October 10, 2024
Here are the 2024 Beacon Awards Recipients
FMS, HLB, Focus Lighting, Lighting Workshop, Loop Lighting, and Peerless Lighting win Beacon Awards
The Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) announces the winners of the first annual Beacon Awards at a ceremony held on October 9, 2024, at Sony Hall in New York City.
The Beacon Awards honor outstanding achievements Lighting Design in seven categories - Excellence in Commercial Lighting Design, Exterior Lighting Design, Historic/Cultural Lighting Design, Hospitality/Retail Lighting Design, a New York Project, Residential Lighting Design, and Product Innovation. There was one winner in each category, except for New York Project, which has two winners. The awards program was open to any design practitioner in the metro New York area.
All proceeds go to fund DLFNY’s Lenar Lighting Empowerment Scholarship, whose goal is to foster the next generation of lighting designers.
“The DLFNY has long been known for our outstanding programs and the Beacon Awards are the newest jewel in our crown,” says Cynthia Truner, president of DLFNY. “I am so delighted that in our first year our awards have been so warmly received by the design community. It is truly a coming together to support and celebrate the profession of lighting.”
2024 Beacon Award Winners
Award of Excellence in Commercial Lighting Design
The Spiral, Fisher Marantz Stone
The Spiral, Fisher Marantz Stone
Individually planted terraces ensure that every floor of this tower opens outdoors, creating hanging gardens and cascading atria that connect the open floor plates from the ground to the summit into a single uninterrupted workspace. At night, the spiraling curtainwall and terraces glow in an ascending procession to a four-story glowing lantern that acts as a beacon to the Hudson Yards neighborhood.
Award of Excellence in Exterior Lighting Design
Signature Bridge, Horton Lees Brogden
Signature Bridge, Horton Lees Brogden
This double basket-handled arch structure comes alive at night with dynamic uplighting programmed with more than 25 celebratory scenes that include changing seasons, events, and holidays throughout the year. Along the popular pedestrian path, the overlook and illuminated glass oculus create an inviting respite for travelers.
Award of Excellence in Historic/Cultural Lighting Design
David Geffen Hall, Fisher Marantz Stone
David Geffen Hall, Fisher Marantz Stone
The design’s flexibility accommodates opera, dance, and film, ensuring artistic vitality for a new generation of composers and performers. Undulating interior walls are illuminated asymmetrically, emphasizing the highlights and shadows of the natural, warm, sculpted beechwood. Custom-designed light-pendants dance before each performance, signaling the audience to be seated.
Award of Excellence in Hospitality/Retail Lighting Design
Chasing Rabbits, Focus Lighting
Chasing Rabbits, Focus Lighting
The lighting design is a celebration of playfulness with relaxed sophistication. Guests of this clubhouse travel on a fantastic journey between rooms, each with its own lighting signature. Halo-lit floating mirrors at the speakeasy create a bold yet delicate focal point. The library exudes elegance with warm tones and built-in millwork lighting, juxtaposed with neon art. In the arcade, color and contrast abound.
Award of Excellence for a New York Project
Penn Station 33rd Street Entrance, Horton Lees Brogden
Penn Station 33rd Street Entrance, Horton Lees Brogden
The renovation of this major rail hub includes a lighting design that combines modern general and accent lighting with a custom dynamic ceiling that reveals content reflective of the season and significant holidays. The lighting design guides travelers to and from their trains in a revitalized, luminous environment that blends lightly applied color and movement with lighting statements reflective of the modern language of the architecture.
Award of Excellence for a New York Project
Rockefeller Center Concourse, Lighting Workshop
Rockefeller Center Concourse, Lighting Workshop
The renovations transformed the subterranean passageways evoking the original Art Deco design with radiused curved cove details, an array of fluted materials, and custom light fixtures. The lighting supplements rediscovered skylights, memorializes original columns entombed behind illuminated translucent glass, and creates a sense of natural flow, with an abundance of ambient lighting.
Award of Excellence in Residential Lighting Design
Meadow Pavilion, Loop Lighting
Meadow Pavilion, Loop Lighting
Folded into a gently sloping landscape of a farm estate, the pavilion acts as a glowing lantern. Constructed as a guest house for artists-in-residence, the lighting within the space balances soft internal luminescence with focal accents to highlight art and sculpture within. Inside, decorative fixtures gently float over the dining table. Outside, the landscape lighting frames the visual perspective to create a curated arrival experience.
