events occurred there, and it is a traditional setting for demonstrations, celebrations, and other public gatherings...
, Prague (1929): shoe store using illuminated opal glass bands carrying advertising, inspiring illumination on other central Prague buildings and causing bands of opal glass to become a trademark of other Bata stores. Building design: Ludvik Kysela, František L Gahura, and Josef GočarJosef GocárJosef Gočár , was a Czech architect, one of the founders of modern architecture in Czechoslovakia....
. Lighting design: Ludvik Kysela. - Merchandise MartMerchandise MartWhen opened in 1930, the Merchandise Mart or the Merch Mart, located in the Near North Side, Chicago, Illinois, was the largest building in the world with of floor space. Previously owned by the Marshall Field family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating vendors...
, Chicago (1930): bright illumination of upper stories, varied intensity on lower stories over an unilluminated base, producing a notable example of steady illumination in an era of experimentation with moving colored displays. Building design: Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. Lighting design: unknown. - Terminal TowerTerminal TowerThe Terminal Tower is a landmark skyscraper located on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It was built during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 1930s, and was the second-tallest building in the world when it was completed. The Terminal Tower stood as the tallest building in North America...
, Cleveland, Ohio (1930): upper half of tower illuminated in white light of varying intensity to show details. Reilluminated in 1979 with a "timid" scheme, replaced in 1981 with golden-white illumination of entire building, at the time the tallest building in the US illuminated from bottom to top. Lights converted to high-pressure sodium in the 1990s, enabling both truer colors and color changes. Building design: Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. Lighting design: unknown. 1981 lighting design General ElectricGeneral ElectricGeneral Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, John J. Kennedy. - A. E. StaleyA. E. StaleyA. E. Staley was a Decatur, Illinois based processor of corn founded in 1898. It changed its name to Staley Continental in 1985. It produced a range of starch products for the food, paper and other industries, high fructose corn syrup, crystalline fructose , ethanol and other agro-industrial...
Manufacturing Company Administration Building, Decatur, Illinois (1930): mobile color floodlighting, first use of General Electric's ThyratronThyratronA thyratron is a type of gas filled tube used as a high energy electrical switch and controlled rectifier. Triode, tetrode and pentode variations of the thyratron have been manufactured in the past, though most are of the triode design...
tube dimmer, plus revolving beacon on dome. Color display recreated in 1989 with a computer. Building design: Aschauer & Waggoner. Lighting design: F. D. Crowther, General Electric (1930); Lutron Co., Bodine Electric, and Staley Co. (1989). - Richfield Building, Los Angeles (1930): elaborate floodlighting to emphasize shiny black an gold, including spotlights on corner angels; openwork metal tower resembling an oil derrick was an aircraft beacon and neon sign and was echoed by towers on company gas stations. Floodlighting continued while company in bankruptcy during the Depression. Building design: Morgan, Walls & ClementsMorgan, Walls & ClementsMorgan, Walls & Clements was an architectural firm based in Los Angeles, California and responsible for many of the city's landmarks. Originally Morgan and Walls, with principals Octavius Morgan and John A. Walls, the firm worked in the area from before the turn of the century.Around 1910 Morgan's...
. Lighting design: Ralph Phillips. - Kansas City Power & Light Company BuildingKansas City Power and Light BuildingThe Kansas City Power and Light Building is a landmark skyscraper located in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri...
, Kansas City, Missouri (1931): color floodlighting with Thyratron control, luminous panels, red neon outlining in lantern. Building design: Hoit, Price & Barnes. Lighting design: General Electric. - Empire State BuildingEmpire State BuildingThe Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
, New York (1931): Initially lighted only at the top, with lights inside the mooring mast, bands of light at the 86th-floor observation deck and above, and 8 searchlights from the tip of the mast, which, however, could not be seen because of lack of material in the air at that height. Stronger single searchlight added in 1932. Four revolving "Freedom Lights" added at 90th floor in 1956, one pointing skyward at all times. In 1964, the entire top floodlit with a black band below, with the effect of a "chandelier suspended from the sky." Colored lighting from 1976, later updated; building is lit in a wide range of colors to mark holidays and other special occasions. Building design: Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Lighting design: Meyer, Strong & Jones (1931), Raymond LoewyRaymond LoewyRaymond Loewy was an industrial designer, and the first to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine, on October 31, 1949. Born in France, he spent most of his professional career in the United States...
