When Steven Ehrlich Architects and developer Skye Partners teamed up to redevelop a pair of buildings in Culver City, Calif. their idea for the lighting scheme was to do it creatively, but with inexpensive components.

These directions were given to the Los Angeles office of Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, who took a tight lighting budget and created a lighting design to target the L.A. area creative types. Ten9Fifty consists of two buildings built at very different times in Los Angeles history. The first is a one-story concrete block warehouse built in the 1950s when L.A. was experiencing a post-World War II boom in population and industry. People moved away from the city and sprawled out into the surrounding suburbs. The aerospace industry was bringing people in droves to the area and the fairly new television medium with a stronghold in Los Angeles was capturing the attention of the nation. Across the drive from the warehouse sits a three-story concrete office building, built in the 1970s when the post-War baby boomers were entering the now solid aerospace and television industries that the generation before had helped grow.

"The target audience was movie, advertising and creative folks," Teal Brogden, Senior Principal with Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design said. "They would be attracted to the young and funky style of the architecture and the volume."

Floor sizes range from 15,000-30,000-square-feet and feature flexibility to accommodate both large and small users. Ceiling heights can go up to 11 feet and floor to ceiling glass is installed on the perimeter window line. The complex also includes services that tenants will use such as lighting and grip rental; motorized equipment; broadband connectivity; a commissary; and 24-hour-a-day, seven days-a-week security.

The television and film industry have a long tradition in Culver City. When the city adopted an official seal in 1936 it read "The Heart of Screenland." However, movies made in the city read "Made in Hollywood" or gave no city designation on the closing credits. A newspaper man in 1934 held a contest to rename the city. Entries included "Filmville" and "Cinema City." In 1991, Sony Pictures Studio head honcho Arnie Shupack told the Culver City Council that movies made in the city would feature the credit "Filmed in Culver City."

One of the first studios in Culver City was Ince/Triangle Studios just down the street from Ten9Fifty. The studio was owned by famous filmmaker Thomas Ince, D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennettt. In 1918, Samuel Goldwyn took over the lot and it became Goldwyn Studios, which later became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In order to draw attention to Ten9Fifty, the lighting served two purposes according to Brogden. One purpose was to get the attention of those visiting the surrounding neighborhood at night to draw them to the facility and the other was those working in the buildings who labor late into the night. A cafe was built into a boardwalk element, and became one of the featured components outside. Obviously it worked as the entire 180,000-square-foot project was fully leased within a year of its completion.

A "Basic" Lighting Project

Ten9Fifty is an office complex designed to meet the needs of advertising and entertainment companies in Los Angeles. The lighting budget for the project allowed for only basic components "like ones you get at Home Depot," according to Teal Brogden, Senior Principal with Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design

"The lighting components were very basic, like ones you get at Home Depot," Brogden said. "We used your basic landscape flood light, accent light equipment and a fluorescent strip light or two were all used in different ways."

Tina Aghassian, a Designer with Horton Lees Brogden relished the challenge of using basic components.

"To me it is always more exciting when you have those kinds of limitations and you have to be more creative with your approach," she said. "We really had to be clever in the way we applied and selected the fixtures. In a way, your approach is more simplified and unique."

Each of these lighting components has a different luminous characteristic. Some are spotty with a very bright pool of light and some are very broad and create a really soft wash.

"In the design, the desire is to have a layering of light, some light is broad and soft," Brogden said. "Others are very focused and crisp to give you a variation on the texture of the light."

Incandescent lights wash plants and the concrete surfaces, while metal halide was used where galvanized panels were installed at the entrances to the buildings. Warm compact fluorescent lights, provided by Focus Industries, were used to backlight fiberglass canopies.

"The metal halide floodlights have a blueish cast to them, while the incandescent spotlights were used as a contrasting color of light used at points of entry," Brogden said. "Fluorescent striplights were used in creative ways in interior circulation areas. Additional metal halide spotlights were used to light trees and other landscape elements."

