Like several other large players in the financial market, this leading hedge fund decided to move out of the New York area and landed in West Palm Beach Florida in one of the area’s most upscale business neighborhoods.

While the move was initially caused by Covid, the company embraced the idea of a new locale and wanted an environment that was at once very special and also indicative of the company’s leadership position and ability to thrive outside of the traditional stronghold of America’s financial industry.

Gensler was hired as the architects of the new headquarters with the lighting designed by Lighting Workshop.  J.T. Magen is the General Contractor.  Apogee was engaged to create very customized lighting that very few if any other lighting companies would be able to successfully create and install.

The heart of the offices is the executive conference room, where the top brass and some of the richest clients on the planet would meet.  Thus, the lighting had to be very, very special and Apogee, along with our go-to lighting membrane partner NewMat came through.  Lighting Workshop’s concept was to create a very long, narrow ellipse shaped illuminated ceiling that seemed to be floating. An ellipse is an already extremely difficult shape to handle.  The design called for no structure from the ceiling so to eliminate any unsightly bracing and to make it seem as though it was floating in air, Apogee’s idea was to suspend the fixture with aircraft cable from different points in the sides of the frame.  Turnbuckles were used to provide the right tension, to position the fixture exactly even from side to side to side and to ensure that the fixture was trued and not go out of round which in this situation could have happened very easily.  To meet the tensioning needs of the fixture, Apogee engineering created all types of structural reinforcement in the framing and the collaboration between Apogee and NewMat handled the critical tensioning issues with the membrane.  Together we enabled this design to be realized and the NewMat team built and installed the fixture on-site.

The result is a breathtaking illuminated ceiling that almost seems like a cloudscape over an intentionally narrow room that hugs the extra-long executive conference table.