(1956), Douglas Leigh (1976). - Cities Service Building, New York (1932): increasing lighting on the upper stories, beginning at the corners, surmounted by a 20-foot glass lantern, a rare feature in America, and neon beacons at base and top of flagpole. Building design: Clinton & Russell. Lighting design: Alfred Paulus, Westinghouse Lamp Co.; Horton Lees Lighting (update).
- Gaumont Palace cinema, Paris (1932): bright floodlighting reflected on the sidewalk, plus light cascade on new tower added in building renovation and expansion; blue and green neon, 10-foot red neon letters. Renovation design: Henri Belloc. Lighting design: Les Établissements Paz e Silva.
- Niagara-Hudson-Syracuse Lighting Company Building, Syracuse, New York (1932): Tower with illuminated glass corner panels, luminous glass pillars on ground floor, all lighted in multiple changing colors; floodlighted stainless steel and glass Spirit of Light atop tower. 1999 scheme, inaugurated at Light up Syracuse, uses fluorescent and neon on computerized timer to produce similar effects. Building design: Melvin L. King, Bley and Lyman. Lighting design: unknown. Howard Brandston and Kevin Simonson, Brandston Partnership (1999).
- RCA Building, Rockefeller CenterRockefeller CenterRockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
, New York (1933): One of the first buildings of the new building complex, and immediately floodlighted, but only on the east side; Lewis MumfordLewis MumfordLewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
wrote that that was the best time to see the center: "Under artificial lighting, in a slight haze, the group of buildings that now make up the Center looks like one of Hugh FerrissHugh FerrissHugh Ferriss was an American delineator and architect. According to Daniel Okrent, Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said he 'influenced my generation of architects' more than any other man...
' visions of the City of the Future." Relighted in 1960 and 1984, now the only Manhattan skyscraper lighted for its entire height. Building design: L. Andrew Reinhard, Harry Hofmeister, Raymond Hood, Wallace HarrisonWallace HarrisonWallace Kirkman Harrison , was an American architect.-Career:Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center...
, Harvey Wiley CorbettHarvey Wiley CorbettHarvey Wiley Corbett was an American architect primarily known for skyscraper and office building designs in New York and London, and his advocacy of tall buildings and modernism in architecture.-Early life and career:...
. Lighting design: Abe Feder (1984). - Simpson's Department StoreSimpsons of PiccadillySimpsons of Piccadilly was a large retail shop which traded at 203-206 Piccadilly in central London, England, and was built as a quality clothing store for men in 1935–36...
, London (1936): Blue, red, and green neon tubes on dimmers above ribbon windows, to produce either colored or (by combining all three) white light; surfaces inclined to ensure even lighting, vertical light trough framing facade. Neon-lighted store name added later. Building design: Joseph EmbertonJoseph EmbertonJoseph Emberton was an English architect of the early modernist period. He was born 23 December 1889 in Audley, Staffordshire and was educated at the Royal College of Art. He first worked for the London architects Trehearne and Norman between 1913-1914, before serving as a gunner in the Honourable...
with László Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
and Felix SamuelyFelix SamuelyFelix James Samuely was a Structural engineer.Born in Vienna, he immigrated to Britain in 1933. Worked with Erich Mendelsohn on the De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea , the British Pavilion for the Brussels World’s Fair and on various parts of the Festival of Britain. Published MARS plan for...
. Lighting design: Joseph Emberton. - New Reich Chancellery, Berlin (1939): Floodlighting from nearby buildings and from trenches in courtyards and main entrance to make the building appear similar by day and night and make streetlighting unncessary, and concealed between double glazing in windows of the Marble Gallery to mimic incoming daylight. Building design: Albert SpeerAlbert SpeerAlbert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
. Lighting design: Albert Speer and Eberhard von der Trappen. - General Electric BuildingGeneral Electric BuildingThe General Electric Building, also known as 570 Lexington Avenue, is a historic 50-floor, -tall, skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States, at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street). Originally known as the RCA Victor Building when designed in 1931 by John W...
