Advancements in lighting design and LED technology inspire spectacular architectural projects. Lighting design firms collaborate with architects, design consultants, engineers and owners to produce impactful human-centric environments. This post celebrates and analyzes three lighting design firms and their selected projects.
Lighting firms featured:
TM Light
TM Light, based in New York, was founded by Jeff Taylor and B. Alex Miller. Their lighting work has included projects spanning residential, luxury retail, hospitality, museums, landscapes, urban masterplans and lighting sculpture. TM Light regards lighting as intrinsic to the experience of architectural spaces, delivering sustainable, inspiring and resilient lighting design for projects. Their lighting design produces a sense of harmony and poetry, exploring both functional and artistic possibilities with light. TM Light’s team combines knowledge and project expertise to deliver sustainable, inspiring and resilient lighting for projects of every shape and size. Throughout all stages of a project, the studio goal is to add something inspiring to the project—something that’s not only seen, but felt.
Thaden School
Lighting design: TM Light
Team members: B. Alex Miller, Aoife O’Leary
Architect: Marlon Blackwell Architects
Location: Bentonville, Arkansas
Photography credit: Timothy Hursley
The Thaden School is a private school serving grades kindergarten through twelve. TM Light’s collaboration with Marlon Blackwell Architects yields an expression of form and light. The topographical language of the buildings also reflects the lighting design, which flows through carved-out spaces. The interior and exterior environments feel connected yet open, with light punctuating building elements.
Throughout the project, architectural elements were used as an armature for light. In this way, the lighting approach became intrinsic to the student’s experience of the building’s space and materials across multiple scales. At the porches, linear LED fixtures concealed within punched roof openings, turning skylights into lanterns at night.
The plywood roof serves as a continuous source of light throughout the building; the structure is warmed by in-grade uplights at the porches, uplit by concealed linear fixtures in the corridors and washed by direct/indirect pendants in the classrooms. This rooting of the lighting approach within the spatial and architectural concepts also extends to the detail scale; lockers in the corridor are lit by linear LED integrated into a custom metal shelf extrusion.
Thaden Bike Barn
Lighting design: TM Light
Team members: B. Alex Miller, Aoife O’Leary
Architect: Marlon Blackwell Architects
Location: Bentonville, Arkansas
Photography credit: Timothy Hursley
The Thaden School Bike Barn transforms the original idea of the Ozark Barn into an exciting multipurpose space. The red metal roof and wood-siding lattice serve as the framework through which lighting is expressed. Visually anchoring the eastern portion of the school campus, this barn provides flexible space for learning, sports and gathering.
Lighting is rooted in the vernacular of a dilapidated barn, where light leaks inward and outward, so the façade spacing modulates to make the building glow like a lantern. This allows for a dappling of light, shade and shadow as patterns are cast by spaces between wood. Where possible, the indirect passage of light through architectural surfaces is valued above the application of direct light from the light fixtures. TM Light worked with the architects to detail this trespass of light through certain planes of the enclosure. This heightens the space between rather than the architecture.
Where possible, this indirect passage of light through architectural surfaces is emphasized above the application of direct light from the luminaires themselves. The linear, uplight grazers concealed at the balcony level are the main source of illumination for the interior, as well as the ceiling. Cylinder pendants supplement the downlighting and carefully align with the bottom of the wood trusses to reduce visual impact. The lighting design uses inexpensive, industrial fixtures to reinforce the experience of space while using them in an elegant and strategic manner to maintain hierarchy.
Crystal Bridges Museum Art Park
Lighting design: TM Light
Team members: B. Alex Miller, Aoife O’Leary
Architect: Marlon Blackwell Architects
Location: Bentonville, Arkansas
Photography credit: B. Alex Miller
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Heartland Whole Health Institute, is a museum-quality office building complemented by Art Park, an 800-space parking structure serving the museum. TM Light integrates exterior lighting with the parking structure program and exterior, while producing a lighting effect with outdoor sculptural elements. The interior of the parking structure reveals engaging yet functional colored lighting that guides program and movement. The perforated metal screen and solid cladding of the exterior envelope are also illuminated in color. Elements such as stairs and stairwell use path lighting.
Challenged by the owner to design a high-performance building that is both site-responsive and visionary, the architectural team proposed a composition of curvilinear weathered-brass forms resting on a native-stone base, inspired by the Ozark forest and karst landscape. These sculptural elements, placed along the cantilevered outdoor park area, stack toward the sky. TM Light uses a refined lighting technique to project light through fractal-like design geometry, casting patterns onto the ground. The effect captures the function and theme of the adjacent art museum and health institute.
