Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood received a brand-new, luxury apartment tower with the construction of 500 Lake Shore Drive. The Related Midwest tower’s stunning and sophisticated design quickly made it an emblem in the downtown area, while its LEED Gold status offers incoming residents sustainable habitation. Morlights joined Solomon Cordwell Buenz for our first collaboration, tasked with bringing the stunning spaces into the light.
Morlights’ schematic design for the tower included hallway, apartment, amenity, lobby, and pool deck lighting, which all needed to adhere to the building’s high-end aesthetic. We launched a collaborative and review-intensive process, conducting multiple sessions with the design team to ensure all parties’ needs and goals were met. Morlights introduced several clever innovations to solve unique problems throughout the tower, including linear lights in the mailroom to light the front of mailboxes, and carefully placed and calibrated lights in the game room to illuminate the game tables without television glare. We also implemented linear luminaries in pavers on the pool deck, which eliminated the need for poles or other obstructive lighting structures, as well as created clever and upscale wayfinding. Morlights excelled during this challenging process, providing our creative solutions within a tight budget and a high-end context.
