June 19, 2026
2026 NYC Lumen Awards Put Great Design in Focus
Focus Lighting earns top honors while nearly 900 lighting people gather for an evening of celebration and camaraderie
The morning had belonged to the Knicks. By evening, it belonged to the architectural lighting designers.
On June 18th, some 884 members of the lighting community made their way to Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers for the 58th Annual Lumen Awards Gala, arriving on a day that had already given New York plenty to celebrate.
Earlier, a ticker-tape parade had rolled through Lower Manhattan for the city's first NBA champions in 53 years. Most people in that room had never seen the Knicks win a championship.
The day had been gorgeous: 88 degrees, sunny, with breezy gusts that made the walk to Pier Sixty pleasant and the hairdos negotiable. Inside, the room settled into this year's theme, Twilight on the River, a framework that suited both the venue and the moment. The Hudson at dusk has a particular quality of light that lighting designers, of all people, tend to notice.
Whatever IES CEO & Executive Director Colleen Harper (R) just said, it landed well with IES Past President Lance Bennett (L)
A New Format, Mostly Well Received
Co-host Asher Schoenberg of SDA Lighting & Controls channeled the day's energy early, delivering a chanted rendition of "Go New York Go New York Go" that landed with a room still giddy from the Knickerbockers’ victory. Even this publication's resident Celtics fan, a Villanova alum with three good reasons to appreciate the Knicks' starting lineup, found himself nodding along.
The evening also introduced a format change that drew more curiosity than complaint. Gone was the familiar left-right stage arrangement that IESNYC had used for years. In its place: theater in the round, with the stage positioned at the center of the room. With 89 tables set for dinner, fewer than the 100-plus the space held before the pandemic, there was room to pull it off.
Above: Zachary Pearson, President of IESNYC and Principal at Fisher Marantz Stone
Reactions ranged from genuinely enthusiastic to politely neutral, with a small minority preferring the old configuration. The consensus leaned positive. The format invited less performance, fewer skits and more conversation, which suited a crowd filled with table sponsors seeking to connect with their invited guests.
Honoring Those Who Are Gone
The program made long-form space, as it has now for at least two consecutive years, for well-crafted memorial tributes to lighting people who are no longer in the room.
- Lighting designer David Mintz was remembered as one of the foundational figures of the New York lighting design community, a presence on West 42nd Street whose retail work touched projects across the globe and who stood among the earliest and most committed advocates for the IALD. St. Louis-based lighting designer Randy Burkett delivered the video tribute to Mintz, which played across large screens positioned around the room's perimeter.
- Lou Bell, a longtime spec salesperson at Stan Deutch Associates, now SDA Lighting & Controls, was honored as well. Lighting designer Susanna Zweighaft offered a tribute that the room received with warmth.
The memorials were genuine, and the room held them with care. A handful of guests, speaking privately afterward, noted that the tributes ran a bit long and that the transition from solemn remembrance directly into “Enjoy your dinner!” felt abrupt, even a little dissonant. The same observation surfaced after last year's gala, and it may be worth the IESNYC's consideration as they shape future programs.
New York City’s Tight List
The 2026 Lumen Awards recognized eleven projects in total, a characteristically lean slate for the IES New York City Section. We have noted before, covering events in other large cities like Boston and Los Angeles, other IES sections tend toward larger award pools. Last month's Boston program honored 21 projects. Whether the IESNYC jury applies a more exacting standard (or others grade on a more generous scale) is a question worth asking, but the result is a list that feels considered rather than expansive.
Of the eleven honored projects, a few were rooted in New York City itself, reflecting the depth of the local design community. But as usual the reach extended well beyond the five boroughs, with recognized work coming from Warsaw, Shanghai, Omaha, Tulsa, the Main Line, Princeton, Baltimore, and even South Jersey. It was a scope that reflected both the global practices of New York-based firms and the breadth of projects the jury considered.
Lumen Awards attendees enjoy the dance floor during the Afterglow afterparty.
Above: Members of the Hartranft Lighting Studios team: Quincy Drane, Tiana Alderson, Andrea Hartranft, Shoshanna Segal, and Adrienne Bixler.
The Ceremony, and the Afterglow
With Friday falling on the Juneteenth holiday, curfews softened and the evening extended. Afterglow cocktails, music, and dancing kept lighting people at Pier Sixty well past the hour when the more disciplined among them might have called it a night. For a community that spends most of its professional life managing how spaces feel after dark, knowing how to close out a long day in good light comes with the territory.
"The ability to create spaces where people feel safe, seen, and moved matters more than ever," said Christine Heller, IESNYC Lumen Committee Chair and Focus Lighting principal, in remarks distributed with the evening's program. "The projects honored this year are not just technically strong. They reveal, interpret, and transcend."
Zachary Pearson, IESNYC President and Fisher Marantz Stone principal, framed the evening as a celebration of connection as much as craft. The work honored, he said, reflects partnerships between disciplines, perspectives, and generations that make great projects possible. On a day when the city itself was celebrating a long-deferred championship, the lighting community seemed content to add its own quiet version of the same thing: the recognition of work done well, and done together.
The Winning Projects
Focus Lighting took home the Award of Excellence for Limusina, a New York restaurant whose maximalist interior demanded something beyond conventional restraint. The team tested gels, built mockups, and tuned color temperatures until amber and rosy hues cohered into what juror Gabriele Negro of Studio Atomic described as a space that feels "both rich and beautifully balanced." Focus also received an Award of Merit for Obvio, another New York project.
Above: Members of the Focus Lighting design team accept the 2026 Lumen Award of Excellence for Limusina
Three additional Awards of Merit went to Arup for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Tillotson Design Associates for the Princeton University Art Museum, and Domingo González Associates for the Williams Crossing Bridge in Tulsa, a piece of infrastructure that demonstrated what careful lighting can do for a structure over water.
Six Citation Awards rounded out the program, spanning exterior lighting, exhibit lighting, daylight integration, public garden lighting, public space activation, and facade illumination. The range of categories pointed to how broadly the jury defined excellence: from a Buro Happold installation above a Washington Heights public square inspired by the Latin American diaspora, to a Tillotson-designed Chanel fashion exhibition in Shanghai where strict preservation requirements and precision framing projectors had to coexist without compromise.
Tillitson led the pack with three total awards on the evening.
The 2026 Lumen Award recipients are listed below.
Awards of Merit
Citation Awards
