Anna Freiesleben
With a background in architecture and urban design, Anna ventured into lighting design to explore atmosphere and placemaking through the specialist medium of light.
The captivating elements of light, shadow and pattern have consistently featured throughout Anna’s design work, including an immersive projection installation at the 2018 Venice Biennale. Winner of a Silver Creative Conscience Award in 2020, Anna's Master’s thesis explored migration and boundaries, expressed through the layering of coloured glass, perforated screens, and their shadows.
Since joining Michael Grubb Studio, Anna has utilised her conceptual and technical skills in notable projects including Battersea Power Station, Silvertown and Ad Gefrin Distillery. These skills were effectively implemented on site at Ready Steady Light 2021, where the team won the Technical Award.
Anna continues to expand her portfolio of bespoke lighting projects, focusing on crafting spaces that radiate ambiance and purpose. Always considering the core foundations of light, the nature of light beyond Earth is the latest fascination to capture Anna’s imagination.
Irene Mazzei
Irene received her PhD in Chemistry in 2022, after completing her BSc and MSc in Materials Science in 2016 and 2018. The projects she’s worked on have always been motivated by sustainability, and spaced from the development of sustainable materials for gas capture and separation to feedstock valorisation considering the principles of Green Chemistry.
She is strongly motivated by the need to have real initiatives to promote sustainability and recognises the importance of sharing knowledge within the industry on how to tackle these issues.
Since 2022 she has been working as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate with Edinburgh Napier University and Stoane Lighting on a project funded by UKRI’s Innovate UK and focused on the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the lighting industry. To do so, she has been working in direct contact with lighting designers and manufacturers on the quantification of the environmental impacts of lighting products using LCA and other methodologies. She is involved in the dissemination of her sustainability studies, academically and commercially. In 2023, she was Technical Lead in the working group focused on the creation of a lighting-dedicated version of CIBSE TM65 embodied carbon assessment methodology – TM65.2.
Tony Matters
Designer Tony Matters is the founder and Creative Director of Faber and Company, an award-winning design studio specialising in the restaurant and hospitality industry. From Michelin-starred restaurants to neighbourhood cafés, Faber's multi-disciplinary team designs everything from interiors and branding to tableware and staff uniforms.
Alongside their portfolio of F&B projects, Faber are official tableware designers for the Bocuse d’Or UK, working alongside the country's best chefs to represent the UK in the world’s largest and most prestigious culinary competition. It’s Tony’s vision and commitment to curating a complete experience that’s helped Faber become one of the leading restaurant designers in the UK.
Sandra Brookes
As part of her role at Lighting Design International Sandra Brookes oversees, manages, and designs projects within the office. She is actively responsible for initial bidding for projects, client liaisons and the development of conceptual ideas through to detailed design and final installation. She also ensures that the result within the space accurately reflects the initial vision, that is why she describes herself as a warrior of light.
Trained as an architect and lighting designer, Sandra has over 20 years’ experience in the lighting design industry and has worked in Lighting Design International for around 7 years. Sandra’s project expertise ranges from high-end retail, residential, restaurants, hospitality, historic buildings, as well as master planning in urban environments worldwide and within the UK.
Fluent in Spanish and English, Sandra studied architecture in the Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia, where she gained an insight in the architectural world. In addition to her studies in Colombia, Sandra was given the opportunity to study in the Danish Royal Academy of Arts, where she continued her architecture training. It was in Denmark that she decided to pursue a career in lighting design, as the Danish sensibilities to light made her aware of its subtle yet powerful ability to change and enhance architecture.
Sandra was granted a scholarship in Colombia and came back to Europe, this time to London to study lighting design in The Bartlett School of Architecture. At the start of her lighting career, Sandra gained experience in engineering consultancies, which added a different perspective and another layer to her lighting skills through developing solutions integrating daylight and artificial lighting supporting sustainability.
Her interest in lighting design as part of architecture, took her to work with Lighting Design International, where she gained a well-rounded experience in many UK and international projects. These include restaurants, building exteriors, luxury residences and particularly Hotels which include the Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel in Greece which won the Best lighting for the Bar & Restaurant awards for the Avra Lounge.
