AWA Lighting Designers

AWA Lighting Designers AWA is a lighting design firm providing research-driven designs that impact the world through innovation, poetry & human-centric responses.

AWA won the 2021 LUXlife LEADING DESIGNERS AWARD “MOST INNOVATIVE CREATIVE LIGHTING DESIGN PRACTICE NY.”

The buildings that become addresses worth paying more for are designed that way from the start. Light is part of that de...
06/03/2026

The buildings that become addresses worth paying more for are designed that way from the start. Light is part of that decision.

5 projects. 5 geographies. One consistent proof.

• U Bora Tower, Dubai: A 250-metre tower whose lighting responds to architectural gesture across 80,000 square meters of mixed-use space, from lobby to crown
• Singapore Chancery, New York: A programmable, integrated facade identity legible at three scales simultaneously, with interior environments that distinguish every type of space
• Godrej One, Mumbai: A LEED Platinum pre-certified global headquarters where sustainability compliance and spatial ambition were resolved as a single brief
• KAFD, Riyadh: A 0.5 million square meter financial district whose nocturnal identity was embedded in the master plan, connecting four developments into one coherent place
• Address Beach Resort and Vida Marina, Marassi, Egypt: A waterfront hospitality development where every lighting decision was made in service of the guest's experience and the primacy of the ocean view

What this delivers for every project:

Iconic value

Parametric design

Construction challenges solved

Engineered value

AWA Lighting Designers work across commercial, mixed-use, civic, cultural, and hospitality projects in 25 countries.

If you are working on a building, a campus, or a new district, we welcome the conversation.

Read Related Article: https://www.awalightingdesigners.com/blogs/Light_Turns_Investment_into_Legacy,_One_Iconic_Building_at_a_Time.?id=6a20257fd4d7037145dfbe1c

Contact us now:

[email protected]

awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: Essam Aarafa, Aedas, Godrej Properties, Amith Nag, AWA

What Makes a Destination?AWA Lighting Designers call it contrast engineering. The deliberate orchestration of light, sha...
05/20/2026

What Makes a Destination?
AWA Lighting Designers call it contrast engineering. The deliberate orchestration of light, shadow, and darkness to establish visual hierarchy and guide human attention through a property. Without this, spaces are uniformly lit. With it, they become places guests remember, describe, and return to.

Proved Across Three Properties
At Vida Marina Resort Marassi, Egypt, 103 rooms and suites on one of the Mediterranean's largest marinas, AWA engineered interior and exterior light in continuous harmony with the coastal context across four distinct dining venues and an infinity pool overlooking the marina.

At Alila Diwa Resort Goa, AWA designed for the specific tropical coastal light, microclimate, and cultural identity of the site. Every contrast between interior warmth and tropical exterior is engineered, not accidental.

At Fairmont Jaipur, Fairmont's first hotel in India, 248 rooms and a 48,500 sq ft Convention Center, AWA created candle-light effects on entry stairs, richly textured shadow patterns on plain walls, and warm chandelier glow that turned vast spaces into intimate ones.

The Outcome
Guests feel the shift from arrival to dining to rest as a curated journey. That journey is what fills rooms, drives returns, and builds reputation no advertising spend can replace.

Pathways to Collaborate
If your next property deserves to be a destination, we welcome the conversation.

Read Related Article: https://www.awalightingdesigners.com/blogs/LIGHT_CREATES_DESTINATIONS._?id=6a0d45105d41caebf5868d39

LIGHT CREATES DESTINATIONS.
Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: Essam Aarafa, Ali Rangoonwala, Fairmont

At the recent panel discussion on “Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable Heritage Lighting” at Light+Led Expo 2026, A...
05/14/2026

At the recent panel discussion on “Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable Heritage Lighting” at Light+Led Expo 2026, Abhay Mohan Wadhwa, Founder & Design Principal of AWA Lighting Designers, contextualized heritage lighting within the framework of allusion vs illusion.

