Blog
Welcome to the Light World Tour blog, fellow lighting design professionals and lighting enthusiasts!
Starting in September, our lucky competition winner, Paula Rainha will travel the globe in search of the world’s most inspiring lighting sights, installations and events. She’ll also have the opportunity to conduct interviews with leading designers, architects, technology experts and artists in the field.
Paula will share her 3-month journey through daily blogging, photo and video uploads and tweets. So stop by daily – She welcomes your comments, questions and support. And don’t forget to follow her on
Current location: Amsterdam
Latest posts
5th January 2012
After three months and a few weeks on the road I ended my Light World Tour in Porto, so this is actually might last post as a world traveller. What this trip was and involved went beyond my expectations. It was an amazing learning lesson and a privileged experience on lighting and this will definitely remain unforgettable for the rest of my life.
5th January 2012
There are two Pritzker Portuguese winners based in Porto, the architect Álvaro Siza awarded in 1992 and architect Eduardo Souto de Moura in 2011. They have quite a vast and diverse work so without having the chance to cover everything (I would need another Light tour just for this) I decided to pick Casa da Música (House of Music), a project by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas that has won the Pritzker Award in 2000.
5th January 2012
To celebrate my 100th post I decided to go to Oporto for the very end of my Light World Tour. 315 km north of Lisbon, we actually call it Cidade Invicta (Unvanquished / unbeaten city) or Porto which means literally Port from where the Port Wine takes its name from. Located along Douro River it is another city where life is very much connected to water.
3rd January 2012
In a country very much connected to water and the ocean I had several reasons to go to the Oceanário de Lisboa (Lisbon Oceanarium): as much diverse my Light World Tour has been I hadn´t covered yet lighting underwater and they have a new extension to house temporary exhibitions that I was keen to visit. Plus, I´ve been before and I never get tired of watching the fish swimming in their massive tank.
2nd January 2012
I met up with João Luís Carrilho da Graça (JLCG), an award winning architect who has a very extensive and diverse work in Portugal and internationally, for a short conversation on light and architecture.
On architecture and light JLCG referred James Turrel who sees light as a mean to define space regardless of the light source, either being nature or man-made technology. This is how JLCG interprets lighting in his buildings.
2nd January 2012
After the initial shock, I felt happy to be home. Lisbon is such an inspiring capital that is hard to become indifferent to this city. And now seeing it under a ´new light´ it seemed more charming than ever.
Inhabited since the Neolithic t is a city with seven hills crossed by the wide river Tagus and its natural port was always an important feature of the city. The river and the ocean at Lisbon doors´ are a constant presence in the city that you can actually admire from various perspectives and different highpoints
31st December 2011
Returning back home and stopping traveling was a great shock for me. I started having the blues. On the first days I was back I dreamt that I was about to miss flights! And lying on my bed I would wake up in the middle of the night wanting to check my itinerary and my next destination to realize that I was already back home.
21st December 2011
Amsterdam was my last destination. By this time I felt a real traveller living only from a suitcase and calling home the hotel rooms I passed through on this trip. So far I counted almost 40 cities, 18 countries, 3 special regions, 33 flights, 38 hotel rooms and about 95 days of travelling!
21st December 2011
Light has been always important in Painting and is a source of inspiration for many artists. Netherlands was the birthplace for some of the most famous painters in art history and since I was in Amsterdam it seemed to me to be the ideal place to explore light in painting. A limited schedule and a queue that wrapped around the building made me avoid the Van Gogh Museum. This appeared to be the obvious option, but I accepted the suggestion by Rogier Van der Heide who I had met a few days before, and instead I headed to the Rijksmuseum. In here you can admire some of the art pieces by the likes of Rembrandt and Vermeer.
21st December 2011
When I arrived at Eindhoven, I couldn’t really believe, three months had passed and I was back where I started. Three months was that so? I had learnt so many things and had so many stories to tell that I didn’t even know where to start. People kept asking what were the highlights of the trip and what I liked the most and I just wanted to say: everything! I enjoyed every moment that I didn’t really want to end it like this! So with a few days in the area I took my time to relax and to share my experience with different people that were interested on my journey.