Drama in the Landscape

Cacti, aloe plants and what Brogden describes as "really gnarly" trees, which are actually sycamores were all lit in different ways. The sycamores, cacti and aloe plants were uplit and silhouetted in incandescent and metal halide. The sycamore is found throughout California from Baja all the way to Sacramento, where it thrives in sandy soils. It can reach 100 feet in height and can get its "gnarly" appearance from having multiple trunks that will often lean on the ground with a widespreading crown with spreading, crooked limbs.

"We were trying to create a dramatic landscape," Aghassian said. "It is like a desert landscape and in the desert there are really dramatic sunsets. I think we all tried to have something dramatic like that. A lot of landscape elements were lit dramatically and they were selective and not in big sweeps of light."

In order to create a stronger relationship between the buildings on the property, the driveway that had previously separated the two buildings from different eras in L.A.'s history was landscaped with sycamores, creating a stronger relationship between the two buildings.

Fortunately for the lighting design team, most of the trees being lit were already a part of the landscape. One of the age-old challenges that nearly every lighting designer faces is putting lights in a tree that when the project starts is one size and as it progresses, the tree becomes smaller and smaller.

"You start out with a tree that is in a 72-inch box and as the project goes you'll be lucky if is 32-inches," Brogden said. "If we installed lights in the tree they would be bigger than the tree. We didn't have that problem on this project."

One special challenge facing HLB was making sure that the ground cover and medium height landscape elements didn't become objects that block the light from some other larger piece that is being lit.

"You have to work carefully together as a team to make sure where you want to have unhindered light on a tree or a wall by coordinating the mounting behind the fixtures so it fits in the groundcover but not covered by it," Brogden said. "In this particular project, because of the shapes of the trees and the succulent landscaping was so interesting, they cast some really great shadows on the building and that makes it a little more dramatic and unique."

Creative With a Small Budget

The lighting design team not only worked on the exterior of the project, but the interior as well. Brogden said that exterior and interior lighting are similar in that they both have practical demands. She said that exterior lighting, while enhancing a project, also helps people with "way finding."

Brogden said that there are always things pulling a lighting design project in different directions. When a project starts, Brogden said that she asks the developer and architect to write a paragraph of how the place is supposed to feel and what the goals are as far as the lighting and atmosphere. The other factor pulling the project is the budget.

"The process includes giving the design team two or three options," Brogden said. "Stylistically they are a little different, but they are also along the spectrum of the budget.

"One option is the most fantastic thing that can be done, along with the layers that make it fantastic. If we take one layer away you still have an interesting story, and if we take another layer away we still have an interesting story, but not as complex. I think from a design standpoint it is nice to make a design move that gives you impact immediately and gives you something to discover the second or third time you return. Even if it is a low budget project, we still like to have enough layers in the design so that it is not obvious and apparent the first time you go through."

The budget for Ten9Fifty was pretty tight according to Brogden. She added that the type of budget is relative because a tight budget to one design team is a generous budget to another.

"This particular architect and developer had worked together before and specialized in doing things creatively, but built of very inexpensive components," Brogden said.

Aghassian said that throughout the project, the lighting team met with the Landscape Architect on the project and with the architects to make sure that the vision of the lighting project was carried out as things progressed.

Lighting Inside and Out

The lighting design team not only worked on the landscape lighting of the project but also on the extensive interior portions of the development. Although interior and exterior lighting are somewhat different, there are similarities.

"Exterior lighting needs to help with way finding," Brogden said. "For example, we have a big broad wash of light on galvanized metal, and that is where we have the entry door into the building. That is a practical requirement to help people find a door. In that way it is like interior lighting because interior lighting has a lot more of a practical demand."

Brogden added that exterior lighting creates an environment and that the biggest mistake in exterior lighting is the perception that all you need is some foot candles on the pavement. "There is a lot more to it," she said.

Exterior lighting needs to make visitors feel safe. There needs to be enough light on the ground and enough volume in order to recognize who is coming your way.

"People feel comfortable if vertical surfaces are illuminated around you and gives you a sense of your boundaries," Brogden said. "Just a little vertical space can make an area seem much more brightly lit."

A safe well-lit work environment is now in place for the next generation of creative minds in the greater Los Angeles area.