Drawing from research explored as early as 1996 through work on Historical Buildings, Color Preference Index (CPI), and Flattery Index concepts originating from the 1950s, the discussion revisited a fundamental question:

Before electric lighting existed, architecture was shaped through daylight, shadow, hierarchy, and intent. To illuminate heritage today, we must first understand:
Why was a structure designed?
What it intended to express
How light can allude to form rather than impose illusion

References to chiaroscuro and tenebrism in Renaissance art highlighted how masters such as Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci intentionally shaped perception through light and darkness. Similar contextual understanding exists across Indian artistic traditions, including Pahadi painting, where light carried emotional and cultural meaning.

The discussion also reflected on projects such as Ismail Building, where the lighting approach focused on allusion rather than illusion..

Why This Matters

Historic lighting conservation shapes cultural memory, emotional experience, and the dignity of heritage beyond visibility.

Pathways to Collaborate

Meaningful heritage lighting emerges through collaboration across typologies to create contextual, perceptually sensitive, and culturally rooted experiences.

We thank the organizers, moderator Kirtida Unwalla, fellow panelists Adil Dholakia and Eby Vincent Mathew, and everyone who joined the session for an engaging and thoughtful exchange.

LIGHT+ LED EXPO MUMBAI 2026.

Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: AWA

Abhay Mohan Wadhwa, Founder & Design Principal, AWA Lighting Designers, will be a panelist at the Light + LED Expo 2026;...
05/06/2026

Abhay Mohan Wadhwa, Founder & Design Principal, AWA Lighting Designers, will be a panelist at the Light + LED Expo 2026; India’s leading trade platform for lighting technologies and design.

Session:
“Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable Heritage Lighting: A Dialogue Between Architects and Lighting Consultants.”

8th May 2026
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Hall 6, Bombay Exhibition Centre, NESCO, Goregaon (E), Mumbai, India

Curated by INTACH Greater Mumbai Chapter in collaboration with Messe Frankfurt

Moderator:
Kirtida Unwalla

Panelists:
Abhay Mohan Wadhwa
Adil Dholakia
Eby Vincent Mathew

Hear from the panel as they share perspectives on collaboration in heritage lighting.

Join us for an engaging exchange of ideas and experiences.

Event page: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7434181646796390400/;

Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/p/DXit3bLDHqj/

Register: Register for Light + LED Expo 2026

We look forward to seeing you there.

LIGHT + LED EXPO MUMBAI 2026.

Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: AWA & Intach

Lighting standards define illuminance levels. They achieve uniformity ratios. They satisfy compliance. But they rest on ...
04/15/2026

Lighting standards define illuminance levels. They achieve uniformity ratios. They satisfy compliance. But they rest on a single flawed assumption: that human beings respond to light the same way.

The body doesn't recognize standards. It responds to stimulus.
A uniform lux level cannot accommodate different states of being.

What responsive design actually looks like:
Brigade Gateway: movement, gathering, and transition, each condition lit differently because each is used differently.
Bihar Museum: lighting responds to scale, distance, and narrative sequence. Uniformity would reduce clarity. Variation enables perception.
Godrej One: movement, collaboration, focused work. 3 modes, 3 visual conditions. One approach cannot serve all three.

Technically adequate environments become experientially limiting.

Moving beyond standardization means a shift in intent.

Integrate lighting at the concept stage. Map user conditions, not just space types. Design layered systems that allow variation. Ground decisions in how people actually perceive and respond.

The question is not how much light is needed.
The question is: who is the light designed for?

Why This Matters:
When lighting is designed with human response at its core, workplaces generate focus, cultural spaces carry meaning, and public environments invite presence rather than passage.

Pathways for Collaboration:
AWA Lighting Designers work with architects, developers, institutions, and workplace strategists to move lighting from compliance to experience.
If that's a gap you're trying to close, let's talk.

Read Full Article:
https://lnkd.in/ggFJ8H5q

Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: Jeff Goldberg/ESTO, AWA


The science that shapes how you think, feel, and heal just gained a powerful voice.Your body responds to light. The colo...
04/08/2026

The science that shapes how you think, feel, and heal just gained a powerful voice.

Your body responds to light. The color of your space, the frequency of sound around you, the quality of light you work under; each one actively governing your stress, your sleep, your cognitive output, and your capacity to recover. Established science. Immediate consequence.

