09/25/2026
Originally designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the early 1970s, One Liberty Plaza’s lobby was reimagined to meet a new generation of office tenants. Lighting became central to that transformation.
Wood walls on either side and a stone wall behind carry the lighting. Together, they form the major ambient light source in the space. The technical difficulty lay in achieving an even wash of light across such expansive surfaces, calibrated with enough precision that the fixture itself disappears entirely from perception upon entry. It’s TM’s ethos: embedding the lighting into the DNA of the architecture so that it’s one and the same.
Above, a Pierre Huyghe ceiling-mounted grid of lights takes on a checkerboard aesthetic, animated and playable at architectural scale. Paddles rest on a coffee table below, inviting anyone who notices them to stop and play.
Architecture: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Photography: Lucas Blair