Street Lights

New York, NY, 2004

The New York City streetlight is both illumination and icon, the most ubiquitous element in the furnishing of our streets. Streetlights symbolize the character of the city’s commitment to its public spaces, both to making them safe and to making them beautiful. Current lighting combines a variety of styles, ranging from standards that evoke historical elements to the predominant and unlovely functional types. This situation of variety will continue for the indefinite future as will the use of lighting standards for mounting signage and other fixtures on a strictly as-needed basis. Our designs are meant both to have a strong individual identity and to be compatible with the variety of other fixtures currently in use. We have proposed a family of three types of fixture, based on three specific kinds of urban space.

Credits: M. Sorkin