GE Lighting presents 30th annual Edison Awards

In a ceremony scheduled coincident with Lightfair International, GE Lighting announced a lighting design by L'Observatoire International at the Vintry Fine Wines retail shop in New York center as the winner of the 2012 GE Edison Award. The work at the wine shop won out over three other Award of Excellence finalists. The company also presented five Awards of Merit, three Awards for Environmental Design, and one Award for Residential Design.

The Edison Awards are an annual program that is intended to "recognize excellence and quality in professional lighting designs." The program is open to projects completed in the calendar year. The projects aren't required to exclusively use GE Lighting products but most include significant use of the company's products.

The Vintry Fine Wines project delivered across the board on the judging criteria that includes 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. The GE Edison Award went to designers Hervé Descottes, Jeff Taylor and Jessica Tchah of L'Observatoire International.

The design utilizes the GE Tetra Contour LED system at a color temperature of 2700K. The store architecture, by Roger Marvel Architecture, utilizes curved rows of shelving and the Contour system installed in the ceiling and the shelves matches the geometry of the shelves. The design was meant to "evoke the geography of a vineyard."

The lighting designers created a mockup to verify their concepts and to ensure that the wine bottles were well lit, but that there would be minimal reflection from the LED sources. The finished design delivers on that goal and allows the store to maximize the use of the space in terms of presentation of the merchandise.

The design team also installed a lighting control system that minimizes energy usage, maximizes the lifetime of the lighting, and enhances the customer experience throughout the day. In a twist of how dimming is often used in indoor applications, the lights are brighter during the day when the LEDs compete with natural light, and dimmer in the evening when it's easier to see the bottles clearly with just the LED lighting.

The other Award of Excellence finalists included: the Harry Winston Shanghai Pavilion in Shanghai designed by Francesca Bettridge of Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design in New York; the Space Shuttle Pavilion at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York designed by Brett Andersen, Stephanie Daigle, Samuel Kitchel and Kenneth Schutz of Focus Lighting in New York; the Velti Headquarters in San Francisco designed by Jody Pritchard and Kristin Peck of PritchardPeck Lighting in San Francisco.

The Harry Winston flagship store in the People's Republic of China was lit with a variety of lighting technologies. GE 70W ConstantColor ceramic-metal-halide (CMH) light a curved gilded glass outer wall. Tetra Contour LED fixtures light the entrance. Legacy Precise IR MR16 lamps and CMH MR16 lamps are used to light merchandise.

In the Space Shuttle Pavilion, 32W GE T8 lights create a twilight ambiance while 20W ConstantColor CMH MR16 lamps light the landing gear of the shuttle and 70W PAR30 metal-halide lamps light the shuttle fuselage. GE T5 fluorescent lamps in direct/indirect fixtures were used primarily in the Velti headquarters while Tetra Countour LEDs provide accent lighting and Tetra AL 10 4000K LEDs highlight the company's Mobile Museum.

Merit and Environmental

The Awards of Merit went to: the Burlington Performing Arts Centre in Ontario designed by Ion Luh and Ryan Fook-Sheung of Consullux Lighting Consultants; the Concert and Congress Centre in Augsburg, Germany designed by Erwin Döring of d-lightvision; the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas by Susan Brady, Attila Uysal, Donna Sumner, Wen Yuan Lin and Bruce Taylor of SBLD Studi; the Sutphin Boulevard Overpass by Domingo Gonzalez of Domingo Gonzalez Associates; and the Arquitipo UNARTE of Gustavo Avilés and José Ramón Tagle of Lighteam Gustavo Avilés. An Award for Environmental Design also went to Arquitipo UNARTE. The second Environmental award went to the Hilton Columbus Downtown in Ohio by Galina Zbrizher of Total Lighting Solutions.

Both an Award for Environmental Design and The Award for Residential Design went to Galina Zbrizher of Total Lighting Solutions and architect Vance Harris, both of Vancouver, for the Scarlett Residence in Canada. The team worked with the owner's desire to eliminate or minimize ceiling-mounted luminaires to retain the look of the wood ceilings.