Focus Lighting
Founder Paul Gregory explains: “I started Focus Lighting in 1987, really as a place to design. We try to bring the architect, interior designer and owner together to agree on one concept, one idea, one thought, that the viewer will see when they pass by the store or enter the hotel lobby or walk into a residence; and they’ll feel something that can create an emotion in the viewer.”
Focus Lighting works closely with architects and interior designers to deliver memorable, beautiful lighting designs for clients. Their extensive body of work includes retail, hospitality, office, healthcare, education, entertainment, residential, art pieces and more. Focus Lighting collaborates and explores designs through mockups to bring concepts to reality. Their projects achieve a sense of marvelous while preserving finesse.
Sartiano’s
Lighting design: Focus Lighting
Team lead: Brett Andersen
Interior designer: Studio Sofield
Location: New York, NY
Photography credit: Ryan Fischer
This subterranean restaurant exudes elegance and exclusivity. Located in an iconic building and inspired by a Tuscan wine cellar, the restaurant is warm and intimate. Transparent materials and well-balanced lighting celebrate the desire to see and be seen.. Warm-toned LEDs and gauzy decoration soften, while reflective surfaces in the glass-enclosed VIP section yield mystery. The space shifts from a welcoming daytime environment to a dramatic evening scene as the sun arches beyond the vaulted ceiling. This historic space has been transformed into one of the hottest restaurants in NYC.
The perimeter brick walls that generate a warm underground ambiance are sensitively lit with hidden uplight grazing. Small-profile recessed and structure-mounted downlights are used throughout to discreetly illuminate dining and bar surfaces. Indirect lighting highlights the bar table and drink shelving elements. Mirrors expand the illuminated environment. Lighting enhances the tones, materiality and aesthetic details of Sartiono’s.
Café Carmellini
Lighting design: Focus Lighting
Team lead: Kelly Hannon
Architect: Perkins Eastman
Interior designer: Martin Brudnizki Design Studio
Location: New York, NY
Photography credit: Ryan Fischer
Ranked among North America’s 50 best restaurants in 2025, Cafe Carmenellini is housed within New York’s Landmark building. Like its neoclassical architecture, the design blends the old and the new through ornate craft with a modern touch. Many spherical lamps with a textured-lens aesthetic, along with elegant copper-colored fixture elements, define the primary lighting effect in the space. These fixtures form grand, multi-layered chandeliers and wall sconces, producing ambient light and artistic sparkle.
The interior’s tree and plant elements are uplit, and the bar’s artistic peacock and tree designs are backlit, providing focal points in the space. Downlights, sparingly used throughout the space, provide subtle dining illumination. Lighted blue tiles on the open kitchen walls add contrast and color to the dining experience. Table and bar lamps complement the restaurant’s thematic intent. The lighting engages, creating warmth and exuberance in this interior.
Liberty Science Center Observation Deck
Lighting design: Focus Lighting
Team lead: Brett Andersen
Location: Jersey City, NJ
Photography credit: Ryan Fischer
The Liberty Science Center houses inspiring exhibitions and educational spaces. A recent renovation of the Robert Wood Johnson III tower at this beloved center created the opportunity to reimagine its lighting. The tower now stands out prominently in the skyline, achieving the executive director’s and the museum’s long-term goal. The tower’s unique architecture comprises façade surfaces, interior spaces visible through glazing and a large, glass pyramid-shaped event space at the top, which created unique challenges and opportunities for the lighting design team. A beautifully iconic yet flexible lighting scheme emerges by carefully considering interior and exterior energy usage, maintenance and aesthetics, all on a limited budget and timeline.
The tower’s versatile, color-changing interior and exterior lighting adapt to the desired theme for any event or holiday. The use of indirect facade uplighting and direct-view lighting that outlines the pyramid’s geometry is uniquely vibrant against the distant skyline. The presence of dynamic tower lighting creates a powerful impression on viewers. The lighting at the pyramid also creates an immersive experience for the interior observation and event space, with colorful lighting fully illuminating interior walls. Downlighting and table lamps add layers to this space.
L’Observatoire International
L’Observatoire International was founded in 1993 by Hervé Descottes. The company’s work with well-known architects blends the intersection of light and matter, accentuating architecture and transforming spaces. The firm’s attention to visual hierarchy, shadow, materiality and time tells a story with each project, triggering emotional reactions and memories with these spaces. Emphasizing collaboration, L’Observatoire International provides lighting design and art direction to a range of spatial expressions comprising art and cultural institutions, museums, performing arts centers, educational centers, libraries, large-scale public spaces, parks, outdoor environments, private residencies, luxury commercial properties, master plans, supertalls, hotels and restaurants. They describe their goal of harmonizing the roles natural and artificial lighting play in revealing the drama and nuance of the built environment.
