Architecture Alumnus Contributes to Lighting Design for Fay Jones School Construction Project

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A fabric dropped ceiling conceals the nearly 400 fluorescent tubes that provide lighting for the second floor gallery of Vol Walker Hall.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – That Richard Renfro designed the lighting in the lobby of Vol Walker Hall is more than fitting. As an architecture student in the 1970s, he was influenced by professors, including Ernie Jacks and Murray Smart. A month ago, that same lobby was named in honor of Smart, former dean and University Professor emeritus of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Renfro did some lighting work for the recently renovated Vol Walker Hall and all of the lighting for the Steven L. Anderson Design Center addition. When he began thinking about the project, he and Marlon Blackwell, lead architect on the project, started at the front doors of Vol Walker Hall and thought about stepping inside to the lobby – and what that experience should be like.

Renfro, a 1979 graduate, recalls that Smart and Jacks really got to know their students, and they realized that Renfro was especially interested in the lighting of design projects. Renfro's honors thesis focused on lighting, and Smart connected him with an internship with a New York firm.

Renfro moved there after graduation and never looked back. After 19 years at Fisher Marantz Renfro Stone, he started Renfro Design Group, an architectural lighting design firm in its 15th year.

Working with various architects, with diverse approaches to design and "voices of architecture," Renfro began to understand how they all depended on light. "I realized that the common element was light – seeking to express their buildings and forms, using light," he said.

His firm has worked on commercial, corporate, civic, performing arts and educational facilities, as well as libraries, museums and galleries – modern and historic. He's fascinated to read old documents about what the architects decades ago were trying to do, and seeing how they were sometimes restricted by available technology and limited budgets.

Part of Renfro's job is to help architects see the spaces of their projects differently. Every area can't have the same brightness, so he helps them consider what the focus should be and define priorities.

At its basic level, light helps people see a space. "What you choose to light and what you choose not to light are how people are going to perceive the space," Renfro said. "Most people don't see good lighting; they just notice it if it doesn't work well."

Historic buildings can be easier to work on because he can test the potential lighting solutions in the existing space. With a new building, part of it is chance and educated speculation on the result. But the architects designed the Anderson Design Center addition and Vol Walker Hall renovation using building information modeling software, which allowed Renfro to virtually "fly through the building and really understand the spaces."

With the new addition, ample sunlight comes through the western wall of glass, illuminating multiple levels of studio space. Fluorescent lighting was installed on the eastern walls of those rooms, as well as above the studio desks, to balance the overall lighting. Directed lighting using metal-halide bulbs was also used on the east-west concrete sheer walls in the studios, illuminating all pin-up spaces for students' work.

The lighting had to serve the functions of the spaces during the day and into the night hours. But Renfro was also thinking about the nighttime image, the profile view of the building for passersby.

"It was an opportunity as well to let the lighting that is purely functional for the spaces help describe the building at night," he said. "That reinforces the form that [Blackwell] was trying to create. And, to me, that's part of what I do is try to understand what an architect wants to express about a building and design a lighting system that reinforces that vision."

When it comes time to renovate and update older buildings, the modern eye can have different expectations than what was feasible when they were built. When Renfro restored and enhanced the historic lighting fixtures at New York City's Grand Central Terminal, he also redesigned the lighting system for the constellation of stars on the main concourse ceiling using fiber optics. When working on the Morgan Library and Museum renovation in New York, he was upgrading a space that predated electricity and for which Thomas Edison had done lighting.

Renovation doesn't equal replication. "If you just created exactly what was there, because of your other expectations of color of light and intensity, you might not be as happy," he said.

Renfro uses the concept of "conceal and reveal" to create the desired lighting effect. "You have to hide the lighting to reveal the shapes," he said. That's what he did at the Morgan Library, where there's one obvious light source, with the rest hidden. He won a 2012 Fay Jones Alumni Design Award for that project, awarded by the Fay Jones School.

In the second floor gallery of Vol Walker Hall, the new addition overlaps the historic space. While much of the space was preserved, a skylight and an entrance on the west wall dramatically change the space. For the lighting, Renfro chose 398 slender fluorescent tubes mounted behind a white fabric dropped ceiling. This space will again be used to pin up student work, and Renfro wanted multipurpose lighting that would be both functional and flattering for the work and for the faces of the people discussing it.

The lighting solution will require little maintenance because the bulbs last about 40,000 hours, operating less than 9,000 hours a year.

A border of natural light surrounds the rim of the fabric dropped ceiling. That light is yellow and warmer on the south side, from direct sun exposure, and blue and cooler on the north side because it's coming directly from the sky.

As for the lobby of Vol Walker Hall, Renfro provided lighting by concealing it – installing it on the top and bottom of two display cases, called vitrines, that stand parallel in the lobby. The light from the vitrines subtly illuminates the 78-year-old space in a new way, bouncing off the white ceiling and terrazzo floor.