The Institution:
The International Light Association is a global body advancing light, color, & sound for human health and wellness. The science it governs is precise and consequential: specific colors measurably benefit health; colored light applied to targeted points on the body alleviates trauma.

The Board:
Researchers, therapists, designers, and builders, united by one conviction: understand the science, then build with it. AWA Lighting Designers designed the ILA's color wheel identity in 2019, the full visible spectrum held in one precise, coherent mark.

About AWA's Founder:
Abhay Mohan Wadhwa, founder, AWA Lighting Designers. 900+ projects across 25+ countries spanning healthcare, infrastructure, and sacred spaces. Author. Educator. Awarded globally, including Best Lighting Designer USA 2025,LUXlife. His practice moves across the cultural, emotional, and physiological dimensions of light with equal fluency.

SOULSARA: Where This Science Becomes Action
SOULSARA is a DeepTech HealthTech company redefining EAPs with proactive data intelligence and evidence-based outcomes.

ILA's rigor. AWA's global practice. SOULSARA's platform. One complete pathway from evidence to institution to daily human intervention, at scale.

Read Full Article: https://www.awalightingdesigners.com/blogs/Abhay_Mohan_Wadhwa_Joins_the_ILA_Board_of_Directors:_The_Science_That_Shapes_How_You_Think,_Feel,_and_Heal_Just_Gained_a_Powerful_Voice?id=69d6534b51e5e451f2f3888c

Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: AWA

When did darkness become bad?One of the most generative questions in architectural lighting. For corporate spaces, also ...
04/01/2026

When did darkness become bad?
One of the most generative questions in architectural lighting. For corporate spaces, also one of the most consequential.
The greatest gift a curated workplace offers: the capacity to feel, to orient, to concentrate, to be moved by where you are.

In the 1950s, "more light, better sight" was American doctrine. The OPEC crises of 1973 and 1979 halved light level requirements overnight. No measurable loss of productivity followed. Over-illumination was always an assumption.
Light needs darkness to reach its potential. AWA treats light as luminous clay: sculptable, where the art lies in emphasis, contrast, rhythm, and shadow.

Key Outcomes
Environments with a genuine sense of place. Eye led, mind settled, performance supported. Reduced energy load without sacrificing atmosphere. Facades and interiors with memorable nocturnal identity. Spatial rhythm that makes buildings worth returning to.

In Practice
3 towers unified as one presence, Indiabulls Financial Centre announced AWA's approach: uplit terraces, an 11-metre lobby, facade as civic gesture. At Brigade Gateway, 40 acres resolved through visual hierarchy. Cyber Hub threaded human warmth across an urban spine. Godrej BKC, SOM's LEED Platinum tower: lighting as architectural experience.

Why This Matters
The workplaces that define the next decade will be remembered for their sensory ecology: light, shadow, and spatial rhythm creating environments where people perform, restore, and return.

Collaborate with AWA
We work with architects, developers, and corporate clients for whom lighting is a foundational decision. Building or repositioning a workplace where experience is the differentiator? We welcome the conversation.

WHEN DID DARKNESS BECOME BAD?

Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: AWA, The Brigade Group

The best lighting decisions last way beyond purchase.At a major international airport, our founder witnessed something q...
03/25/2026

The best lighting decisions last way beyond purchase.

At a major international airport, our founder witnessed something quietly telling: pile upon pile of recessed LED downlights, removed before the morning rush could see them. Specified with confidence. Installed with intent. Gone before dawn.

At a newly inaugurated lounge at JFK, he observed something equally telling. Multiple shadows from a single hand. Edges splitting where clarity was expected. Cognitive dissonance in the visual field, where effortless seeing becomes continuous adjustment.
Two different observations. One shared truth.

When lighting degrades, visual coherence goes with it
Memory color and edge memory disrupted when light sources overlap
Specification, commissioning, and maintenance are not three separate conversations. They are one.
The best return on a lighting investment is ensuring it keeps working, for the eye, the brain, and the space alike

When complexity must resolve into clarity, every day, lighting is the instrument.

