Lora Kaleva

Associate Lighting Designer London

T: +44 [0]20 7812 8000
E: lora.kaleva@bdp.com

Lora joined BDP in 2011. She is a new class of lighting designer, fully educated through her Bachelor’s and Master’s qualifications in Lighting Design.

She has worked on a variety of projects across the workplace, retail, healthcare and academic sectors throughout Europe, China and the Middle East. Her recent experience includes the multi-award winning Wilkins Refectory and Terrace for University College London and and PWC More London, Cambridge Assessment Headquarters, Paddington Lawn. Lora was shortlisted for Young Lighter of the Year in 2012 and is the winner of the Worshipful Company of Lightmongers Best Exterior Project award in 2010. Her team was awarded the Technical Award in Ready Steady Light in 2011. She has created numerous temporary light installations including IALD 100W challenge, Maggie’s Cultural Crawls and an exciting façade installation incorporating art, light and technology which transformed the Guildhall in Cambridge as part of the E-Luminate Festival in 2017.

She presented her MSc thesis on Saturated Coloured Light at the Professional Lighting Design Convention in Madrid where she won the Vox Juventa Award for best presented paper. She subsequently developed this theory as a series of talks which she presented with her colleague Colin Ball at several international conferences, including the IALD conference Enlighten Americas in San Diego in 2014 and at IALD conferences in Barcelona and Seattle in 2018. Lora sits on the editorial board of Lighting Journal.

What is the most exciting innovation in your industry?

The newest research on light and health, most notably the re-discovery of the blue-sensitive receptors in the eye, which influence the hormonal production in human bodies and our sleep/wake pattern are a milestone in lighting research and should inform how we design spaces for human occupation.