Award of Excellence in Product Innovation
Prim™, Peerless Lighting
Prim™, Peerless Lighting
By using top-down flash methodology, a recessed backlit lens and trim, and indirect batwing distribution, this luminaire delivers softened illumination, superb ceiling uniformity, and superior glare control visual comfort that will not disrupt the flow of a space. This blend of human-centric illumination and design intentionality elevates it to be the peak of linear lighting solutions, striking a balance between what a luminaire should do and how it should feel.
These six projects and one product were selected by a jury of seven design professionals - Clodagh, Shaun Fillion, Elvira Gershengon, Paul Gregory, Barry Richards, Sara Schonour, and Atilla Uysal - who represent the fields of lighting design, interior design, architecture, and education.
Caroline Rinker
The 2024 ICON Award posthumously honors Caroline Rinker. The ICON Award is reserved for a special individual, firm, or company worthy of veneration for their commitment to advancing the impact of lighting within the New York design community. Caroline was selected by the Beacon Awards committee and approved by the DLFNY Board. Best known professionally as a partner at O’Blaney Rinker Associates, she was a former president of DLFNY, a co-chair of LEDucation, and she supported Charles Pavarini III, chair of the Beacon Awards Committee when he said that DLFNY should have its own awards program. Caroline also supported other lighting organizations and was a pillar of the New York City lighting community.
DLFNY thanks our 2024 Sponors. Diamond: Mark Architectural LIghitng, Peerless Lighting for People, Jason W. Gridley/Michael C Egan, JT Roselle Lighting, Inc. Platinum: Lumenwerx, Enterprise Lighting Sales (ELS). Silver: ORA, USAI Lighting, Lites on West, ELA + Synergy, TLQ, MOXIE. Bronze: Pavarini Design, Iluminations, VODE, Metro Area Sales Inc., New York School of Interior Design, RAB Lighting, Peter Di Natale Associates, Inc., Lutron. Media Sponsor – designing lighting.
Photo credits: The Spiral - © Tishman Speyer, Signature Bridge – Lauren K. Davis/Feikopf Ltd., David Geffen Hall - © Michael Moran, Chasing Rabbits - Juan Pablo Lira, Penn Station - Lauren K. Davis/Feinkopf Ltd, Rockefeller Center - Magda Biernat, Meadow Pavilion - Bilyana Dimitrova & David Sundberg/Esto, PRIM – courtesy Peerless Lighting
About Caroline Rinker
A prominent figure in the New York City lighting community, Caroline enjoyed a storied 45+ year career. She was a role model, a mentor, a motivator, and a consummate professional. Her boundless passion, dedication, and contributions to the lighting community were monumental. She was a member of Women in Lighting Design (WILD) and a supporter of the Illuminating Engineering Society New York City section (IESNYC). She served as President of the Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) in 2010-2012 and was an active board member for 20 years. She also volunteered and became co-chair of the LEDucation Trade Show and Conference in 2014 – which became a platform that will continue to help further education in the lighting community for years to come. She always had her eye on the future. Caroline worked in the New York City lighting community in manufacturing, distribution and independent sales. In 2010, she partnered with James O’Blaney to form O’Blaney Rinker Associates. The firm expanded to two offices and a team of 15 representing 34 architectural lighting and controls lines. Caroline’s straightforward, no-nonsense character has been a key ingredient to her success and helped the company become what it is today. Caroline considered volunteer work with the lighting community to be an integral part of our mission. She always had time to share her expertise and keen industry insight with ORA manufacturer-partners, employees, and colleagues and friends too numerous to count. Caroline will remain a brilliant light to warm our hearts.
About the DLFNY Lenar Lighting Empowerment Scholarship
The DLFNY Lenar Lighting Empowerment Scholarship provides financial support to students enrolled full-time in university-level lighting programs. Students enrolled at the following schools are currently eligible: Parsons School of Design and the New York School of Interior Design. Individual awardees, numbers of awardees, and scholarship amounts will be determined by the schools’ lighting program directors. Interested students may contact them.
About the DLFNY
The Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) is an organization dedicated to exploring the power of light in design and the latest in lighting innovation and education. The DLFNY supports formal lighting education through scholarships and contributions to local universities and design schools, as well as national programs. Founded in 1934 and continuously led by a volunteer Board of Managers, we are supported by the DLFNY general membership, the generosity of its corporate sponsors, and financial proceeds from LEDucation. The DLFNY enthusiastically provides designers, architects, manufacturers and their representatives, contractors, educators, and students with opportunities to network and experience the wonder of lighting in New York City and beyond. Visit dlfny.org