, New York (1940): 1931 building with Gothic crown creating a night-time effect of lack of solidity, relighted in 1940 to showcase fluorescent lighting, with red lights inside and blue outside the crown and a dimmer on a timer added for the existing white lights to produce color changes; spotlighting of architectural details; blue fluorescents beneath windows, lighting only the glass. New lighting scheme in 1965: entire building floodlighted, east and west facades more brightly than north and south, gold lights in crown with randomly sparkling blue-white, yellow, and pink "jewels." Building design: Cross & Cross. Lighting design: A. F. Dickerson, General Electric (1940), Robert E. Faucett, General Electric (1965). - Blau Gold Haus, Cologne (1952): Modernist building with integral lighting design using neon under the cornice and hidden incandescent lights in piers between windows to reflect off the turquoise and gold facade (the colors of 4711 eau-de-cologne). Building and lighting design: Wilhelm Koep.
- Manufacturers Trust bank branch, New York (1954): a pioneer of glass-walled bank architecture, replacing the security of solid walls with that of visibility from the street; banking hall set back from the outside wall and it and outer edges of upper floors illuminated by a luminous ceiling. Building design: Skidmore, Owings and MerrillSkidmore, Owings and MerrillSkidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...
. Lighting design: Gordon BunshaftGordon BunshaftGordon Bunshaft was an architect educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1988, Gordon Bunshaft nominated himself for the Pritzker Prize and eventually won it.-Career:...
Syska & Hennessy, Fischbach & Moore. - Indianapolis Power & LightIndianapolis Power & LightIndianapolis Power & Light Company, also known as IPL or IPALCO, is a utility company providing electric service to the city of Indianapolis. It is a subsidiary and largest utility of AES Corporation, which acquired it in 2000....
Company, Electric Building, Indianapolis (1956, 1968): 1924 office building floodlit with color available, in 1968 redesigned with stone cladding and halogen lamps (now replaced with quartz) with colored filters illuminating only the window recesses. Dimmer controls and programmed effects including symbols for holidays and a moving band of darkness created by shutting off lights on one floor at a time. Building design: Unknown (1924), Lennox, Matthews, Simmons & Ford (1968). Lighting design: George E. Ransford, IPL (1956), Norman F. Schnitker, IPL (1968) - Seagram BuildingSeagram BuildingThe Seagram Building is a skyscraper, located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with Philip Johnson. Severud Associates were the structural engineering consultants. The building...
, New York (1958): Tinted-windowed modernist skyscraper designed with a strip of luminous ceiling on outsides of all floors to counter sky glare during the day and provide a night-time "tower of light" appearance in contrast to daytime appearance; ground floor made four times brighter than upper floors by white marble illuminated from concealed lighting slots. Night illumination system not used since 1973. Building design: Ludwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
, Philip JohnsonPhilip JohnsonPhilip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
, Ely Jacques KahnEly Jacques KahnEly Jacques Kahn was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscrapers in New York City in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film...
. Lighting design: Richard KellyRichard Kelly (lighting designer)Richard Kelly was an American lighting designer and considered one of the pioneers of architectural lighting design. Kelly had already established his own New York-based lighting practice in 1935 before enrolling at the Yale School of Architecture where he graduated in 1944...
. - Tishman Building, New York (1958): Slim office tower with setbacks, clad in folded aluminum, evenly illuminated by mercury vapor lamps to create "tower of light," a similar appearance to daytime but with the "666" of the address in red neon near the top. Building design: Carson, Lundin & Shaw. Lighting design: Abe Feder.
- Thyssenhaus, Düsseldorf (1960): Skyscraper consisting of three slender slabs, two smaller ones sandwiching a larger, designed for two distinct night-time appearances: fluorescent ceiling lights near building edges to illuminate entire building from within as a stack of ribbon windows, or alternatively display of the company signet by illuminating only blue fluorescents placed on both sides of selected windows on each side of the building. This terminated when the company merged with ThyssenThyssenKruppThyssenKrupp AG is a German multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Duisburg Essen, Germany. The corporation consists of 670 companies worldwide. While ThyssenKrupp is one of the world's largest steel producers, the company also provides components and systems for the automotive...
in 1966. Building design: Helmut Hentrich and Hubert PetschniggHubert PetschniggHubert Petschnigg was an Austrian architect.-Life:Petschnigg was born in Klagenfurt, and went to school in Villach. In 1934 he began to study architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, where he entered the Hansea Vienna branch of the Kösener Corps student society...
. Lighting design: Unknown. - Pirelli TowerPirelli TowerThe Pirelli Tower , is a skyscraper in Milan, Italy.-History:...
