“Light is the fifth dimension of architecture”, Birgit Walter, founder and creative director of BMLD

The lighting of spaces plays a very important role in our perception of the environment; depending on the light, we can see a room in one way or another. Light affects and stimulates us both physically and psychologically, even if we are not aware of it. In architecture, it allows us to highlight shapes, model objects, emphasize different points, and even thanks to lighting we can generate one atmosphere or another in a space. Museums, facades, restaurants, clubs, shop windows... all of them play with lighting to highlight what interests them most. Moreover, it has a fundamental role in our body, as it is responsible for keeping us alert and active.

We have spoken with Birgit Walter, founder and creative director of BMLD, a lighting design studio based in Barcelona with international experience. It is the first studio in Spain dedicated to lighting design. BMLD is made up of a team of architects, interior designers, and product designers, all trained in lighting. They develop both national and international projects, such as in India: “currently we have several projects here in Spain and also abroad, especially lighting for hotels, facades, noble spaces, and restaurants,” she tells us.

For Birgit Walter, good lighting is the kind that goes unnoticed, the kind that makes you feel comfortable when you enter a space “light can create very beautiful or uncomfortable spaces, it's the fifth dimension of architecture”. The architect, the interior designer, and the lighting designer must work together to get the best out of each space, lighting is neither more nor less important, it's just another element. Light exists to make a space visible. In marketing, it's also used; light influences on an emotional level and by illuminating the premises in one way or another, you can influence the customers.

For Birgit Walter, deciding what is the best lighting we can have at home is very subjective. In the kitchen, she recommends lighting the work areas, for the living room diffused light or floor lamps usually work,lighting in the library or on paintings “really, where we need more light is in the reading area”. The bathroom is the place where we need to see ourselves best, that's why she recommends that the light always comes from the mirror, “it can be integrated or in sconces or pendant lights at face height which looks more elegant”. For gardens or terraces, she likes lighting in planters, “spots of light that when you are inside you can see them and create a mix of indoor-outdoor”. Birgit Walter emphasizes that for her, lighting in private areas should be more intimate and personal. We also asked her about how we can be more sustainable with lighting: “we should buy quality materials so they last longer and try to be energy-efficient”.

BMLD was the studio that designed the lighting for the facade of La Rotonda, the Hotel 1898 and the Casa Lleó i Morera. “At La Rotonda, we had to achieve a complete integration of the lighting fixture into the facade, making the fixture invisible while illuminating the facade.”

The case of Casa Lleó i Morera was quite a challenge, Birgit Walter tells us: “We had full heritage protection and the difficulty we encountered was in incorporating lighting, since there was none. Being protected, you cannot make channels. We had to run the electrical cables through the existing pipes that were previously used for gas”, and she continues, “the project was done backwards, first we looked at what points we had available to illuminate and then we thought about what to put there to highlight the tiles, the wooden ceilings... We used both technical and decorative lighting. The technical aspect involved very small spotlights that were integrated as much as possible and for the decorative, we opted for glass luminaires like filament lamps that mimic the old gas light quality”. In the lighting of the Hotel 1898, they used the gaps in the windows to make the facade visible, since in Barcelona there are not many options for illuminating them, “for example, in Toledo we are doing the lighting of the entire facade skin, incorporating a light system from above that illuminates us in a wall-washing manner, here in Barcelona it is not allowed.