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The finalists
Design ◆ Lighting Installations
Are
Finalist
Project
Thermally Speaking
Location
Toronto, Canada
Firm
LeuWebb Projects, Canada
Summary
Toronto-based duo Christine Leu and Alan Webb are known for their charming and playful installations that chart a distinctive path between art and architecture. Their latest mounting — Thermally Speaking — follows suit, mixing a sensitive and site-specific approach with interactive technology for an entirely singular experience. For the 2019 edition of the all-night art crawl Nuit Blanche, LeuWebb Projects activated the facade of the Fort York Visitor Centre (by fellow Canadian practices Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects) in their home city’s West End. Using the inherent properties of the 100-metre-long stretch of channel glass at the building’s apex, the pair collaborated with a number of lighting designers to fit the nearly one-metre-wide cavity behind the facade with linear LEDs and PAR lamps.
Finalist
Project
Franklin Square
Location
Washington, DC, U.S.
Firms
Hickok Cole Architects (U.S.) and GPI Design (U.S.)
Summary
The lobby of a 1980s Phillip Johnson–designed office tower gains a fresh glow thanks to four flowing ribbons of light created with backlit glass panels. Originating outside the building on the underside of its four front canopies, these panels draw the eye through the lobby’s glass facade and along the full length of its ceiling, finally curving downward as they reach the back wall behind the reception desks. Along the way, they illuminate key historic details, such as the rows of columns that run between them and the original marble floor maintained below.
And
Design ◆ Lighting Installations
The Winner
+ The Peoples Choice
Is
Project
Thermally Speaking
Location
Toronto, Canada
Firm
LeuWebb Projects, Canada
Christine Leu and Alan Webb: 2021 AZ Award Winners in Lighting Installations
Presented By: Landscape Forms

Toronto-based duo Christine Leu and Alan Webb are known for their charming and playful installations that chart a distinctive path between art and architecture. Their latest mounting — Thermally Speaking — follows suit, mixing a sensitive and site-specific approach with interactive technology for an entirely singular experience.

For the 2019 edition of the all-night art crawl Nuit Blanche, LeuWebb Projects activated the facade of the Fort York Visitor Centre (by fellow Canadian practices Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects) in their home city’s West End. Using the inherent properties of the 100-metre-long stretch of channel glass at the building’s apex, the pair collaborated with a number of lighting designers to fit the nearly one-metre-wide cavity behind the facade with linear LEDs and PAR lamps.

“It is a social experience.”
Adelaide Testa, AZ Awards 2021 Juror

Working in tandem with a series of thermal imaging cameras located on the Visitor Centre’s ramp, these fixtures illuminated the five-metre-tall partitions on both the front and rear of the complex with an ever-changing choreography of rainbow hues typical of the infrared format. The resulting “shifting curtain of light” was continuously transformed alongside the meanderings of art-goers, from seven at night to seven the following morning, rendering them both “observers and subjects of observation,” according to the designers.

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