, Milan (1960): Skyscraper with central section flanked by two tapering thinner sections, designed as "self-lighting architecture", with cantilevered roof illuminated from beneath. Building design: Gio PontiGiò PontiGio Ponti was one of the most important Italian architects, industrial designers, furniture designers, artists, and publishers of the twentieth century.-Early life:...
with Antonio Fornaroli and Alberto Rosselli, and engineers Pier Luigi NerviPier Luigi NerviPier Luigi Nervi was an Italian engineer. He studied at the University of Bologna and qualified in 1913. Dr. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946-61...
and Arturo Danusso. Lighting design: Gio Ponti, Antonio Fornaroli, and Alberto Rosselli. - Michigan Consolidated Gas Company BuildingOne Woodward AvenueThe building now known as One Woodward Avenue is a skyscraper and class-A office center in Detroit, Michigan. Located next to the city's Civic Center and Financial District, it overlooks the International Riverfront and was designed to blend with the City-County Building across Woodward Avenue and...
, Detroit (1961): Skyscraper adjacent to Union Trust building, built by the same company to take over its night-time advertising presence: white quartz facing sparkled during the day, lobby ceiling lighting represented blue gas flames, office floors had perimeter fluorescent lighting, top two floors set back behind a masonry screen which was silhouetted by floodlighting, with openwork tower on top; colors varied for holidays but building became known for the standard scheme of deep blue lighting on the roof tower above white lights, emulating a gas pilot light. Building design: Minoru YamasakiMinoru Yamasakiwas a Japanese-American architect, best known for his design of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, buildings 1 and 2. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century...
. Lighting design: John J. Andrews and James McDonald. - Embarcadero CenterEmbarcadero CenterEmbarcadero Center is a commercial complex of five office towers and two hotels on a site located off the Embarcadero in the financial district of San Francisco, California. The Trammell Crow, David Rockefeller and John Portman development was begun with Tower One in 1971, with the last...
, San Francisco (1971-1973): The buildings are lit up every year in greenGreenGreen is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
and redRedRed is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
during the ChristmasChristmasChristmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
/HanukkahHanukkahHanukkah , also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE...
holidays, between the day after ThanksgivingThanksgivingThanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
and Epiphany. - Chrysler BuildingChrysler BuildingThe Chrysler Building is an Art Deco style skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at , it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State...
, New York (1981): 1930 building was originally intended to have a lighted glass dome; triangular windows in the metallic spire were equipped with lights, but not lighted until after the Depression and then only for holidays. New owner in 1979 had these updated to fluorescents and floodlighting added on spire and tower shaft. Building design: William Van AlenWilliam Van AlenWilliam Van Alen was an American architect, best known as the architect in charge of designing New York City's Chrysler Building .-Life:...
. Lighting design: William Di Giacomo and Steve Negrin, William Di Giacomo Associates, based on William Van Alen designs. - Tower of Winds, Yokohama (1986): Renovated ventilation and water tower covered in mirrors, encircled by 12 neon bands, enclosed in a steel framework with floodlights and 1,200 bulbs, covered in perforated steel sheeting to look solid in daylight; all lighting computer-controlled to reflect wind direction and speed and street noise in "environmental music" or an "audio-visual seismograph". Building and lighting design: Toyo ItoToyo Itois a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" city, and has been called "one of the world's most...
, lighting design with Kaoro Mende, TL Yamigawa Labs, and Masami Usuki. - Bank of America Tower, Miami (1987): Main facade given setbacks to house floodlights; evenly lighted aluminum strips create a "luminous beacon"; usually white, but colored lenses placed by hand for special occasions. A city-wide illumination plan resulted from the building. Building design: I. M. PeiI. M. PeiIeoh Ming Pei , commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou...
and Harold Fredenburgh, Pei Cobb Reed & Partners. Lighting design: Douglas Leigh. - Kirin Plaza, Osaka (1988; demolished 2008): Almost windowless black granite building with metal elements, with four light towers, described by critics as combining "Zen and kitsch" and contrasting with advertising-filled facades of nearby buildings. Initial lighting scheme involved computerized colored lights appearing three times a night. Building and lighting design: Shin TakamatsuShin TakamatsuShin Takamatsu is a leading Japanese architect and professor at Kyoto University. Takamatsu's futuristic looking buildings often use anthropomorphic or mechanical imagery.-Notable projects:* Origin I, II, III, Kyoto, 1980-1986...
