Projects

Schuler Shook provided exterior lighting design services for the renovation and adaptive reuse of the Carbon and Carbide Building on Michigan Avenue. Now the home to Hard Rock Hotel, this Art Deco masterpiece originally opened in 1929 as an office building and was designated a Chicago Architectural Landmark in 1996.

The exterior is composed of black granite and dark green terra cotta, a challenge to illuminate. Our designers used on-site mockups to test fixtures against the dark cladding and worked to highlight the gold terra cotta and gold leaf trim. The 40-story building is now a 381-room hotel with restaurant, bar, conference and meeting rooms.

Alexander Calder’s steel stabile ​“Flamingo” was the first work of art commissioned under the General Service Administration’s Art in Architecture Program in 1974. The sculpture’s vermilion colour and 53-foot tall organic form serves as a counterfoil to the surrounding three prominent Mies Van der Rohe federal office buildings in Chicago’s Federal Plaza. In its initial installation, it was not lighted for viewing after dark.

The lighting of the ​“Flamingo” was implemented as part of a program to improve the plaza and increase security. The primary challenge was to illuminate as many surfaces and facets as possible using a reasonable quantity of fixtures. All lighting fixtures are buried in the plaza pavers and are identical: PAR38 adjustable uplights with positive locking mechanisms. Schuler Shook performed site testing to test and select the incident lighting angles, source colour, and fixture locations and quantities. All of the lighting emanates from the plaza, shining up on the sculpture, which reinforces the weightless nature of the sculpture and suggests that the sculpture floats above the plaza, barely touching the ground.

The initial renovation project won an IALD Award of Merit and an IES International Illumination Design Award. IALD judges remarked that, ​“The graceful and beautiful pattern of the form comes alive…”

The original design used 150 watt halogen PAR lamps with spot and flood distributions. In the second renovation of the plaza, Schuler Shook replaced the lights with more energy efficient ceramic metal halide.

Schuler Shook provided architectural lighting design for MB Financial Park at Rosemont, now Parkway Bank Park, a new multi-season park in the entertainment district of the Village of Rosemont, Illinois. The lighting design scope includes the skating rink, plaza, pedestrian paths, and seven new restaurant facades. 

The park is situated in a nine-acre development that includes several busy restaurants and pubs, providing a welcome outdoor activity area in combination with dining and retail spaces for a true multi-season entertainment environment.

After nearly 70 years, the lighting of the clock tower at the Minneapolis Municipal Building was restored to the original design intent. Using the architect’s drawings as a guide, the glass and the support structure was restored to look as it did when the building was built in the early 1900’s. Minneapolis Architects Long and Keys designed the Municipal Building as a landmark structure, drawing on neo-Romanesque themes of Boston architect H.H.

Richardson. The tower is the crowning jewel of the building, with four clock faces that measure 24 feet in diameter. It is the largest four-faced, chiming clock in the world. The tower also serves as a symbol of great city of Minneapolis.

Using a technique taken from theatrical lighting, Schuler Shook used a ​“bounce drop” – a highly reflective curtain hung behind each clock face. A bank of highly efficient LED floodlights illuminate the drop, and the reflected light provides an even wash of light that back-lights the clock face, without shadows from support structure.

The glowing glass silhouettes the clock hands, allowing citizens to read the time-of-day from miles away.

In concert with JCDA, Schuler Shook provided the lighting design for a tunable white linear art installation. ​“Horizon Light” is connected to the arrival canopy of the O’Hare Consolidated Car Rental Facility (CONRAC), a multi-modal transit centre where air travel connects with light transit, rail, bus and vehicular travel.

The Midtown Exchange development transformed the former Sears building on Lake Street in Minneapolis. Schuler Shook provided the lighting design for the public lobbies, corridors, and building façade for this mixed-use residential, retail, and office development. 

Collaborative Design Group served as the project architect with Ryan Construction as the lead developer. Shea Architects provided interior design services.

Chicago’s historic Water Tower was completed in 1869 and was one of only several buildings to survive the great Chicago fire. Over the years, the tower’s limestone facade became very dirty and the lighting scheme was in need of modernization.

Schuler Shook’s new facade lighting consists of ceramic metal halide spotlights that graze light up the various turrets and towers. Fixtures are located close to the building, allowing the texture of the rough-cut limestone to be revealed, while the 3000K colour temperature of the lamps renders the warmth of the stone. 

The new lighting for the historic Water Tower gives new visual impact to North Michigan Avenue’s ​“Magnificent Mile”, one of Chicago’s most visited destinations for tourists and residents alike.

A re-development project integrated lighting, across the exterior façade of an entire block, to re-vitalize a fading landmark, address security issues, and add excitement to the area.

Color-changing LED fixtures were implemented to uplight the perforated metal mesh façade with a series of 5 to 8 minute light shows. The colour washes and patterns cross-fade, wrapping around the block in a planned sequence, creating an impressive
street vibe. When local sports team are playing home games, the team colours are featured in a sequence that starts with single colours, and progresses to moving blocks of colour and change with increasing frequency.

MCTC uses fluorescent perimeter cove fixtures to uplight into wooden coffers, giving it a warm established street presence on Minneapolis’ Hennepin Avenue. Excellent stack lighting ensures student’s visibility of book shelves’ bottom row. Decorative pendants are randomly located in the main conference room, giving the space a festive atmosphere

MCTC’s illuminated parking ramp provides a dramatic entrance to the college and Minneapolis Arts District. Schuler Shook also designed the lighting for MCTC’s library located directly across from the parking ramp.

The Carlyle is a 39-floor residential tower on the Mississippi riverfront in the historic Mill District of Minneapolis. This new tower was designed with art-deco design themes reinterpreted using modern methods.

The lighting design considerations included the downtown location within a historic district, energy consumption and cost, and the building’s architecture. The lighting design draws the eye up the façade to the spires at the top of the building. 

Southbank Park serves as the ​“front door” to the seven-acre Southbank planned development along the Chicago River. The design team focused on landscaping for a natural habitat open to the public yet maintained by the private owner. The parkland connects to an accessible riverwalk via multiple gently curving walkways. Schuler Shook’s lighting design approach was to work within that ecosystem, creating spaces for people to gather while controlling illumination in areas intended for bird migration and wildlife.