June 1, 2018
International Interior Design Association Southern California Chapter hosted their 2018 Calibre Design Awards on Friday, May 18th, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. We are happy to announce that our lighting design project, RDC/Studio111 Office, won in the Work-Medium Category at the Gala Event! Congratulations to RDC/Studio111, and a special thanks for including us as part of the design team.
You can view all the winning projects here!
May 18, 2018
Sarah Wang and I were the official Oculus representatives at Lightfair in Chicago. It was fun walking through a large variety of luminaires, controls and components at the show. Even better was to catch up with old friends and acquaintances.
As lighting design firms go, we are lucky to be considered important enough for many manufacturers to come by our office regularly to keep us appraised of their newest products and advances. However, Lightfair still gives us a wide overview into upcoming products and general trends in the lighting industry.
April 30, 2018
Thank you Contract Lighting Magazine for your beautiful write-up of our lighting design for Boston Consulting Group offices!
“BCG’s new space – spanning the top two floors of one of L.A.’s tallest office towers – needed to convey a 360 degree perspective and sense of ‘unlimited possibility.”
You can read the full article here!
April 20, 2018
The Oculus Team spent a lovely late afternoon and early evening outside of the office. We traveled to the Marciano Art Foundation to view and be inspired by Olafur Elliason’s Reality Projector and afterwards visited Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar, one of our award-winning hospitality projects!
At Marciano Art Foundation we were awed by the expansiveness of Ellison’s warehouse-sized video projection. To experience light and art combined, was right up our alley as lighting designers! According to MAF’s website, “For his exhibition at the foundation, titled Reality projector (2018), Eliasson has conceived of a seemingly simple, yet complex installation that uses projected light and the existing architecture of the space to create a dynamic shadow play. The artwork references the space’s former function as a theater as well as the history of filmmaking in the city by turning the entire space into an abstract, three-dimensional film.“
April 6, 2018
We are proud to announce that Oculus Light Studio is a recipient of a 2018 Shop! Retail Gold Award. Per their website, “The Shop! Awards Competitions recognize the best new designs in retail environments and experiences. Considered by many as the “Academy Awards” of the retail design and brand marketing industries, we offer four award programs, each celebrating a different area of design expertise.”
2018 Gold Award Winner
Roots, York, ON, Canada
Congratulations to: CallisonRTKL
March 12, 2018
Check out Oculus Light Studio principal, Archit Jain, speak at Illuminating Engineering Society Los Angeles event ‘What Inspires Me, Powered by PechaKucha’, from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm on March 15th
“Come join us for an evening of inspirational exchange. We will have a variety of presenters sharing their passions: lighting designers, architects, lighting reps, & lighting manufacturers. Every day as an architect or lighting designer requires inspiration, but where do these individuals find it?”
February 23, 2018
A very nice write-up was recently done by Light Show West of our BCG Office project in DTLA. The article describes the many opportunities and challenges to transforming this corporate office environment into something truly unique. Working within dizzying heights and strict light levels, the team got creative and came up with solutions for the varying spaces. Striking focal features to the office include concealed LED striplights along stairways and an RGB programmable skylight that accentuates the 50′ high lobby.
“On the 51st floor, you can see 360 degree views: the mountains and the ocean, from downtown to Long Beach….You’re looking north at 50 ft of glass on the 51st floor of a downtown office tower. Where else would you find a space like that?” Scott Hatton is quoted.
January 15, 2018
For all of your lighting inspiration, Oculus project updates and team news be sure to start following us @oculuslightstudio
January 4, 2018
About:
As a warm up to the award season, please join us for a panel discussion with last year’s award recipients. It will be an informative and inspiring discussion with the project designers. Hear from the designer’s in their own words how the project came to be. And get the inside view as to why these projects were selected by the judges.”
December 15, 2017
To celebrate the holidays, the Oculus Team ventured out to DTLA and ‘Instagram-ed’ our way through Happy Place, an immersive set of multi-room installations meant for taking your best selfie. We got goofy with our picture taking, including finding Scott hanging upside down like a bat from a bedroom ceiling. Overall, we enjoyed meandering through the different rooms and left with big smiles on all of our faces!
To cap the night off, we ate a large family-style meal at Officine Brera,which provided a festive and inviting atmosphere to celebrate the holiday season. Not to mention, we had the chance to experience basking in the warm glow of Oculus’ award-winning lighting design! The Northern Italian inspired cuisine was super satisfying and we all ate until we could eat no more. continued→
November 6, 2017
We are so very pleased to welcome aboard our newest lighting designers, Likhitha Rangaswamy and Karl ‘Nico’ Meyer, to the Oculus Family. Acquiring some bright young talent is certainly exciting!
To find out more about all of our lighting designers, visit our People page.
