C.C. Sullivan

C.C. Sullivan's Posts

• Design Focus

  Chanel Ginza, Tokyo

  by C.C. Sullivan

  The idea for Chanel's ritziest location in Tokyo was by no means simple. The façade would at once serve as communications media, daylighting source, and fashion icon—plus it would need to allow views between interior and exterior at all times. The design team, led by Peter Marino + Associates Architects, envisaged a 10-story-high media wall, flashing messages and patterns by means of an LED system.

• Custom House, New York City

  by C.C. Sullivan

  The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, a 1907 Cass Gilbert masterpiece at the southernmost tip of Manhattan, contains many treasures. Portraits of explorers and carved wooden screens in the old collector's office vie to capture the visitor's eye, often losing out to the colorful fresco cycle of ocean liners adorning a Gustavino vault in the huge oval rotunda. But visitors need not enter what is now the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian to appreciate its Beaux-Arts grandeur. Flanking the north-facing grand entry stair stand regal female figures of Daniel Chester French's

• Design Focus

  Façade Lighting: A Fork In The Road?

  by C.C. Sullivan

  Today, façade lighting design strategies seem to follow two diverging paths: One emulates the work of nature—the moon and the sun—while the other embraces the possibilities of latter-day technology. For any given project, a lighting designer tends to operate with either a “naturalist” or a “technologist” mindset, though the approaches can overlap considerably. In the best cases, each hopes to imbue the building with not merely skilled illumination, but a higher level of meaning.