GE Announces Winners of Prestigious 32nd Annual Edison Awards: Ramos, Banks, Sudderth and Landl of BANKS|RAMOS Architectural Lighting Design Win 2014 GE Edison Award

NEW YORK, 2015-05-05 17:32 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 2014 GE Edison Award is presented to Claudio Ramos, Hiram Banks, Erin Sudderth and Matt Landl of BANKS|RAMOS Architectural Lighting Design for lighting Square Inc. Headquarters in San Francisco, California, USA. The project also received an Award for Environmental Design, reflecting exemplary energy efficiency and environmentally sensitive design. This is the third time since this award was first instituted in the 2002 competition that this has occurred. A personalized Steuben crystal award for the winner of this 32nd annual lighting design competition was presented by GE Lighting on May 4, 2015, in New York, New York.

A photo accompanying this press release is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=32742

The new headquarters for Square Inc., a mobile payments startup company, is designed to be open and collaborative. With 175,000 square feet of useable space that spans the length of an entire city block, the design team's challenge was to make the space feel hospitable while accommodating future growth and expansion. The goal was to create an office interior that echoes the company's values of modern and functional design. Lighting plays an important role in establishing way-finding, defining "communities" within the space, and providing the feeling of daylight throughout the floor plate.

By using a variety of high-performance fluorescent and LED solutions, BANKS|RAMOS was able to reduce lamp quantity and energy usage. General lighting throughout the open-office area and team rooms is provided by GE 21-watt and 28-watt T5 fluorescent lamps. Custom linear suspended pendants with dimmable LEDs create an elegant cadence down the main building corridor, and continue through floating wood ceiling slats which also conceal GE 7-watt LED MR16 lamps that illuminate art and signage. An upper level dining area, commercial kitchen and servery are illuminated with 12-foot dimmable T5 fluorescent pendants and continuous LED track lighting, again detailed within a floating wood ceiling.

Daylight harvesting reduces electric lighting consumption to 65% in open office areas during bright daytimes. The lighting power density is 0.64 watts per square foot, 29% below ASHRAE 90.1 throughout the entire project to ensure LEED Gold^® certification.

"The Square Inc. Headquarters project proves that elegant, modern lighting doesn't need to mean high energy and maintenance costs," said Mary Beth Gotti, Manager, GE Lighting & Electrical Institute. "Smart lighting design helps to achieve an ambience that is inspiring yet inviting, and also means the office will remain an environmentally friendly space, even as the company grows."

A panel of five judges selected this year's winning entry for its superiority in the following categories: functional excellence; architectural compatibility; effective use of state-of-the-art lighting products and techniques; appropriate color, form and texture revelation; energy effectiveness; and cost effectiveness.

Judges for the 32nd annual competition were:

• Gilberto Franco, IALD, AsBAI, MIES, Franco Associados Lighting Design, Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Jeff Kinstler, MIES, GE Lighting Specification Engineer – East, New York, NY USA
• Sean O'Connor, IALD, MIES, Sean O'Connor Lighting, Los Angeles, CA USA
• Robert Shook, FIALD, LC, Schuler Shook Lighting Designers, Chicago, IL USA

The winning project was one of three Awards of Excellence finalists. The other Awards of Excellence winners were:

• LWL–Museum of Art and Culture in Muenster (Munster, Germany) designed by Andreas Schulz, Martina Weiss and Laura Sudbrock, Licht Kunst Licht AG (Bonn, Germany). Acknowledgements: Staab Architekten GmbH (Berlin, Germany); Exhibition designer SPACE4 GmbH (Stuttgart, Germany) along with LDE Belzner Holmes (Stuttgart, Germany).  
• St. Louis Art Museum East Building (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) designed by Andy Sedgewick, Andrew McNeil and Chris Rush, Arup (London, UK/San Francisco, CA/New York, NY). Acknowledgements: Sir David Chipperfield, Franz Borho, Julie Bauer and Silke Hoss, David Chipperfield Architects (London, UK); Roger McFarland, Eric Hoffman, and Nicole Crabiel, HOK (St. Louis, MO, USA); and Steve Andert, William Tao & Associates (St. Louis, MO, USA).

Also presented at the GE Edison Awards ceremony were five Awards of Merit, one Special Citation for Creative Lighting Effects. 

Visit www.gelighting.com to view all the award winners of the 2014 GE Edison Awards in more detail and to find information related to the 2014 GE Edison Award call for entries.

*LEED® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Green Building Council®

About the GE Edison Award

GE Lighting sponsors the annual GE Edison Award competition to recognize excellence and quality in professional lighting designs that employ significant use of GE Lighting Products, including, but not limited to, GE LED systems, LED luminaires, LED lamps and modules, LED architectural products, lighting controls and non-LED lamps and luminaires. Projects must be completed within the prior two calendar years. Entries are judged on the following criteria: functional excellence; architectural compatibility; effective use of state-of-the-art lighting products and techniques; appropriate color, form and texture revelation; energy effectiveness; and cost effectiveness. Qualifying entries remain anonymous throughout the judging process.

GE Lighting 

GE Lighting is changing the way people light and think about their world in commercial, industrial, municipal and residential settings. Light brightens our path to a better way of being. Today, light is intelligent. Light listens, learns and sees. GE. Where Light Is Bright. www.gelighting.com

GE

GE (NYSE:GE) imagines things others don't, builds things others can't and delivers outcomes that make the world work better. GE brings together the physical and digital worlds in ways no other company can. In its labs and factories and on the ground with customers, GE is inventing the next industrial era to move, power, build and cure the world. www.ge.com

2014 Awards of Merit

Art Museum Ahrenshoop (Ahrenshoop, Germany)

Licht Kunst Licht AG (Berlin, Germany/Bonn, Germany)

• Andreas Schulz
• Maik Czarniak
• Benjamin Dorff

Acknowledgement: Staab Architekten GmbH (Berlin, Germany)

Drees & Sommer Headquarters (Stuttgart, Germany)

Lichtwerke Architectural Lighting Designers (Cologne, Germany)

• Stefan Hofmann

Dulles Metro Rail/Silver Line (Northern, Virginia, USA)

Domingo Gonzalez Associates (New York, New York, USA)

• Domingo Gonzalez
• AC Hickox
• Patrick Merosier

Acknowledgement: Fredrik Amnäs, Domingo Gonzalez Associates (New York, NY, USA)

Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart, Germany)

Licht Kunst Licht AG (Berlin, Germany)            

• Edwin Smida
• Andreas Schulz

Acknowledgement: Staab Architekten GmbH (Berlin, Germany)

Northrup Auditorium Renovation (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

HGA Architects and Engineers (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

• Tao Ham, Ph.D.

Arup (San Francisco, California, USA)

• Jason Edling

Special Citation for Creative Lighting Effects

"Northern Lights" on John F. Kennedy Center (Washington, DC, USA)

LightingDesign.dk (Copenhagen, Denmark)

• Jesper Kongshaug

Image Engineering (Baltimore, Maryland, USA)

• Joseph Suehle

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, DC, USA)

• Glenn A. Turner

         CONTACT: Megan Lavelle
         megan.lavelle@ge.com
         216-266-9702