Lighting design is the deliberate crafting of luminous environments focused on anticipating perception, an act that is overwhelmingly developed through images and representations. This exploration has culminated in Director of Lam Labs Dan Weissman’s Harvard Graduate School of Design seminar ‘Modeling Light’.

Student projects synthesis analog and digital representations, integrating the initial hands-on explorations into a comprehensive lighting design for an art gallery. The final deliverable was a multi-layered proposal featuring three design strategies: refined Daylighting design; a curatorial and architectural electric lighting scheme; and an Immersive Light Art installation in the ‘Light and Space’ tradition. Students in six groups developed highly unique and original lighting designs for an art gallery, inspired by a particular piece of art. The gallery space was to be daylit, with an electric lighting design that both provided for the needed adjustable lighting for artwork on walls or pedestals, as well as architectural lighting. Finally, students developed a site-specific light art installation, transforming the gallery space into a unique environment with light as the primary medium of exploration. Groups each developed their own desired focus, with some developing their daylighting design, some the electric architectural lighting, and some the art installation.

Alvan, Ken, Yu Han, and Jiachen developed an articulated skylight design reminiscent of the Baylor University Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation and the Yale Center for British Art. The team envisioned light scoops capturing warm direct sunlight and cool skylight within a grid that allows track lighting to mount at a 35-degree angle from perimeter walls. As the skylight’s color temperature shifts throughout the day, the dynamic atmosphere invites users to pause at central seating and view the ceiling as the gallery’s primary art piece.

Rasha and Rick pays homage to the painter Etel Adnan in their project “Ground that holds light : topographic inundations as instruments of light and shadow.” Inspired by Adnan’s abstract landscapes, this light study explores animating terrain through color and time. During the day, a central skylight casts shifting circular projections across topographic inundations. At night, light beams pass through Grasshopper-scripted perforations based on Adnan’s The Weight of the World, using shadows and spatial depth to reconstruct the landscape. Ultimately, the project redefines landscape as an evolving atmosphere shaped by perception rather than a static image. Cyanotype prints explore the limits of contrast and the representation of light.