“Space is oblivion without light. A building speaks through the silence of perception, orchestrated by light.”
This quote, by renowned architect Steven Holl, is spot-on in its assessment. The illumination inside any building overwhelmingly shapes each user’s experience of that structure, in ways that are both obvious and subtle.
“Lighting impacts two key elements — function and perception. The first objective that light must achieve is functional illumination — obviously, we can’t work in the dark. But the second objective, which is sometimes overlooked, is to impact mood, temperament, emotion and attitude” says John Osborne, licensed architect and FSB Senior Design Project Manager. “Lighting has perhaps the biggest impact on worker productivity and performance; and therefore, must be designed with deliberate intent and specificity of purpose.”
Natural vs. Artificial
Natural and artificial light both serve their purpose in corporate designs, but today people have realized the myriad benefits of natural light over older fluorescent and incandescent fixtures, Osborne said. Not only is natural lighting much more energy efficient and cost effective, multiple studies have proven that it significantly boosts employee energy, productivity, alertness and overall mood. Lighting also plays a critical role in the body’s circadian rhythms — the built in “sensors” that govern our sleep cycles and ability to relax. This trend toward natural light is significant, especially considering that nearly 70% of employees previously have expressed dissatisfaction with the lighting in their offices, according to a study by the American Society of Interior Designers.
Going hand-in-hand with the shift toward natural lighting are the open floor plans now trending in corporate environments, Osborne said. These types of plans represent a challenge for lighting designers, as light fixtures must help define work areas, highlight task areas and direct traffic, while at the same time being unobtrusive. This trend toward open layouts facilitates the increased natural light by reducing the obstructive enclosed offices historically located on exterior walls, which blocked natural light from permeating deeper into the floor space. By moving hard-wall functions to the center of the floor plate and placing open office workstations along the perimeter of office floors where possible, natural light can be enjoyed by significantly more building occupants, Osborne said.
Even when natural light isn’t an option, the use of appropriate lighting in the workplace can still assist productivity and mood in both straightforward and cutting-edge ways. As an example, FSB architects solved a serious issue for energy giant Phillips 66 by designing an innovative lighting feature that greatly improved the performance of employees staffing a pipeline control center. Security concerns required a windowless structure, where employees worked shifts around the clock. FSB’s designers created a unique lighted wall feature, with illumination that mimics the sun’s transition across the sky. This feature, in coordination with other carefully designed direct/indirect lighting, made an enormous difference in the quality of life for the center’s employees, who were better able to control their circadian rhythms and establish normal sleep patterns.
Trends in Technology
In many modern corporate structures, traditional fluorescent and incandescent lights have been phased out, replaced by light emitting diodes — more commonly known as LEDs. LEDs require much less power, translating to significant savings in building operating costs.
There is much greater flexibility now that lighting controls no longer have to be hard wired. Technological improvements and computer networked design integration make it possible to add a wave of new lighting control options that save money and are more flexible. For instance, ambient light sensors, which approximate the human eye’s response to light intensity, can now be combined with proximity detectors into a single device that can mounted unobtrusively on a wall or ceiling. These sensory devices can independently per-form such actions as controlling window openings for heat and fresh air control, and window shades for heat control, so that they automatically adjust as the sun moves across a building. This is in addition to energy-saving features such as lights which automatically turn off when a room is unoccupied.
“By boosting and lowering the ambient light, this can also help significantly reduce a building’s overall heating and cooling costs,” Osborne said. “Companies can see the cost benefit from these sensors, and that energy savings can potentially be used for other upgrades.”
Costs aren’t the only factor driving technological innovation, however. “The energy management side has been driving (the industry) for a while, but now we’re starting to look at things from the angle of productivity and mood,” Osborne added. “The introduction of LEDs is allowing the lighting control industry to develop fast, with innovations like wireless switching networks and Power over Ethernet (PoE).”
At the end of the day, “There is no one-size-fits-all solution for lighting in the office or other workplace environment,” Osborne noted. “But today’s building owners and employers know that thoughtful lighting design can significantly enhance productivity, and even contribute to recruitment and retention of employees. Proper lighting design can reduce energy costs, and of course, it can give aesthetic life (or conversely, death) to the interior and exterior architecture.”
The William Wayne Caudill Award is meant to recognize and honor an individual AIA Central Oklahoma member who has displayed a long-standing commitment to the betterment of the profession and the well-being of architects. 
OKC.Biz announced the top honoree in 25 business categories at the Best of Business 2017 awards luncheon March 22. FSB was named Best Commercial Architecture Firm for an unprecedented 5th time.
Operating under the guiding principles of Character, Teamwork, Excellence and Community, employees like working at FSB. In fact, nearly 30% of the firm’s 150 employees have been with the company more than 10 years. Today, a vibrant new brand, new collaborative work spaces, a growing Fortune 500 client list and a desire to continuously raise the standards of innovation in the design industry continue to attract high-caliber professional staff.
Experience is also beneficial in knowing what questions to ask clients, Sauer said. As a full-service architecture and engineering firm with more than 75 years of experience designing hangars for federal, commercial, and private clients, FSB has honed a list of questions to cover before beginning any hangar project, and many of those questions pertain to HVAC.
Depending on climate, function, and client preference, engineers determine whether a hangar needs to be cooled, or just heated and ventilated. The firm has designed everything from a completely air conditioned and environmentally controlled manufacturing hangar for Airbus in Mobile, Alabama to more standard maintenance hangars for operations in more moderate climates.
Sauer said the firm has encountered — and replaced — hangars with HVAC systems where the conditioned air is delivered directly across the ceiling space and is exhausted without ever entering the occupied area. High-volume, low-speed fans, he said, also help to destratify the space, redistributing warm air back down to the occupied level when heating is needed, or on warmer days working like a ceiling fan, providing air movement for improved comfort and minimal cooling.
To provide access, well-conceived hangars might include a system of overhead catwalks, as FSB structural engineers devised for their recently completed Helicopter Maintenance Hangar at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California. The hangar received the 2014 Excellence in Structural Engineering Award – Outstanding Project from the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations.
Why Building Assessments are Critical
Typically, on a new school, the architect and even the district does not know who the students are yet, Schmidt said. However, FSB placed a high value on student input, and Edmond Public Schools embraced the priority. Early in the design process FSB arranged peer institution tours and used them as an opportunity to learn from middle schoolers at existing, recently constructed middle schools. Schmidt said principals at peer institutions were typically very accommodating of FSB and Edmond Public Schools, assigning student ambassadors to guide the group though their new school.
The tours were at times a two-way learning experience, with FSB architects and engineers learning from students about their experience and school building, and middle school students witnessing part of the design process firsthand.
FSB was proud to play a key role in the renaissance of Oklahoma City by serving as the owner’s representative for the Metropolitan Area Projects (known as MAPS). These taxpayer-funded initiatives have transformed the state’s capitol into a go-to destination, resulting in multiple new downtown entertainment venues and a complete revitalization of the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds.
The FSB-POND Joint Venture was awarded a contract by Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Washington for architectural and engineering services for the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization (PAR) Complex.