ERCO Lichtbericht OVI – New York Times

ERCO Lichtbericht features the work of the OVI team on the New York Times building.  The project

Early in the 20th century, New York City set the standard for the modern metropolis with its soaring skyscrapers and luminous skyline. At the opening of the 21st century the city has witnessed a renaissance in tall building design, with none more remarkable than The New York Times Building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop/Fx Fowle and with lighting design by Jean Sundin and Enrique Peiniger of the Office for Visual Interaction (OVI). This monolithic tower of quiet beauty transcends the frenetic energy of Times Square and presents a technologically innovative, yet timeless icon for The New York Times and the city itself.

Lighting concept exterior
Renzo Piano has said, “The story of this building is one of lightness and transparency” and the notion of transparency and light runs throughout the design of the New York Times Building – from the ultra clear, low-iron glass and ceramic rods that compose the double-skin curtain wall to the carefully calibrated floodlighting that gives a delicate, warm glow to the exterior while allowing visual connection with the building’s interiors.
Focusing the outdoor lighting
To illuminate extraordinarily large buildings or surfaces, you can simply use extraordinarily large luminaires and power outputs – or you can distribute the required luminous flux over a relatively large number of more compact luminaires. The latter not only has the advantage that you can fall back on standard, more economical lamps and luminaires, but it also allows a greater uniformity of lighting to be achieved – albeit only if you succeed in precisely aiming each luminaire such that the individual beams optimally overlap.
The lighting designers at OVI have already used this principle in many projects including, for instance, the plenary chamber of the Scottish Parliament and the US Air Force Memorial in Arlington. In the latter case, to achieve exactly the desired illuminance levels, OVI used laser sights for the first time, temporarily mounting them to the luminaires during focusing. Similarly, to achieve the desired uniform brightness progression of 1:3 between base and pinnacle, the projectors on the New York Times Building were also precisely aimed using lasers to map out the computer-calculated design and then locked in position.

Foyer and garden lighting concept

The story of transparency and lightness continues in the public areas of the ground floor of the New York Times Building. OVI translated these metaphoric qualities into three-dimensional space by finely composing light levels to visually activate and connect several distinct areas – the lobby, the central glass-walled enclosed garden, and the multi-use space of TheTimesCenter.

ERCO Lichtbericht OVI – New York Times

Contributors
Client: The New York Times/Forest City Ratner

Companies
Architects: Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Genoa/Paris) in collaboration with FXFowle Architects, P.C. (New York)

Competition (2000)
Design Team: B. Plattner (senior partner in charge), E. Volz with G. Bianchi, J. Moolhuijzen (partners), S. Ishida, P. Vincent (senior partners), A. Eris, J. Knaak, T. Mikdashi, M. Pimmel, M. Prini,
A. Symietz Consultants: Ove Arup & Partners (structure and services)

Design Development, 2000-2007
Design Team: B. Plattner (senior partner in charge), E. Volz (associate in charge) with J. Carter, S. Drouin, B. Lenz, B. Nichol, R. Salceda, M. Seibold, J. Wagner and C. Orsega, J. Stanteford, R. Stubbs, G. Tran, J. Zambrano; O. Aubert, C. Colson, Y. Kyrkos (models)

Consultants: Thornton Tomasetti (structure); Flack & Kurtz (services); Jenkins & Huntington (vertical transportation); Heitman & Associates (facade consultant); Ludwig & Weiler (storefront); Office for Visual Interaction (lighting); Gensler Associates (interiors); H. M. White (landscape); AMEC (construction manager)

See more about the New York Times Building project: https://www.oviinc.com/project/the-new-york-times/

See a PDF of the full ERCO Lichtbericht article: https://www.oviinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/erco-lichtbericht-87-en.pdf