September 13, 2017
This year’s LightShow West at the LA Convention Center is coming up shortly, be sure not to miss Oculus Light Studio Principal, Archit Jain, participating as a panel member for the seminar The Dos and Don’ts of Working with a Commercial Lighting Designer!
continued→
September 8, 2017
Among all the deadlines, and the visiting interns, it still was an eventful summer for the Oculus team outside of the studio! Many of us were able to do a bit of traveling, whether going abroad or venturing out on weekend camping excursions. As the season is coming to a close, we thought it would be nice to take a look back and share some of the unique things that each of us did. We hope you had a wonderful summer as well!
ARCHIT
As part of his family’s experimental “visit a country a year” plan, Archit and family took a trip to Chile. A country with many landscapes, they were able to catch some contemporary architecture in Santiago, visit the Andes Mountains for some August skiing, see the the stark visuals of the Atacama desert with the Valle de La Luna (Moon Valley) and view the colorful murals of the ocean-side town of Valparaiso. Exceptionally cool to him was the Tropic of Capricorn (nerd!).
July 27, 2017
The Oculus Light Studio Team went on our summer outing to the Petersen Automotive Museum. Of course, being the architectural lighting designers we are, there was plenty of discussion over the lighting installation and architecture of the museum. Overall, everyone enjoyed admiring the collections of vintage cars and Scott even got to play a racing game!
Hungry from our museum exploration, we finished the afternoon by dining at the newly constructed Drago Ristorante housed within the museum. The interior design of the restaurant happens to be a hospitality project that Oculus recently won a Calibre Design Award for and it was nice to finally enjoy a delicious meal there.
May 10, 2017
Oculus Light Studio is now MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) Certified by the Southern California Minority Supplier Development Council.
We are proud to be a minority owned company with a diverse employee base!
April 4, 2017
Oculus is Hiring a Creative Office Manager / Marketing Coordinator! This position is full time (40 hours/week), and we are looking to hire ASAP!
March 13, 2017
Last week I attended the IALD Enlighten Asia Tokyo + Lighting Fair 2017 combination event in Japan, and it served as a great reminder that we have an ever-growing toolbox of lighting products, manufacturing and construction techniques… but it left me with a few questions to ponder: What is it about the human experience that we want to capture or relate to in our designs? Lighting can be so abstract yet visceral at the same time; how do we as Lighting Designers use it to shape the environment and connect with the users within?
A few of the Enlighten seminars provided some insight—Mark Major (Speirs + Major) presented the first hour called “The Qualities of Night (or why we need darkness as well as light)”, and he referenced Junichiro Tanizaki’s essays “In Praise of Shadows”, which celebrate intentional darkness for its ability to grant us mental “quietness” and by contrast allow us to be more aware of and appreciate illumination. In application, this means designing with darkness as much as we are designing with light (especially in exterior landscaped areas) so that we can create a distinct nighttime character as opposed to just replicating or extending the daytime experience.
December 22, 2016
Happy Holidays from Oculus Light Studio!
We took some time out of our busy work schedule to visit the Enchanted: Forest of Light installation currently showing at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge. The event is described as “an interactive, nighttime experience unlike anything else in Los Angeles, featuring a one-mile walk through 8 distinct lighting displays in some of the most beloved areas of Descanso Gardens.”
We always appreciate thoughtful design, especially when lighting is the star of the show and there is an emphasis on being environmentally friendly! It was especially fun to watch the younger family members of the team being inspired to play with the interactive pieces as they realized that standing on a certain spot or running across a disc would make lights move or change color. Descanso Gardens served as the perfect lighting-related activity for our holiday party, and after we enjoyed a wonderful meal (and flash rainstorm!) at Red Herring in Eagle Rock, CA.
November 28, 2016
While most of our posts here are focused on work that we have done or are doing, sometimes it is important to take a step away and take a moment to see inspiration in the world around us. To this end, I asked the Oculus Team members for one or two photos from their break to show how they spent their days off. Enjoy the photos below!
November 17, 2016
We are looking for an enthusiastic intern to work and learn with our diverse team on a variety of architectural lighting design projects located around the country and the globe. You will be interacting with and assisting Oculus’ team of designers and principals on all aspects of the art, science and business of lighting design, including design, renderings, presentations, lighting calculations, office organization, CAD and 3-D modeling. Based on performance, you will have a chance to be a permanent member of our team.
Qualifications: Students with 3-4 years of architecture/engineering school or enrolled in a Masters program and knowledge of Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Microsoft Office, Adobe InDesign and Photoshop in a Windows environment. Desirable qualifications would be proficiency in performing lighting calculations, lighting design coursework or experience. If you are a foreign student, you must have the necessary permissions to work.
We look forward to hearing from you! Email resume with portfolio as pdf attachment (not more than 7MB) to
jobs+in2016@oculuslightstudio.com.