Firm
Linnaea Tillett Lighting Design Associates creates imaginative, technically innovative and ecologically-sensitive lighting programs for the landscape and built environment. With a reputation for lyricism and a passion for restraint, the firm has forged a highly acclaimed body of work by finding the poetic in the functional, the elegant in the robust, and simplicity in technical and regulatory complexity. Led by an environmental psychologist, the firm has pioneered an ecologically-sensitive approach to lighting in the landscape that centers and protects local habitat: human and non-human alike.
The firm has 35 years of experience with projects across the United States and beyond. The lighting design team leverages additional expertise in the fields of environmental psychology, landscape architecture, interior design and sculpture. Working across a range of typologies and scales, the portfolio includes urban parks, waterfronts, cultural campuses, connective corridors and master plans as well as outdoor sculpture collections and public art. Known for their commitment to seeing each project successfully built and maintained, the firm is a frequent collaborator with leading landscape architects, architects and public artists including Maya Lin, Toshiko Mori, Nelson Byrd Woltz, OLIN, Gustafson Guthrie Nichols, Civitas and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.
The firm is a nationally certified WBE.
Our Philosophy
Our work is both poetic and non-poetic (i.e., practical). We oscillate between pragmatic and aesthetic function—tipping even the most straightforward condition—a street, a hallway, a bike bridge—into a condition that is open to artistic form.
Our work is resolutely site-specific. Night is not the same everywhere. It is concrete; it is specific; and filled with surfaces, each of which responds differently to every glancing light. Each site has its own nighttime culture, norms and that intangible quality - atmosphere -- which we draw out.
We listen. We learn from our clients and the larger community about their activities and their social ties, culture and histories. From this, we craft our designs in dialogue with values and sensibilities of the landscape architect, architect or artist with whom we collaborate.
We operate with an acute sensitivity to the desired emotional texture of a space-its affective, social and symbolic dimensions. We take the view that how a space feels is as important as how it looks.
We respect the need to protect the night sky and well-being of the many nocturnal species inhabiting our world. Hence our approach turns on first analyzing where—and even if—lighting is needed. Whenever possible, we amplify, reuse and refine what exists. And if light is missing, we add it in as subtle and efficacious a manner as possible.
We realize our vision through in-depth research, careful analysis, the precision and clarity of our documentation, and our attentiveness and accessibility to our clients and collaborators.
Finally, we recognize that we are operating in a global climate that is increasingly complex, extreme, unpredictable and, at times, destructive. Therefore, we look to employ new thinking and techniques to design robust lighting programs that can function in unstable and adverse circumstances.
Tillett Lighting Design Associates
11 Hanover Square, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10005
