Speakers

*all keynote speakers are in chronological order*

Keynote Speakers

Paloma Design Studio: Sofie Bamberg, Jenny Loqvist, Anna Ekberg.[link]

Portrait of Paloma Design Studio: Sofie Bamberg, Jenny Loqvist, Anna Ekberg

Paloma Design Studio started out of a dream and a vision of creative freedom. The company is founded and run by three female lighting designers with a background in product-, interior- and spatial design. The width of experience in various design fields helps us to take a holistic approach to lighting with room composition and human experience at the focus. During our decade in the lighting industry, we have worked with a wide range of customers and projects, both interior and exterior, private and public. Our vision is to create places that excite you and unique experiences that lingers through the interplay of light, material and space.

Prof. Dr. Manuel Spitschan [link]

Prof. Dr. Spitschan studied psychology at the University of St Andrews and received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2016 to 2017 he was post-doc at Stanford University and from 2017 until 2021, he was a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow and was promoted to University Research Lecturer (2020–2021). In January 2022, Spitschan was appointed to the Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Assistant Professorship “Chronobiology & Health” at TUM and as Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. Spitschan is active in the CIE, chairing JTC20, current speaker of the Steering Committee of the Daylight Academy and past chair of the Optica Color Technical Group.

teamLab Architects Inc.: Shogo Kawata (河田将吾), Raghuram Venkatesan [link]

■ teamLab Architects Inc.

A group that makes digital and architecture coexist in an ambiguous manner.

By taking digital out of the screen and turning an architectural space into architecture that can

be experienced, teamLab Architects designs architecture in which the digital and real coexist

ambiguously.

■ teamLab Inc.

teamLab (f. 2001) is an international art collective. Their collaborative practice seeks to navigate

the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Through art, the

interdisciplinary group of specialists, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators,

mathematicians, and architects, aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world,

and new forms of perception.

*all speakers are in chronological order*

December 4^th 2023

Seren Dincel

Light formed through urban morphology and different organism groups: First findings from a systematic review.

Seren Dincel is a practising lighting designer and doctoral student. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design from Bahcesehir University of Istanbul, Turkey and master’s degrees in Interior Architecture from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and Architectural Lighting Design from Hochschule Wismar, Germany. Seren worked for Sweco Architects, Zumtobel Group, Light Bureau part of AFRY and JVL Studio on projects at various scales with a focus on outdoor public spaces. She is currently a doctoral student at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Her doctoral work is part of a multi-stakeholder transdisciplinary project involving pedestrian lighting applications in urban parks to minimise the ecological impact. Seren is an associate member of the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD).

Pimkamol Mattsson

Coping with darkness: residents’ experience of availability of outdoor lighting in neighbourhoods

Pimkamol Mattsson, an associate senior lecturer in Environmental Psychology, Dept. of Architecture and Built Environment, Lund University. Her research focuses on human interaction with the built environment and its impacts on energy use, social climate, health and well-being by applying design and psychological theories and mixed method approaches to study human perception, experience and behaviour in relation to physical and social environments. Pimkamol has worked with research projects on human interaction with energy‐efficient design and technologies including energy-efficient lighting in buildings and urban environments, and taken design, personal and social factors influencing behaviours into account. She has a special interest to acquire further knowledge and work experience with multidisciplinary research in which the fields of psychology, architecture, engineering, social, educational and environmental sciences are involved. Her teaching activities devote to environmental design in particular, light and colour. She is also collaborating with public and private actors in both research and education.

Riikka Vuorenmaa

Co-designing Safe and Sustainable Darkness for Northern Urban Places

Riikka Vuorenmaa has worked as lighting designer and scenographer in performing arts since 2001. Her areas of expertise include site-specificity, spatial design, and live art. In recent years Vuorenmaa has focused artistically on long-term outdoor projects committed to change in urban spaces. Vuorenmaa has two master’s degrees in arts: new media as major, from University of Lapland in 2004 and lighting and sound design as major, from Finnish Theatre Academy in 2006. She grew interest in urban lighting while attending continuing education program of Lighting Design in the Oulu School of Architecture, University of Oulu in 2020-2022. At the moment, Vuorenmaa works as project researcher in the Safe and Sustainable Darkness research project in the University of Oulu. In her future doctoral dissertation on urban lighting, she studies what kind of local understanding is relevant in protecting and restoring sustainable urban darkness: how to get the understanding and how to use it in urban lighting design and planning. The research explores participatory methods and community engagement that are linked to certain locations – as opposed to design principles that are somehow more universal. The main interest is in the complementary use opimf in situ artistic methodology and geographic information systems (GIS).

