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INTERVIEW / BERNHARD BSTIELER
INVERSE REACTION
Bernhard Bstieler’s lighting journey has taken him from Austria to the UK and to Thailand, picking up accolades and awards every step of the way. Jimmie Wing caught up with him in Bangkok
“I FEEL THERE IS A LOT TO DISCOVER ABOUT THE LIGHTING PREFERENCE IN DIFFERENT CULTURES BUT VERY OFTEN IT IS NOT SO EASY TO BACK TRACK. IN THAI TEMPLES THEY NOW USE LOTS OF FLUORESCENT WHEREAS IN THE PAST THEY RELIED ON MUCH MORE AMBIENT LIGHTING.”
Many are familiar with tales of talented professionals who sacrifice their careers to move to a distant country to be with some- one they love, and conversely, those who ruthlessly place their careers over family obligations. It is the rare individual who can follow their heart and achieve professional acclaim. Bernhard Bstieler is one such per- son. Despite moving to Thailand to be with his wife (also a lighting designer) whom he met in London while studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Bstieler is UK Lighting Designer of the Year in addition to achieving numerous other awards and accolades, such as Overall Winner of the 2000 City-People-Light Conceptual Design Competition; winner of the 2007 Residential Projects Lighting Design Award UK; 2010 Lighting Design Award UK, International Projects Winner; and the 2010 Bar and Res- taurant Design UK, Lighting Design Winner. So how did he get into lighting design?
Perhaps there was no ‘defining moment’ but his interest in creative lighting was first piqued in the mid/late ‘70s when he came across the work of Munich based artist, Ingo Maurer, who originated the idea of low voltage hanging light sculptures and whose winged light bulb became a lighting icon of the late 20th century. At the time, Maurer’s work with light was very innovative and Bstieler wanted to understand more about how it was done. An Austrian, Bstieler grew up in Innsbruck and studied electrical engineering at Tech- nical College for Electrical Engineering (HTL Innsbruck). Then he did something com- pletely different; he got a business degree in economics at the University of Innsbruck. During the course of these diverse studies he joined Bartenbach, a lighting engineer- ing office that later changed its name to Bartenbach LichtLabor. These were probably his formative years. Declared Bstieler: “I
was greatly inspired and encouraged by the founder Christian Bartenbach. Even though he’s an engineer his approach in studying human reaction to natural and artificial light was extensive.” Bartenbach’s experiments included ac- claimed research into how people respond to different lighting conditions both consciously and subconsciously. Bstieler was fascinated but after four or five years “I found my interest in integrating lighting into the architecture, after learning about technically perfect solutions, I felt that lighting should really be a part of the design of the architecture and not a separate element and I wanted to study more about architecture and light.”
Consequently in 1998, he went to London to The Bartlett Graduate School (Bartlett School of Architecture) to get a Masters degree in Light & Lighting.
Next he joined the London based lighting
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