Duke University’s Wilkinson Building embodies the University’s vision for collaborative research and creative engineering education bringing together departments, faculty, and students from across the University. Connecting graduate research laboratories, meeting spaces, and workstations on the upper levels with assembly space, shared amenities, and undergraduate classrooms on the lower levels, a central “wedge” provides access to all the floors via a communicating stair, topped with soaring views to the campus.
Pivotal’s design complemented the intimate unique spaces on the lower floors with task-focused lighting and decorative pendants in highly visible areas. Continuing this theme in the undergraduate maker spaces, pendants were selected to invoke an industrial aesthetic, providing the higher levels of illumination required. On the upper floors, illumination of the wedge walls focuses attention on the information being shared by the interdisciplinary labs within. Linear architectural ceiling elements are complemented by a combination of surface-mounted linear and point source lighting elements strategically placed to integrate within the architecture. Illumination of the wood ceiling at the uppermost level of the wedge is visible from a distance, signaling this new destination for students, faculty, and visitors.