A team meeting with the project manager and design team was performed to determine the best, up to date options to get the look and feel of a modern lobby without full demo while leaving the existing stair structure intact to work around.

The fountain was the first thing to be removed to optimize the size of the lobby, There were pumps and pipes for the fountain in the floor and walls that we needed to safe off and also hide any existing plumbing, so a planter was designed with no irrigation just for fake plants.

The T-Bar grid ceiling was out of date and used fluorescent lighting fixtures so opening up the ceiling gave a bigger, more modern feel to the lobby.

Once we removed the T-bar ceiling we had to address the current, out-dated florescent lighting. The idea we came up with was taken from an automobile dealership. The dealership often uses lighting to accent certain area cars, we thought this would have a nice effect on the lobby.

At this point we needed a lighting photometric study done to determine the size of the light fixtures and height of the lights to accomplish the desired lighting effect of the lobby.

The metal stairs were our next issue to work around and update so the idea of a glass railing system was going to be tough with the existing guardrail system that was welded to the structural stair beams. What we determined (with the help of a professional glass company) was to cut all the metal guardrails off and use automotive bondo to smooth out all the areas so the new glass system could be bolted to the existing beams.

Final painting and flooring was then installed with the customer highly involved to get the best fit and finish possible. The ceiling was painted black to basically make it disappear above the new lights.