LEX News

Following the renovation of two floors of an existing hospital wing, the new Swedish Medical Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) opened to provide mental health services to the public. The nearly 15,000-square-foot BHU features 22 beds. ZGF Architects produced the design, which includes state-of-the-art lighting.

For the lighting, the designers wanted to blend the best of old and new based on biophilic/circadian design principles. They retained an existing outdoor space and a large skylight in the common area. They also specified downlights in BHU’s corridors and dining/activity space that provide both color tuning and dimming.

A natural environment is being simulated in the room to create a greater feeling of well-being thanks to modern tunable white LED technology and a custom-designed illuminated ceiling. In addition, more than 800 LED luminaires and LED drivers from Tridonic have been installed in the new administrative block at the hospital.

With the help of WB Moore, Dyna Drum fixtures were installed on the balconies in strategic locations to project light onto the building at precise angles. This mounting strategy added to the speed of the installation. Altogether 140 of the 4000K Dyna Drum SO and HO fixtures were installed at balconies on the 13th, 44th, 48th, 53rd, and 56th floors. With the new lighting system, Bank of America can display vibrant new light paintings on its building’s crown.

In the past couple of decades, the lighting industry has been transformed by the advent of the LED, a type of solid-state lighting (SSL) technology. At present, LED-based lighting solutions are employed in numerous general illumination as well as specialty lighting applications due to their energy efficiency, durability, reduced size, and fewer maintenance requirements. These advantages, combined with customizable and unique lighting fixtures that cater to the specific design and needs of the space to be illuminated, provide desirable benefits to the built environment.

Where there is light, there are customers.

I spent the weekend in a town called Schaumburg, Illinois, which is about 20 miles outside of Chicago.  My son, Sam, who is 17, was playing in a soccer tournament in the area.  Thanks to a quirky schedule (we had more than 24 hours between games) and some amazingly cold weather (you would have thought it was January), we decided doing anything outdoors between games was completely out of the equation.

After our second meal at Portillo’s in two days, it was time to do something other than drink Chocolate Cake Shakes.  So we headed to Woodfield Mall, a massive shopping complex that is one of the largest in the country.  I thought for sure we could kill a few hours between games doing something other than eating more Portillo’s.