. - NEC SupertowerNEC SupertowerThe , headquarters of NEC Corporation, is a 180 metre tall skyscraper in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It was completed in 1990 and was designed by Nikken Sekkei. Its primary use is offices...
, Tokyo (1990): Upper stories of tower floodlighted on the narrow sides with lights concealed in plaza vegetation; tinted blue in spring and summer, coral in fall and winter, and turning off in rising stages every hour between 7:00 and midnight, leading to the nickname "watchtower." Perimeter ceiling lighting on ribbon windows on broad sides. Lighting scheme won an international award. Building design: Nikken SekkeiNikken Sekkeiis a Japanese architecture firm headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo.-External links:*, official site...
. Lighting design: Motoko IshiiMotoko Ishiiis a Japanese lighting designer. From 1965 to 1967 she worked at lighting-design offices in Finland and Germany. Returning to Japan in 1968, she established the Ishii Motoko Design Office....
. - Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur (1996): Floodlighting almost entirely on inner faces of twin towers, emphasizing the space between; upper floors encircled with light from setbacks; the two pinnacles topped by internally illuminated spheres at the base and smaller floodlighted spheres at tops of finials. Uplighting extends above towers and is reflected in clouds. Scheme won an Illuminating Engineering Society merit award. Building design: Cesar PelliCésar PelliCésar Pelli is an Argentine architect known for designing some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. In 1991, the American Institute of Architects listed Pelli among the ten most influential living American architects...
and Fred Clarke, Cesar Pelli and Associates. Lighting design: Howard Brandston, Scott Matthews, Chou Lien, Jung Soo Kim, H. M. Brandston and Partners. - Tower of Time, Manchester (1996): Technical equipment tower for Bridgewater HallBridgewater HallThe Bridgewater Hall is an international concert venue in Manchester city centre, England. It cost around £42 million to build and currently hosts over 250 performances a year....
converted into "a huge, abstract clock": lights inside glass facade change color to indicate ZodiacZodiacIn astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude which are centred upon the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year...
sign, those outside to indicate season; lines of tubing on each of the five floors lit incrementally to indicate Monday through Friday; rapid sequence of color changes "chimes" the quarter hours. Building design: Renton Howard Wood Levin. Lighting design: Jonathan SpeirsSpeirs and Major AssociatesSpeirs and Major Associates is a UK lighting design practice founded by Jonathan Speirs and Mark Major in 1992. The practice is particularly noted for its illumination of prominent buildings, including Barajas International Airport, 30 St Mary Axe , the Millennium Dome and the interior of St. Pauls...
, Jonathan Speirs & Associates. - Kunsthaus BregenzKunsthaus BregenzThe Kunsthaus Bregenz presents temporary exhibitions of international contemporary art in Bregenz, capital of the Austrian Federal State of Vorarlberg...
, Bregenz (1996). Art museum in the form of a cube with facade of frosted glass shingles three feet outside building walls; daylight penetrates through these and translucent ceiling, at night floodlighted from inside the glass skin (the space also housing technical equipment). Building design: Peter ZumthorPeter ZumthorPeter Zumthor is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.-Early life:Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker...
. Lighting design: Peter Zumthor and James TurrellJames TurrellJames Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
(1997), Keith Sonner (199), Tony OurslerTony OurslerTony Oursler is a multimedia and installation artist.- Tapes, Installations: 1977-1989:Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including The Loner, 1980 and EVOL 1984. These works involve elaborate sound tracks, painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special...
(2001). - Verbundnetz AG, Administration Building, Leipzig (1997). A modern example of a power company building using lighting to advertise electricity: light from red, yellow, and blue neon tubes between the two layers of glass forming the facade of the northeast tower is reflected outward by teh ceiling and metal louvers and are computer-controlled to reflect the temperature changes to which the building systems are responding. Building design: Becker, Gewers, Kühn & Kühn. Lighting design: James TurrellJames TurrellJames Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
. - Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne (1997 renovation). Replacement spire on 1973–84 building replaces floodlighting with 8 lighting systems, thousands of lights including incandescents, halogen, neon, strobes, color-changing floodlights at base, and fiber-optic cable. Building design: Roy GroundsRoy GroundsSir Roy Burman Grounds , wasone of Australia's leading architects of the modern movement.-Biography:Born in Melbourne, Grounds was educated at Scotch College and then Melbourne University and worked for the architectural firm of Blackett, Forster and Craig...
