85 Broad Street

Financial District, New York

85 Broad Street is a 1980s corporate tower with a 400-year-old street running through its lobby. The former Goldman Sachs headquarters sits on top of Stone Street, the first paved street in New Amsterdam, and the street’s landmark-protected path still crosses the building. When Beacon Capital Partners acquired it in 2014, it set out to turn a staid corporate tower into somewhere the neighborhood’s new creative and technology workforce would want to be.

ESI Design led the experience design and conceived the two light sculptures at the heart of it. Outside, a twisting ribbon of light bars and reflective blades winds through the arcade that surrounds the building, acting as a beacon that draws visitors and tenants in and gives a motionless building a sense of dynamism. Inside, a second sculpture runs down the lobby ceiling in full color, lightening the heavy structure and tracing the historic path of Stone Street. Around them, a map-themed scheme honors the site’s history, with backlit cutout maps of the boroughs, cove-lit relief maps of early New York, and custom chandeliers that echo the forms of both sculptures. The building was 50 percent leased and valued at $350 million in 2014. By 2017 it was 90 percent leased, and it sold for approximately $650 million.

upLIGHT’s contribution

upLIGHT was the lighting designer and ESI Design’s partner in making the sculptures real. Working in close collaboration with the design team, we identified the lighting equipment that could realize the sculptural forms and designed how the light would be controlled. The exterior sculpture uses an intentionally restricted palette of white light. Each bar holds ten individually controlled pixels, driven by black and white “pattern videos” instead of conventional programming, so the animation travels along the serpentine form. The lighting shifts through the day and can be updated remotely by the design team. The project won the 2017 IES Lighting Control Innovation Award.