Cité de l’Océan et du Sur
Lighting design: L’Observatoire International
Team: Hervé Descottes, Nicolas Dufils
Architect: Steven Holl Architects
Location: Biarritz, France
Photography credit: Roland Halbe (photos 1 and 2), Iwan Baan (photo 3), Fernando Guerra (photos 4 and 5)
The Cité de l’Océan et du Surf, which opened in 2011, was a collaboration between architects Steven Holl and Solange Fabião. The museum raises awareness of oceanic issues and explores educational and scientific aspects of surf and sea. Derived from the spatial concept “under the sky” / “under the sea”, the museum’s concave exterior creates a central gathering plaza, open to the sky and sea, with the horizon in the distance. On the interior, the inverse-convex curve serves as the ceiling of the main exhibition space, evoking a sense of being “under the sea.”
The 3800-square-meter building, which houses gallery spaces, an auditorium, a restaurant, a cafeteria and administrative offices, is part of a larger site, with a public landscape that flows seamlessly from the museum’s plaza to the water. The approach to interior and exterior architecture creates lighting opportunities.
At night, the two glass structures that house the restaurant and the surfer kiosk glow from within, serving as lanterns for the plaza. Glowing linear step lighting illuminates the exterior stair, following the lighting language of the rest of the site. Inside, energy-efficient fluorescent indirect linear sources illuminate the entry, while the path leading to the exhibition spaces is lit by handrails, creating a soft, inviting, glare-free immersion into the exhibition areas below. To preserve the waveform’s smoothness, the convex-curved interior ceiling is kept completely free of fixtures, with all ambient lighting fully integrated into the architecture. The indirect lighting, which illuminates the sweeping interior walls and ceiling, highlights its sculptural qualities. The architecture of the luminous volumes creates a sense of light emerging from the ground into the interior spaces, while also indirectly illuminating the outdoor landscape.
Audrey Irmas Pavilion
Lighting design: L’Observatoire International
Team: Hervé Descottes, Wei Jien, Wen Y. Lin, Thomas Mnich
Architect: OMA
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Photography credit: Jason O’Rear
The Audrey Irmas Pavilion frames the entry to the adjacent Wilshire Boulevard Temple complex. The upward angle of its rectilinear footprint opens up the spaces between buildings. The streetside exterior is gently illuminated with in-grade uplights, which shape the building’s geometry. The hexagonal facade panels underscore the minimalism, accentuated by luminous, angled rectangular windows.
Social and event spaces carve through the building envelope, creating outdoor views into the building’s community-oriented program. Accessible from the street level, a large arched banquet hall is lined in wood and illuminated, creating a warm and inviting environment. On the upper levels, interior and exterior event spaces overlooking the surrounding city use diffuse lighting and colored lighting to create playful, immersive spaces. The porosity of the design elements is heightened by the lighting strategy, merging the experiences inside and outside the building. The landscape lighting, including tree uplighting, in-grade sculptural lighting, and area lighting, complements the finesse of the pavilion.
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Lighting design: L’Observatoire International
Team members: Hervé Descottes, Brian Alex Miller, Nicolas Dufils, Solenn Borchers, Melanie Seigneur
Architect: Gehry Partners, LLP
Location: Paris, France
Photography credit: Studio Dubuisson
L’Observatoire International’s lighting design heightens the exuberant architecture of Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton building. This space for art and design was conceived as a vessel whose sails soar amidst the trees of the Bois de Boulogne. The lighting expresses the contrast of the architectural language, giving this monumental structure buoyancy and movement. Light from the reflecting pool dapples the glass sails, making the building appear to float amid the green sea of trees.
In the evening, the building envelope transforms. The building’s solid-surface core is washed with warm white light, while the delicately formed transparent glass sails transmit and refract light, revealing a contrast between materials and forms. Directional point sources and wall-washing lights maintain the building’s flow from exterior to interior.
The interior uses light to guide one’s experience through the space artistically and purposefully. Stair paths reveal shifting views above and below, which is complemented by directional lighting. The escalator partitions glow, revealing translucent materiality in an immersive way. Dimmable, integrated LED fixtures allow for sustainability that exceeds the most stringent energy policies. The result is the Foundation Louis Vuitton building as an illuminating beacon of Paris.
