The Frederick Gunn School’s new Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship appears as an open, transparent, and welcome hub for its engineering, computer science, and math community. The previous science center’s heavy Brutalist style no longer suited the needs of this thriving and energetic community. The school’s commitment to adaptability and progress is showcased in this new 24,000 square-foot two-story center.

Minimizing impact on the environment is the school’s top priority. Our lighting design approaches add to the sustainability efforts of this close-to-Net Zero project. Many interior light fixtures have tailored lumen packages, reducing lighting loads. Fixtures are discreetly orchestrated around the very open ductwork layouts in the gathering spaces, providing lighting on surfaces only where needed, and avoiding unnecessary light spill into the exterior environment. Understanding that the height of any exterior light fixture’s lens can present an eyeful throughout this existing bouldery site, the short, dark-sky compliant bollards provide a rhythm of light for students and staff, keeping the lighting low where needed, while providing visual comfort and glare-free walking paths.

The public gathering spaces are controlled via an astronomical time clock with day, night, and evening settings for this 24-hour institution. Various scenes have been created at the multipurpose grand stair and gathering space. In addition, classrooms and labs have individually controlled preset scenes.

It was a balancing act to provide suitable lighting for this new engineering hub, while being mindful of the campus’s commitment for dark skies. Each space was carefully studied as a composition three-dimensionally to satisfy the school’s needs for visual comfort and glare mitigation. With these efforts, this project’s LPD is 23% better than allowed by Code. Great emphasis was placed on fixture placement to create visual balance and enhance the user experience.