Goldring/Woldenberg expansion earns another architectural honor

The Goldring/Woldberg Business Complex has earned another accolade.

In its 2020 Best of Design Awards, the Architect's Newspaper, a leading publication and website covering architecture and design, awarded the Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex honorable mention for Architectural Lighting – Indoor. The awards were announced in December 2020.

Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and featuring lighting by Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design, the GWBC’s signature feature is the Marshall Family Commons, an expansive three-story atrium fronted by a wall of curving glass. To emphasize its expanse, the atrium features continuous lines of light run across the ceiling, perpendicular to the fritted glass wall.

The atrium also contains two three-story glass-enclosed towers featuring classrooms and meeting spaces. The towers have a frit on the glass to capture light from RGBW grazers that are detailed into a cove around their tops. The colored lights set the towers off from the atrium and can change over the day/evening or for special events without impacting the interior classroom illumination.

All the lighting in the building is controlled by a dimming system that incorporates photo-sensors as part of a daylight harvesting system that turns off specific task lighting during the day. Throughout, the lighting composition energizes the learning experience, supporting the school’s goal of making education fun and exciting.

In addition to the Architect's Newspaper Best of Design Award, the Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex has received honors including the 2018 Associated Builders and Contractors New Orleans/Bayou Chapter Excellence in Construction Award – Institutional, a 2019 New Orleans Magazine Best of Architecture Award, the IES Illumination Award of Merit - Interior Lighting and the LIT Lighting Design Award. The building also received LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

“The Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex was the result of a collaboration among many individuals – architects, designers, administrators, students and alumni,” said Ira Solomon, Freeman School dean. “I’m pleased to see their extraordinary efforts and the outcome receiving another recognition, this time for lighting by The Architect’s Newspaper.”