[ Page 3 of 20 ]

Advertising supplement presented by

James Carpenter, whose “Lens Ceiling” at the Richard Meier-designed Phoenix federal courthouse was a 2003 Benedictus Award winner, says that the primary focus of his design is always “the exploration of the natural phenomenon of light in transmission, reflection and refraction as they influence architecture.”

Carpenter’s inspiration for Phoenix, where his suspended lens forms the ceiling of the Special Proceedings Court-room: a bubble of air resting gently on a surface of water. “The structure is so strong that people can walk on it to clean it,” remarks a Benedictus juror; “an engineering and artistic marvel,” says another.

Rubio says Gensler collaborates, in box-lunch sessions, with researchers in a variety of unusual disciplines in pursuit of out-of-the-box answers to seemingly elemental design problems, asking questions like, “What makes the sky blue?”

The answer, of course, is that things in nature are sometimes not what they seem, that the color of the sky is a result of refraction, not pigmentation, and that color can be a deceptive element.

In Chicago, trying to understand how they might “magnify” light to illuminate a cavernous public space, Gensler designers called in scientists to share results of studies of a Costa Rican butterfly.

“Pilots say they can see from the air the flash of the wings of the bright, blue Violet Morpho when it opens its wings in the jungle below,” Rubio says.

When light strikes the butterfly’s wings, researchers have discovered the light is somehow magnified, a trick of evolution, an iridescent “deceit” in the mating ritual of the Morpho. Gensler hoped to figure out how it might similarly “magnify” light to illuminate with fewer lumens.

The firm’s exploration of design opportunities led it to discussions with Jay Harman, a former naturalist with the Australian Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, now CEO of an industrial design firm that calls itself PAX Scientific.

Harman logged thousands of hours studying the flow patterns of ocean and air currents, came to conclusions about the effectiveness of natural flow systems and from them is developing revolutionary designs for fans, turbines and pumps.

“Nature knows how to move fluids,” says Harman. “Now PAX knows what nature knows.”

Now Gensler knows what PAX knows, at least in part.