faces of the future - Illuminating Engineering Society

FUTURE LEADERS
Photo: Peiheing Tsai
RENÉE JOOSTEN
COOLEY MONATO
STUDIO
NEW YORK CITY
CAREER CAPSULE
• Interior designer, Olthaar
Ontwerpen
• Key projects: David
Yurman flagship store,
New York City; Pio Pio
restaurant, New York
City; Tiffany & Co. Hong
Kong Plaza, Shanghai;
Gucci, Macau
The stamps on senior lighting designer
Renée Joosten’s passport
could rival those of a Travel
Channel host. The Dutch native has
traveled through Africa, Europe, Malaysia,
Mexico and the U.S.; speaks
five languages; and counts biking the
700-mile pilgrimage route to Santiago
de Compostela, Spain, excavating archeological
artifacts from a Roman
settlement and a medieval castle, and
exploring Mayan temples in Mexico
among her many adventures. Along the
way, she also picked up a B.A. in Interior
Design from the Royal Academy of
Visual Arts in the Netherlands and an
M.A. in Lighting Design from Parsons
The New School for Design, which she
attended on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Travel has not only given Joosten the
chance to explore new places, it has also
taught her how light shapes architecture:
“Through my travels I have seen how
(day)light throughout time has always
been an integral part of people’s culture
and spiritual experience, from the temples
of Tulum, where the Mayans used
the position of the sun for their agriculture
calendar, to the churches along el
Camino de Santiago, where the interplay
of light and architecture is meant to create
a divine and magical experience. Being
exposed to these sites has increased
my awareness of the power of light and
the balance between light and darkness.”
When she’s not driven by wanderlust,
Joosten can be found in New York City,
designing lighting for international retail
and residential projects, teaching in the
lighting design program at Parsons, and
interacting with the local lighting community,
including the IES New York City
Section. A firm believer in integrated design,
Joosten both practices and preaches
“that lighting should always be a cohesive
and integral part of any spatial design. It
is important to educate not only lighting
design students, but also architecture
and interior design students about light.”
A FEW KIND WORDS: “Renée simply
shines (pun definitely intended),” says
Renée Cooley, principal, Cooley Monato
Studio. “She has a keen design sense that
embraces both the aesthetics of the studio
and the needs of our clients. That, coupled
with her solid project management
skills, equates to bringing the concepts
of our designs to fruition. During the six
years we’ve been working together I’ve
seen her grow steadily, fed by her curiosity
and willingness to look beyond the
easy answers. That internal spark is at
the very heart of what makes an achiever—a
future luminary—and she’s got it.”
DOWN THE ROAD: Joosten is especially
“interested in the correlation between
health, light and darkness and
how the developments of new technologies
can tie into that. I’d like to further
explore these developments and integrate
this knowledge into public and
private projects.”
Elizabeth Hall
‘It was rewarding to get recognition when the Virtual Light Loft was
awarded the IES Illumination Award of Merit’
56
www.ies.org