Victor Quezada, Associate, Architectural Lighting Team Lead, discusses why his team glows

AES began offering architectural lighting design services in 2010. Today, AES Lighting consists of five skilled lighting professionals coming together from vastly different backgrounds due to their common passion: lighting design.

In this interview with Victor Quezada, Associate, Architectural Lighting Team Lead, he explains how the team collaborates over unique opportunities, and what makes the AES Lighting stand out in the industry.

What makes AES Lighting unique and one of a kind in the market?

As a team of diverse professionals, we’re able to approach projects from multiple angles. Together, we have a strong balance of artistic and technical skills thanks to our teams diverse educational and technical backgrounds.

Our team is currently made up of five talented and passionate individuals. Our trained architect/lighting designer and double-major interior designer can see details from an aesthetic perspective while also providing valuable technical insight. We also have two engineers who bring a wealth of technical expertise and specific knowledge of lighting controls to our team. Lastly, there’s me! I have 15 years of experience in the lighting industry and have a Master of Fine Arts background, so I’m able to draw on past learnings and contribute from an artistic perspective.

As AES Lighting’s team covers a wide array of skillsets, we’re proud to complete one hundred percent of our work and designs in-house, so nothing is ever outsourced. This means we’re able to streamline our workflows, creating a more cohesive product while saving time and lowering costs.

With this wealth of experience and technical background, the team functions as nodes in a network. Each person contributes to a project with their specialized expertise, then comes together to create a product that combines both aesthetics and technical expertise.

AES Lighting’s core competency is our ability to package our abilities – art, engineering, architectural, interior and lighting controls – into one bundle.

Your team members have diverse professional backgrounds, how does this enhance your offering?

It’s instinctual for a diverse team like ours to understand the constraints and challenges specific to each project, and to provide a bespoke design strategy that incorporates our combined knowledge and expertise.

We speak the language of architects, interior designers, and engineers, so we’re able to communicate effectively with all of the stakeholders that we work with. Regardless of the size of the project, AES Lighting is a key collaborator and strives to create an understanding atmosphere for anyone who works with us.

How does the diverse background of the team bring inspiration to the design?

AES Lighting is comprised of a diverse group of individuals, so we’re able to put forth personalized design solutions, inspired by our global professional experiences and training. This means we provide a rare level of expertise across multiple lighting sectors. This has enhanced our collective ideas, perspectives and outcomes for our firm, our clients and the communities in which we live and operate in.

We have team members who have been in the industry for 15 years and know the market well, and others who are newly graduated with fresh ideas. Together, our team members have worked in over twelve countries, speak seven languages, and lived in nine countries. Our team’s diversity is incredibly evident in our work.

What do you love about working in the AES Lighting team?

As a team within a fast-growing company like AES, we’re able to work on projects of all sizes. Our combination of talent and resources allows the AES Lighting team to handle multiple large-scale projects at the same time.

Merging artistic and technical platforms allows us to have a diverse portfolio. From art galleries to natatoriums, community centres, schools, landscape architecture, building facades and office towers – we’re able to adapt our strengths to any project, and inspire learning from one another.

Combining our knowledge and sharing insights into the lighting world makes us stronger, both as individual professionals, and as a team. Together, we have an irreplaceable set of knowledge, skills, practice – but what really makes AES Lighting strong is that we are a collaborative team who simply love the art of lighting.