(1973); Peter McIntyrePeter McIntyrePeter McIntyre may refer to:*Peter McIntyre official New Zealand war artist during the second world war*Peter McIntyre *Peter McIntyre *Peter McIntyre *Peter McIntyre...
and Bob Sturrock (new spire, 1997). Lighting design: Barry Webb with Stephen Found, Bytecraft Australia. - Theme BuildingTheme BuildingThe Theme Building is a landmark structure at the Los Angeles International Airport within the Westchester neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles. It opened in 1961, and is an example of the Mid-Century modern influenced design school known as "Googie" or "Populuxe."The distinctive white building...
and light columns, Los Angeles International AirportLos Angeles International AirportLos Angeles International Airport is the primary airport serving the Greater Los Angeles Area, the second-most populated metropolitan area in the United States. It is most often referred to by its IATA airport code LAX, with the letters pronounced individually...
(1997). Building in futuristicGoogie architectureGoogie architecture is a form of modern architecture, a subdivision of futurist architecture influenced by car culture and the Space and Atomic Ages....
style originally lit with amber floodlights to symbolize optimism in the jet age. 1997 lighting redesign floodlights building from below to avoid blinding patrons in restaurant, plus observation deck lights to light the arches that cross above it. Dichroic color changers programmed to change gradually over several minutes, producing many intermediate color effects, with a brief sequence of rapid changes on the quarter hour. In 2000, addition of 15 110-foot glass pylons in a circle at airport entrance, plus 11 along Century Boulevard, of increasing height to evoke the flight path of an aircraft after takeoff. Pylons lit from within in changing colors, nicknamed the "Psychedelic Stonehenge," won Lighting Dimensions International's Lighting Designer of the Year award for Dawn Hollingsworth. Building design: James Langenheim, Charles LuckmanCharles LuckmanCharles Luckman was a businessman and an American architect, famous as the "Boy Wonder of American Business" when he was named president of the Pepsodent toothpaste company in 1939 at the age of thirty...
, William PereiraWilliam PereiraWilliam Leonard Pereira was an American architect from Chicago, Illinois, of Portuguese ancestry who was noted for his futuristic designs of landmark buildings such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco...
, Welton BecketWelton BecketWelton Becket was an architect who designed many buildings in Los Angeles, California.Becket was born in Seattle, Washington and graduated from the University of Washington program in Architecture in 1927 with a Bachelor of Architecture degree .He settled in Los Angeles in 1933 and formed a...
, Paul WilliamsPaul Williams (architect)Paul Revere Williams, FAIA was a Los Angeles-based, American architect. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous stars including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, and Charles Correll...
; light columns: Nadel architects. Lighting design: Michael Valentino, Walt Disney ImagineeringWalt Disney ImagineeringWalt Disney Imagineering is the design and development arm of the Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation and construction of Disney theme parks worldwide...
; light columns: Dawn Hollingsworth, Jeremy Windle, Erin Powell, Moody Ravitz Hollingsworth Lighting Design, Inc. - Burj al Arab hotel, Dubai (1999). Metal exoskeleton lighted in white from base; crown of building and fiberglass facade of atrium lighted by luminaires at various levels and on bridge to island that change colors every half hour, plus colored strobes, searchlights, and projection of images on special occasions. Lighting design won a 2000 International Illumination Design Award. Building design: W. A. Atkins & Partners, Tom WrightTom Wright (British architect)Tom Wright is a British architect. His most famous design is the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Born in Croydon, a town in Greater London, United Kingdom on 18 September 1957, Wright studied at the Royal Russell School and then later at the Kingston University School of Architecture...
design director. Lighting design: Jonathan SpeirsSpeirs and Major AssociatesSpeirs and Major Associates is a UK lighting design practice founded by Jonathan Speirs and Mark Major in 1992. The practice is particularly noted for its illumination of prominent buildings, including Barajas International Airport, 30 St Mary Axe , the Millennium Dome and the interior of St. Pauls...
