“The idea was to create a ribbon in the middle of the canyon,” says Hervé Descottes, principal of L’Observatoire International, about the High Line project.

The steely body of KPF’s new shell for this museum’s existing structure is vibrant, yet the lighting was configured to minimize light pollution.

After the London 2012 Summer Olympics, lighting design firms Speirs + Major and Michael Grubb Studio worked with landscape architect James Corner Field Operations to transform what had been an open concourse in the Olympic Park into a 1,600-foot-long promenade.

Located in a previously industrial part of Paris, the 1975 Pont de Sèvres Towers, designed by Badani and Roux-Dorlut, have been reimagined by French architect Dominique Perrault. Renamed Citylights, the once detached office complex now embraces the city with sustainable prism-shaped buildings that illuminate the rapidly developing district (dubbed Trapèze) with a gentle luminosity.

A two- to three-hour drive from the bright lights of Southern California’s largest cities, Borrego Springs—a small town bordering the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in northern San Diego County—became the world’s second official Dark-Sky Community in 2009.

When lighting designer Hervé Descottes began work on Jean Nouvel’s concert hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, the project was well under construction, and the architect even had another designer’s lighting scheme in hand.

Named after the Italian word for Paris, Parigi was designed to look as if it were an Italian restaurant in the heart of the French capital.

The renowned piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons recently moved its flagship, Steinway Hall, from the Beaux- Arts New York City landmark it called home for 90 years to a modern Midtown skyscraper. The upshot is a project that will illuminate its brand for 21st-century clientele.

From the founding of their namesake monastery in 1145, the clerics of Santa María de Retuerta pursued Roman Catholic values of work, peace, and hospitality. Although monks have not occupied this corner of Spain’s Sardon del Duero area since 1931, contemporary visitors to their former abbey subscribe to the same principles, but in the reverse order.

Fortresslike power plants are usually perceived as an intrusion on the visual environment. But the San Francisco utility giant PG&E has long taken exception to that truism.