As an Associate for Lighting Design International she will continue to build Lighting Design International’s portfolio of projects, creating inspiring spaces through the careful integration of lighting to architecture. As lighting professional, she keeps current with the new technologies and design trends within the lighting industry, ensuring the designs respond with the latest trends, technology and products.
www.lightingdesigninternational.com
Chloe Salvi
Chloe graduated with an MA in Lighting Design from Edinburgh Napier University. Her knowledge of lighting stems from her professional background in photography during which she developed her understanding of light as an expressive tool that can create an atmosphere able to communicate strong emotions and feelings.
Following her graduation, Chloe gained experience assisting public light art installations such as 'Garden of Light' by French artists TILT in Leicester Square during London Lumiere, ‘Alley of Light’ at the Amsterdam International Light Festival and Leo Villareal’s ‘Illuminated River’ project on London’s Thames. She then transitioned into architectural lighting and worked with an award-winning independent lighting design studio in the US, assisting high-end commercial projects in the Bay Area following the latest local energy efficiency standards and LEED certifications.
Back in the UK, Chloe worked with an independent practice specialising in creative public realm lighting and is now working with a studio specialised in high end hospitality delivering elegant atmospheres worldwide.
Chloe is passionate about ecology, sustainability and promoting mindful lighting design approaches that consider the impact of lighting on the environment and the species that inhabit it. She has recently become a mum and has kickstarted with Ruth Kelly Waskett a peer support group for all current and prospective parents in the industry.
Zerlina Hughes
Zerlina studied at Goldsmith’s College, University of London and the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
Early in her career she worked as an assistant to film director Mike Leigh and was lighting design consultant for Warner Bros’ ‘Batman Begins’. Her theatre designs include the National Theatre, London’s West End, New York Broadway and Sydney Opera House. In opera and dance, she worked extensively in France, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. This work continues in the studio with the recent work at the Royal Opera House, The National Theatre of Scotland, festivals in Europe and America.
In 2006, Zerlina formed lighting design practice studio ZNA, completing successful projects in all major national institutions including the National Gallery, V&A Museum, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Design Museum, Royal Academy. Recent completions include on a new build museum in Odense, Denmark, refurbishment of the Courtauld Gallery, the Wallace Collection and Raphael Court and Hintze Sculpture Gallery at the V&A Museum. The studio has designed lighting for commercial galleries: Philips Auction House and Gallery, Colnaghi Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery and David Zwirner Gallery. As well as completing several high end commercial, retail and residential spaces for clients such as HISCOX HQ, London, Rolex HQ, London, Asprey Store, London. The studio was also proud to deliver the lighting scheme for new Maggie’s Centre, at the Royal Marsden Hospital. Most recently in Summer 2023 two long term projects completed and opened to great acclaim: the transformed Young V&A museum and the National Portrait Gallery.
studio ZNA uses lighting in the design of spaces as a narrative tool. We consider time, season, mood, colour and texture as well as function and form. How do we want the occupant to feel as they enter a space, as they inhabit a space over time, navigate and obtain the desired messaging and also how they feel as the leave a space - what has it invoked in them. From this, we create a choreography of luminance, a light journey.
Zerlina’s background in theatrical and film lighting is crucial as here. As part of the creative team, we collaborate fully in the conceptual thinking to completion. We find this delivers the most successful finished projects as the lighting is fully integrated into all aspects of the designed environments. It also informs the way we discuss and present design with our clients and creative partners. It is not purely a technical process but a shared creative dialogue led by people. We thrive in this collaborative process, and it informs our design practices. We have established long working relationships with different types of practices and one our longest collaborations is with Nissen Richards Studio.
Zerlina and Nissen Richards Studio Director Pippa Nissen began their careers at similar times and first worked together in theatre nearly 30 years ago, before extending their work into architecture and exhibition. They both are fascinated with the way in which light expresses space and material and its transformative and sensory qualities that add another dimension to the built environment. They are both keen to develop their work with a view to support new types of more sustainable, flexible architecture.
Zerlina is a professional member of the International Association of Lighting Designers and a representative for the international platform Women in Lighting.
