Duke University’s Wilkinson Building embodies the University’s vision for collaborative research and creative engineering education bringing together departments, faculty, and students from across the University. A central “wedge” connects all facility floors via a communicating stair topped with soaring views of campus. The upper floors are home to graduate research laboratories, meeting spaces, and workstations, while lower levels support shared amenities, assembly space, and undergraduate classrooms.

Pivotal’s design complemented the intimate, unique spaces on the lower floors with task-focused lighting and decorative pendants in highly visible areas. Continuing this theme in the undergraduate maker spaces, pendants invoke an industrial aesthetic, providing the higher levels of illumination required. On the upper floors, the wedge wall illumination focuses on the information shared by the interdisciplinary labs. Linear architectural ceiling elements are complemented by a combination of surface-mounted linear and point source lighting elements strategically placed to integrate within the architecture. The wood ceiling’s illumination at the uppermost level of the wedge is visible from a distance, signaling this new destination for students, faculty, and visitors.