21.02.13 - Robert Levit and Rodolphe el-Khoury's "Crystal Sun" will light up Boston's Copley Square

Daniels Faculty Associate Professors Robert Levit and Rodolphe el-Khoury were recently announced the winners of Boston's GLOW 2012 Competition.

The GLOW competition challenged architects, planners, and designers to create a new way to light Copley Square, a public square surrounded by a number of architecturally significant  buildings in Boston's Back Bay neighbourhood. Levit and el-Khoury's winning design, entitled "Crystal Sun" treats the square as a large public living room. Hanging above, illuminating the square, is an iconic chandelier. The duo is now working on the second phase of Crystal Sun with engineering consultant, and Daniels Faculty sessional instructor, David Bowick.

"Crystal chandeliers have a huge impact on the way people experience rooms in buildings—they are iconic set pieces that make big first impressions and become associated with the rooms they illuminate, but, equally important, they also quickly become background material, casting light onto activities and things taking place within the room and receding from the forefront of consciousness," el-Khoury and Levit told SHIFTboston. "We feel that both the iconic object of the chandelier and the centralized illumination that it casts will draw together the space of Copley Square making an urban room of a space that otherwise drifts off in too easily."

For more images, visit Khoury Levit Fong's website.