Pippa Nissen
Pippa Nissen established Nissen Richards Studio in 2010 and now runs the practice together with co-director Jim Richards. The arts and culture-based studio offers architecture, exhibition design, interpretation, theatre and graphic design as its unique multi-disciplinary skillset. Thirteen years on, the company’s multi-award-winning portfolio features projects for some of the UK’s - and the world’s - leading cultural institutions, from the British Museum, the National Trust, the National Railway Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Wordsworth Grasmere and the V&A to MUNCH and Kode in Norway, the Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, the Hannover Staatsoper and the National Library of Norway.
The practice was awarded two RIBA National Awards 2022 and 2023. First, for the sensitive new-build design of the viewing tower at historic Anglo-Saxon burial site Sutton Hoo and secondly as part of the team that refurbished The Courtauld, leading the scheme’s wayfinding and gallery designs. Nissen Richards Studio’s inspirational new colour scheme and designs for the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year were called ‘bold and sometimes surprising’ by the FT and ‘magnificent’ by The Times.
Pippa Nissen studied architecture at University of Cambridge, gaining first class honours, and returned to teach as a Design Fellow after qualifying. She also studied for an MA in Theatre Design at Slade School of Fine Art, graduating with distinction. In 2020, she and her team agreed to lead a new postgraduate teaching unit at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University, challenging students to face the future and design ‘A Museum for Now’.
Pippa’s unique fusion of architecture and theatre design is one of the many elements that set Nissen Richards Studio apart. The studio’s theatre work, under Pippa’s direction, has also included work for The Actors Touring Company, Aldeburgh Festival, Albany Theatre, Basel Opera and Teatro Orientación in Mexico.
Pippa speaks and writes widely on architecture and interpretation, sustainability, colour and lighting for publications including for The Architects’ Journal, Architecture Today, Architecture Magazine, the RIBA Journal, FX, Museums Journal, Design Insider, DARC, ARC and Art & Museum. In 2020, Pippa was invited by the RIBA to edit the Civic and Cultural chapter of the RETHINK book, which looked at post-pandemic architecture, involving guest submissions from leading industry figures from the British Museum and The Natural History Museum. Pippa has been a design judge for the Blueprint Blue Riband Student Awards, the Design Week Awards, the Architects’ Journal Student Prize and the FX International Interior Design Awards.
www.nissenrichardsstudio.com
www.amuseumfornow.com
Beata Denton
Beata Denton is an architect and lighting designer, educated at KTH in Stockholm and at Westminster University in London. She was head of the Interior design studio at pS Arkitektur in Stockholm for many years and has been working with lighting design for about 20 years. She works in Sweden but has had a gap year working as a lighting designer in London.
Her passion for lighting and storytelling led her to take the step four years ago when she Initiated the Lighting studio in Reflex Architects, Stockholm, which she is running today.
Her speciality is working with office lighting for strong brands such as RedBull and TUI Travels and many gaming companies, notably Skype, Mojang, King and Paradox interactive. Her work also includes hospitality lighting for restaurants and bars and private homes.
Beata finds great satisfaction in meeting with people and learning from peers in the business, as well being a mentor herself. She has been a mentor for 2 consecutive years in the Silhouette Awards and she is presently representing Women in Lighting in Stockholm. She was the Chairwoman for the Swedish Lighting Society for 5 years until last December.
Gary Thornton
James Poore
James is the founder and CCO of JPLD having dedicated his career to lighting and he has been working in the field of architectural lighting design for over 20 years. JPLD are an award-winning independent lighting consultancy covering all aspects of lighting and lighting design, working locally, nationally and internationally with a broad portfolio of projects and clients across the world.
James has given talks on light and lighting both locally and internationally, has written articles for various journals and publications and is a member and council member for the SLL (Society of Light and Lighting) and CIBSE (Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers) as well as the ILP (Institute of Lighting Professionals), where he sits on the education & architectural committees. He is also a fellow of the RSA. James is a member of the advisory board of the Lighting Police since 2022 supporting the team raising awareness about the importance of adequate light in our lives.
