In Greek mythology, Prometheus is regarded not just as the Titan god of forethought and fire, but also as humanity’s benefactor. It is considered that in defying the Olympian gods by stealing the sun’s fiery soul and gifting it to us, civilisation was actualised and prospered. From living in shadows to living, we cautiously learned to tame fire and have since congregated around its glowing embers, worshipping it for its benevolence, of warming, nourishing, and protecting us, a fiery beacon of enlightenment and progress.

Light as life—the same powerful connotation is replete in most major religions of the world. Beams from our solitary star have outlined forms of divinity for aeons, from Sol to Surya and Helios, representing our ability to truly see and gain intellect, which in turn, has coloured cultures. The pursuit of light has also been essential in designing architectural entities for aeons, for it is in how we channel, position, and dictate routes for natural as well as artificial lighting that spaces truly manifest and emote. Deified onto surfaces and captured through architectural play and fixtures, light, with its constant shadowy companions truly creates atmospheres.

Conceptualised upon the same registers, PSLab Lighting’s new home in Berlin, Germany, resembles the studio’s bespoke approach to lighting, harnessing and upholding light as a material and protagonist. Themselves lighting experts specialising in the designing, communicating, planning, implementing, and manufacturing of lights and lighting fixtures, this project marks the company’s fifth studio in Europe (after Stuttgart, Antwerp, Bologna, and London, with Paris and Amsterdam in the making) to showcase its unique design process, materials, mock-ups, and technical light.

Designed in collaboration with Belgium-based B-bis architecten and Lukas Beer (site architect), the new space has been conceived as simply, ‘a space built for light.’ Its location in Berlin’s Charlottenburg, chosen deliberately between the luxurious and bustling Kurfürstendamm and gritty Kantstrasse on Niebuhrstrasse, is an area defined by galleries, small neighbourhood restaurants and independent shops. Housed on the ground floor of a typical West-Berlin residential building from 1907, the context-specific architecture of the new studio takes ample cues from the city’s classic yet pure and abstract environment. The idea began with wanting to bring the rigid, strict, rational aspects of this atmosphere, of symmetry and repetition spelt by arches and colonnades frozen in expanses of grey, and emulate it within the studio. 

A sacral space for light

The façade design spanning across the whole ground floor incorporates a large, contemporary zinc and glass sliding door that greets guests into the space, situating them instantly into an expansive, stage-like setting. Almost in response, the stark austerity of this space reveals a framed, pleasing view of a verdant courtyard, the calming green softening the vast stretch of industrial grey. "As a highly contemporary element, in contrast—but embracing the historic Niebuhrstrasse, the window projects what to expect inside,” shares the company rooted in Beirut. Inside, the classical built elements of the cityscape (arches and colonnades), are interpreted and echoed within a minimal skin, defining the sober architecture of the space, while being aided by the building’s symmetry.

"In Berlin, you will find a lot of colonnades, arches, and repetitive symmetrical facade patterns from different architectural eras from Classicism to contemporary buildings. We took those cues which you will see in the symmetry of the design and the arches that lead visitors from one room to the other," relays Dirk Engelen, B-bis Architecten.

Playing off our developed instinct to recognise the warmth of the sun, the glean of crackling fire and our associated emotions with divine light bringing us from darkness to light, the interior design brings to focus the critical role of light’s absence—secure in its bareness, the space consciously strays from oversaturated sources of illumination, as the eye must be able to rest in dark places for light to truly shine through with purpose. Fixtures with minimal glare are placed with intention, gently washing the untinted walls and surfaces with soft, golden light, to ensure that visitors genuinely get to interact with the light’s dialogue with the space.

We design what we build. We build what we design. – PSLab

Because the basement area was integrated into the contextual design, the front room enjoys a double-height space of six metres, where lighting designs are installed in various heights, sizes, quantities, and configurations, reminiscent of a composed theatre production. All walls inside function as projection surfaces to show the low-lit, pleasing, and intentional performance of lights.

Two arches lead the way, accompanied by framed views of the green, ivy-leafed courtyard design, into the garden room which enjoys its role within the interiors. This space doubles up as a design workshop, integrating a physical materials library where clients are encouraged to feel, touch, and explore the particular design process of the lighting brand. Movable panes are built into both the main walls to induce a workshop character, where small windows have been extended to tall, openable ones.

Elevating the monochrome grey experience of the setting are large open bay windows that flood it with natural light, providing a subtle textural guise to its monastic nature. Sunlight streaming in from both the street and courtyard facades changes the ambience of the contemporary design dramatically, depending on the time of the day.

The cosy lower space, accessed directly by a staircase with a black-piped, minimal balustrade, takes up a more subdued persona, an invitation to foster informal and intimate conversations with an interactive backdrop of the team showing off the lighting lab’s extensive digital library. According to Dimitri Saddi, founder of PSLab, it is here where the lighting designers conduct presentations, explaining their way of thinking and designing to clients, and letting them receive a first-hand experience of the lights’ components and materials.

"PSLab is not a digital platform where clients pick and buy products. Therefore, the physical space as a 'home' is most important for one-on-one communication. In Berlin, as with all our studios, we wanted to design a canvas to show the quality of our light and to show the process of our bespoke design approach by integrating a material library of endless opportunities and possibilities,” says Saddi.

PSLab Berlin’s employed materiality is succinct and effective in its role to keep the illumination at the heart of the space, revered in its treatment, instead of highlighting its architecture. To quote the owners, “As light is one of nature’s purest elements which often features in sacred spaces, it is the overarching reference for the new PSLab space.” Layers of sundry shades of limewash combine with elements in concrete, zinc, and fabric to deliver the studio’s ‘calm and sacred atmosphere,’ an intended and ideal canvas to explore light.

“It was a clear choice to create a monochromatic world with slightly polished concrete floors, cement render on the brick walls, [and] cement plaster on the side walls. The different natural grey textures bring the focus on the light. The space became a sacred space for light,” Engelen reiterates.

‘Invisible light’

A huge grey-steel gantry system on the ceiling of both, the front and garden rooms takes focus in the overall design by incorporating not only light sources but all technical elements on display. In the first room, the system on the ceiling indulges in hundreds of bare light fixtures that show what PSLab terms ‘invisible light,’ in many configurations on all walls of the space. This intangible entity is what the company centres itself on, where the focus is not just on the fixtures they design but the illumination itself, and how it proceeds to manipulate a space. PSLab does not provide readymade products but instead, works with designers and architects to conceive bespoke lighting systems which facilitate the illumination of unique settings.

The entire space, according to its owners and designers, is simply ‘built with light in mind.’ With this, PSLab hopes to elaborate its process-driven thinking and approach that explores light, shade, and the bespoke atmospheres created with them. As Mario Weck, partner of PSLab Stuttgart and Berlin tells STIR, “For PSLab, the studios are the most important communication tool. Only here one can experiment [on] how we see light, [and] the magic of light. Hence, we put a lot of effort and time into designing those spaces so that people feel comfortable stepping into this almost different world and trust us to work with them and their projects. Also, we make a distinct differentiation between visible and invisible light, something that we can show in the studios.”

With each of their projects ‘special and bespoke,’ PSLab perseveres to bring the essence and vibration of light into their pared-back studios, something that can be traced back to their London outpost upholding similarly applied rigour and uniqueness. A fine art, to dedicate themselves to an affair with light and life, reaching for light’s DNA in their work and bringing warmth inside spaces—these are designed endeavours to make the invisible, visible, the intangible, tangible—an effort made clear when the luminaires don’t just act as physical objects, but aid in creating experiential spaces through the distribution of designed lighting.