Henrika Pihlajaniemi

Co-designing Safe and Sustainable Darkness for Northern Urban Places

Architect (M.Sc.), D.Sc. (Tech), lighting designer and researcher Henrika Pihlajaniemi lectures and teaches Architectural and Urban Lighting in the Oulu School of Architecture (OSA), University of Oulu. She had a leading role in establishing architectural lighting education in the curricula of architects in 2003 and as a multidisciplinary continuing education program in 2020. In 2016, she defended her doctoral thesis “Designing and experiencing adaptive lighting – case studies with adaptation, interaction and participation”. Recently, she has led several research projects in OSA, such as “SenCity – Intelligent lighting as a service platform for innovative cities” project, where smart lighting solutions were piloted in six cities in Finland. Her research is related to intelligent lighting and well-being in learning and working environments, lighting education, and to the use of lighting to develop cities. At the moment, she is leading the research project “Safe and Sustainable Darkness”, which studies methods to create good and safe experiences of darkness in various urban environments, supporting well-being of people and nature. Additionally, she works as a lighting design consultant in her architectural office (M3 Architects). She and M3 Architects have received numerous prizes in national and international architectural and urban design competitions.

Isak Foged

Daylight Diagram – A new method to map and analyze the temporal conditions of daylight intensity.

I am a Professor WSR at the Institute of Architecture and Design at The Royal Danish Academy, Cluster Leader and Founder of the Cluster for Material Studies, currently building a new exciting research environment including architects, designers, and engineers with affiliated chemists and psychologists. The research group investigates across material and structural scales, focusing on biogenic material compositions through qualitative and quantitative methods.

Trained as an Architect (MAA) and Civil Engineer (IDA), I have held positions as Associate Professor in Environmental Tectonics at Aalborg University (2018-2020) and Assistant Professor at Aalborg University (2015-2018). I hold a PhD from Aalborg University (2015) with visiting scholar studies at Columbia University (2014), a M.Arch. from the School of Architecture, UIC, Barcelona (2009) and MSc.Eng.Arch. from Aalborg University (2008). [image and bio from Royal Danish Academy]

Nanet Mathiassen

Poetic Daylight – a pavilion for the perception of daylight

Nanet Mathiasen is an architect and holds a position as researcher at BUILD Institute of the Built Environment, Aalborg University, Denmark. She specializes in architectural lighting design and holds a Ph.D. on Nordic light and architecture. In her research she focuses on the role of daylight in architecture and how various lighting design creates the perceived atmosphere of a space. Within resent years, she has been occupied with sensory stimuli of light and how to include these effects of light in healthcare architecture with the intention of supporting vulnerable people such as elderly people with dementia. Parallel to her research Nanet teaches at lighting design educations focusing on architectural daylight design and the relation between perceiving and measuring light.

Evdoxia Iro Gkolompia

Uniform vs. uneven lighting: Accommodation of multiple users’ preferences in study rooms.

Evdoxia Iro Gkolompia is a Greek architect/ lighting designer who has graduated from the School of Architecture of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and has recently obtained a Master’s degree in Architectural Lighting Design, in KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden (2023). She believes in the need for design solutions which will contribute through complementarity to the research of the harmony of our cities and homes, as these are the “vessels” of our lives and the miniatures of the world in which someone shapes a character and an image of life. Her vision is to use and combine her knowledge and experience in lighting design and architecture in order to create sustainable spaces that are conducive to human use, compatible with the needs of users regarding physical and mental health, while promoting beauty and functionality. In May 2021 she participated in the Panhellenic Interdisciplinary Conference “SPACE INTERWEAVINGS. Ethos – Social Practices – Architecture” with a presentation’s topic: In search of the future ‘hues’ of Beauty. She has also participated in various architecture and lighting design workshops and seminars around Europe.

December 5^th 2023

Yael Erel [on behalf of Lyn Godley]

The Use of Immersive Light-Based Art for Wellbeing

Yael Erel is an architect, educator and light artist. She interweaves light research with academic teaching and practice. Erel is a registered architect as well as the president and co-founder of lightexture, her lighting practice, where she designs and constructs light fixtures and light art installations. She graduated with honors from The Cooper Union (BArch) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (MArch), where she gained deep insight on light as material. Her current research studies the construction of spatial and temporal light-drawings with reflected light. Erel has exhibited her work extensively and was awarded second prize in the international 2022 (d)arc Awards for her project Reflecting on Troy, featured in the Troy Glow Light Festival. She lectures internationally, is a published writer and the recipient 2020 Architectural Education JAE Best Article Award. Erel has been teaching architecture since 2004; she has been immersed in architectural education and taught architecture at Harvard GSD, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, The Cooper Union, and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Rensselaer School of Architecture.

Alyaá Tabbah

Simulation workflows in multi-objective lighting design optimisation for human well-being and building performance metrics: a scoping review.