, Gavin Fraser, Malcolm Innes, Alan Mitchell, James Mason and Iain Ruxton, Jonathan Speirs & Associates. - Forty-Second Street Studios, New York (2000). Rehearsal space building meets city requirement for Times SquareTimes SquareTimes Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
buildings to provide lighted signs with a screen of steel blades on which more than 500 colored abstract patterns are projected, changing slowly on Monday night and more rapidly as the week progresses, every few seconds on weekends. Translucent shades behind the frame lit by fluorescents to create a background; 175-foot acrylic spire at one side of building also changes color; 30-foot glass square with dichroic fins on lower floors recalls theatre facade previously on site and refracts daytime light. Building design: Platt Byard DovellPaul ByardPaul Byard was a lawyer and an architect. He was born in New York into an educationally successful family. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a teacher of English at Columbia University...
. Lighting design: Anne Militello, Vortex Lighting, and James Carpenter. - Goodman Theatre CenterGoodman TheatreThe Goodman Theatre is a professional theater company located in Chicago's Loop. A major part of Chicago theatre, it is the city's oldest currently active nonprofit theater organization...
, Chicago (2001). Computer-controlled LED display on 96-panel facade, capable of 16.7 million colors and numerous effects, plus crown of LEDs over entrance rotunda changing colors in harmony. Integration of music to produce a giant color organColor organThe term color organ refers to a tradition of mechanical , then electromechanical, devices built to represent sound or to accompany music in a visual medium—by any number of means. In the early 20th century, a silent color organ tradition developed...
planned. Building design: Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg ArchitectsBruce KuwabaraBruce Bunji Kuwabara, B.Arch, OAA, FRAIC, RCA, AIA is a Canadian architect and partner in the firm Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects ....
and Decker Legge Kemp Architecture. Lighting design: Rich Locklin, Lightswitch, and Color Kinetics. - Sony CenterSony CenterThe Sony Center is a Sony-sponsored building complex located at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany. It opened in 2000.-History:The site was originally a bustling city centre in the early 20th century. Most of the buildings were destroyed or damaged during World War II...
, Potsdamer PlatzPotsdamer PlatzPotsdamer Platz is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about one kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag , and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park...
, Berlin (2001). Perimeter fluorescent lighting in office tower and adjacent buildings; ten-story atrium of entertainment center roofed by folded fiberglass on which bright white light is projected beginning before sunset to extend daylight, followed by a series of 21-second artificial sunsets from sunset to midnight, dark blue until early morning, and bright white once more until daylight. Building design: Helmut JahnHelmut JahnHelmut Jahn is a German-American architect, well known for designs such as the US$800 million Sony Center on the Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, the Messeturm in Frankfurt and the One Liberty Place, formerly the tallest building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Suvarnabhumi Airport, an international...
. Lighting design: Yann Kersalé and L'Observatoire International. - D-Tower, Doetinchem, Netherlands (2004): 12-meter tower of translucent epoxy resin, reminiscent of a nerve cell in form, displaying computer-generated colors representing citizens' dominant mood as ascertained from a daily questionnaire. Design: Lars SpuybroekLars SpuybroekLars Spuybroek is a Dutch architect and artist.-Education:He graduated cum laude at the Technical University Delft in 1989. A year later, he won the Archiprix for his Palazzo Pensile, a new royal palace for Queen Beatrix in Rotterdam...
, NOX. - Torre AgbarTorre AgbarThe Torre Agbar is a 38-storey tower located between Avinguda Diagonal and Carrer Badajoz, near Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, which marks the gateway to the new technological district of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel in association with the Spanish firm B720...
, Barcelona (2005). Office tower "glow[ing] at night as a colorful monolith." Building design: Jean NouvelJean NouvelJean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture...
. Lighting design: Yann Kersalé.
Further reading
- László Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
. "Light Architecture." Industrial Arts 1 (1936) - Walter Köhler. Lichtarchitektur: Licht und Farbe als raumgestaltende Elemente. Idee und Gestaltung der Bildfolge von Wassili LuckhardtWassili LuckhardtWassili Luckhardt was a German architect. He studied at the Technical University of Berlin and Dresden. Luckhardt and his brother Hans worked closely together for most of their lives...
. Berlin: Bauwelt, 1956 - Walter Köhler and Wassili Luckhardt. Lighting in Architecture: Light and Color as Stereoplastic Elements. New York: Reinhold, 1959. (Translation)