AWA Lighting Designers collaborates with infrastructure agencies, airport authorities, developers, and transit planners to keep good design alive across the full life cycle of a space.
Read Full Article: https://www.awalightingdesigners.com/blogs/The_Best_Lighting_Decisions_Last_Way_Beyond_Purchase.?id=69c3bed1cd8088642869d513

THE BEST LIGHTING DECISIONS LAST WAY BEYOND PURCHASE

Contact us now:
[email protected]
awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: AWA

Lighting defines how space is perceived, interpreted, and valued.AWA, designs lighting for hospitality as a human-centri...
03/19/2026

Lighting defines how space is perceived, interpreted, and valued.

AWA, designs lighting for hospitality as a human-centric system that supports a system of coherent relationships between form, material, context, and human perception. That coherence is where value is created.

Hierarchy. Perception. Narrative.
Hierarchy structures navigationand mexperience of space with clarity and intention.

Perception shaped through contrast, color, and calibrated light levels, defines quality.

Narrative embeds cultural context and material memory into the spatial experience and creates identity.

Guest Experience

Light shapes mood, extends dwell time, and strengthens the spatial clarity. Perceived quality is directly linked to the visual light creates. Light shapes that perception and the premium it commands.

Outcomes

Extended dwell time. Stronger spatial identity. Clear navigation. Memorable experiences that drive return. And a perception of quality that justifies premium positioning across every hospitality asset.

Pathways for Collaboration

AWA Lighting Designers collaborates where lighting is central to spatial intent. Where projects require human-centric lighting, cultural nuance, and research-driven strategies, we translate that intent into measurable outcomes.

Light is the force that makes the experience and the asset worth more.

Read Full Article: https://www.awalightingdesigners.com/blogs/Light:_The_Silent_Force_Shaping_Perception,_Behavior,_and_Premium_in_Hospitality?id=69bb76accd8088642869d3d6

LIGHTING SHAPES GUEST EXPERIENCE

Contact us now:

[email protected]

awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: Essam Aarafa, Andrew Rugge, © Perkins Eastman, Ali Rangoonwala, © Fairmont, Daniel Schwartz, AWA & Fram Petit, ANYK.



Hierarchy structures navigation and move through space with clarity and intention.

The environments children learn in shape their health, attention, and emotional balance every single day. At AWA, we des...
03/12/2026

The environments children learn in shape their health, attention, and emotional balance every single day. At AWA, we design lighting for schools as a human-centric system that supports health and wellness while enhancing the learning environment.

Human-Centric Lighting for Learning Environments
• Balanced lighting reduces eye strain during long study hours
• Lighting environments support sustained attention and visual comfort
• Adaptive lighting controls respond to different classroom activities
• Specifications ensure accurate implementation during construction

Biophilic Lighting: Reconnecting Classrooms with Nature
• Lighting recreates visual connections to natural rhythms
• Bespoke fixtures inspired by patterns found in nature
• Spatial lighting strategies create calmer indoor environments
• Lighting environments reduce stress and sensory fatigue

Modalities of Light, Color, and Sound
• RGBW lighting systems enable therapeutic color environments
• Lighting designed for relaxation, focus, or creative activity
• Sensory lighting strategies help reduce anxiety and stress
• Simple controls enable teachers to adapt lighting during the school day

Why This Matters
• Improve concentration and classroom engagement
• Reduce visual fatigue and sensory overload
• Support emotional regulation and calmer learning spaces
• Encourage creativity, curiosity, and participation
Lighting becomes an active contributor to healthier schools and better learning outcomes.

Read Full Article: https://www.awalightingdesigners.com/blogs/Lighting_Enhances_Wellness_and_Engagement_in_Schools_?id=69b2361056fe3bcaa163a8c9

LIGHTING ENHANCES WELLNESS & ENGAGEMENT IN SCHOOLS

Contact us now:

[email protected]

awalightingdesigners.com

Photography Credits: Alexander Severin, ARCOP, AWA, Esto Albert Vecerka.

Address

547 West 27th Street Suite 602
New York, NY
10001

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 6:30pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 6:30pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 6:30pm
Thursday 9:30am - 6:30pm
Friday 9:30am - 6:30pm

Telephone

+12124739797

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