Alyaá Tabbah holds an MSc in Sustainable Building Information Management from Jönköping University, School of Engineering. In October 2021, Alyaá started as a research assistant in the Department of Construction Engineering and Lighting Science. In October 2022, Alyaá became a PhD student at the Department of Construction Engineering and Lighting Science. Her PhD is about advanced lighting simulations in automated information flow. She is currently working on investigating and developing a multi-criteria analysis framework integrating beyond-vision effects of light focusing on evaluation metrics, simulation workflows and evaluation criteria to create a balanced built environment.

Jim Collin

Sustainability aspect of designing light for people (rather than building)

Originally an electrical engineer Jim Collin went back to school to study lighting design when he realized that his metric toolbox was not enough to create good spaces for people. Following his degree Jim has spent the past 20 years enlightening people in the duality of light as a combination of function and aesthetics. After a multiple award-winning career in lighting design, ending as the international head of Light Bureau, Jim today drives his own business as an internationally hired speaker and lecturer in lighting combined with a partnership at the lighting supply company, Annell Ljus + Form. Jim has throughout his career strived to raise general awareness of the great potential in proper handling of the lighting matter. By creating good lighting for people, enormous energy savings can be made while lowering the total cost of the lighting installation. A true win-win-win situation.

Juan Carlos Mirson

Indirect Lighting in Contemplative Spaces -an Endless Depth

Juan Carlos Mirson, born in 1985 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He graduated as an Industrial Designer from the University of Buenos Aires. Fascinated by the interaction between light and space, he transitioned from specializing in luminaire design to exploring light sources and how they influence spaces and the perception of those who occupy them. In 2016, he completed his master in architectural lighting design at KTH University in Stockholm. During his time at KTH, he honed his technical knowledge and delved into the underlying aspects of light, with a focus on phenomenology, culminating his studies with a thesis that explores the complexities intertwining human perception with architectural experiences. Since 2017, he has resided in Berlin, establishing a prominent career in the field of architectural lighting. He has worked in various specialized lighting studios, and since 2022, he has been working as a project leader at Licht Kunst Licht. In his work, he combines his passion for light with deep technical knowledge to create captivating and meaningful environments. His personal interest goes beyond simply illuminating spaces; he seeks to discover the intricate paths that, through history, art, and human sensibility, lead to the development of how we inhabit spaces.

Luca Pellizzari

The Influence of Urban Lighting on the Sense of Belonging

Luca Pellizzari, is an Italian practising lighting designer based in France. He holds an MSc in Lighting Design from Aalborg University Copenhagen and a BSc in Product Design from the Polytechnic University of Turin. Luca currently practises as a lighting designer at Les Éclaireurs, an independent architectural and urban lighting design consultancy based in Lyon, France, with a portfolio ranging from national to international projects. Among others, he is currently actively working on the project for the new lighting design of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, namely its facades and surroundings. Luca took part in the Copenhagen Light Festival in 2021 and 2022, with two distinct light installations realised from concept to crafting. He also took part as a panel speaker in the panel discussion “Lighting design from a sustainability perspective” hosted by Fagerhult in the context of Light Symposium 2022 in Copenhagen. Luca has a special interest in the human and social dimension of lighting and its potential to improve people’s well-being, adopting a contextual approach that places at the centre who uses and inhabits the space.

Laura de Frutos

The Influence of Urban Lighting on the Sense of Belonging

Laura de Frutos is a Spanish lighting designer based in Berlin. Previously, she lived, studied and worked in Milan, Madrid and Copenhagen. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and an MSc in Lighting Design from Aalborg University Copenhagen (AAU). Throughout her career in various independent lighting design practices, she has acquired expertise in a diverse range of projects with different scales and typologies. She has developed a special interest in the interplay between light, human perception and atmospheres, by defining qualitative criteria for architectural lighting beyond functional needs. Furthermore, her Master’s Thesis focused on the social role of lighting as a tool to strengthen the emotional bonds between space and citizens. Laura is currently working at Kardorff Ingenieure Lichtplanung in Germany, where she is involved in developing a wide range of national and international projects with renowned architectural firms.

Yael Erel

Urban Illuminations – Light Art Activating the Public Realm

Maria Johansson

People’s conceptual environmental appraisals of urban space in daylight and electric light

Maria Johansson MA in psychology and professor in environmental psychology at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Lund University, Sweden. Her research focus upon human – environment interaction from the individual’s perspective amongst others focusing on lit urban and green spaces.

James Anderson

James Anderson is a 20-year veteran in the lighting design community. Having worked as a technician, designer, manufacturer, and salesperson, he has experience from all sides of the industry and all over the world. James was born in America and has a background in fine arts and design. He now lives in Göteborg, Sweden where he continues to work closely with lighting designers, architects, and electrical consultants in his position with Stockholm Lighting Company.