Lighting
Design Alliance

What do Avenue, the LAX airport, and Beats By Dre have in common? Lighting by Lighting Design Alliance, for one.

An advocate of lighting design, education, and sustainable practices, Chip Israel established one of the most well-respected lighting firms by focusing on collaborative work with clients who appreciate the symbiosis between architecture and light. His company, Lighting Design Alliance, specializes in illuminating everything from single-family homes to an entire Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas and the InterContinental Hotel Los Angeles Downtown. Israel and his company handle about 300 projects per year and are currently working with the visionary team at Avenue.

“We are thrilled to be working with Avenue and believe that the project will dramatically change the Bellevue skyline,” he says. A portfolio of the company’s work showcases an impressively long list of projects throughout the United States but also in countries like China, India, Italy, Lebanon and Qatar. Here, he shares how he approached working on Avenue and how the project’s architecture and landscape provided inspiration for dramatic lighting solutions.

The Project

We were brought in to provide complete lighting design services for all of the front-of-house and guest visible areas—everything from the marketing center and the facades to the Plaza and parking garage, which offers your first impression of Avenue. We also worked on the interior hotel and residential areas.

Curve Appeal

As in all of our projects, we look for the main architectural forms and then try to express them with lighting. When looking at the Avenue models and renderings, the undulating balconies became instantly iconic so we wanted to highlight the wave or curved patterns along with the crown of the towers.

Shine Bright

When approaching a new project, our philosophy is to listen to the architecture and express the forms. We then listen to the ownership to better understand their needs and their intended clientele so we can provide the appropriate lighting solutions for both.

Bringing Ideas to Light

We worked closely with the landscape and architect teams to create integrated concepts for spaces to really bring their ideas to light. For example, points of lights at different spacing or intervals help reinforce the curved balconies and will help with the experience of the site from vantages further away. For the Plaza level, we wanted to create an experience on the facades that can be enjoyed from the pedestrian level, as well as to help create a sense of scale.

Turning on the Drama

We want you to notice the interiors, not our lighting. By highlighting features and downplaying the general lighting, we can enhance the drama of the spaces. The right lighting can really make a space beautiful but more importantly, it can create a space that is comfortable and inviting.

Sustainable Design

To me, sustainability is just good design. The project called for a combination of efficient sources, designing to the correct lighting level and then using controls to turn the lights off or to a lower level when the spaces are not occupied.