Looking Back To Look Forward

By Paula Martinez-Nobles, President, Fisher Marantz Stone

designing lighting (dl) magazine turns five this year. To mark the milestone, we’re inviting leaders who sit at the intersection of practice, business, and education to reflect on how our field has changed—and what still matters. We asked Paula Martinez-Nobles, President of Fisher Marantz Stone (FMS), to open the series because her vantage point spans award-winning projects, firm leadership through a turbulent market, and day-to-day collaboration with architects, manufacturers, and clients.

She has navigated rapid shifts in technology, delivery, and expectations while keeping the craft at the center. She offers a clear-eyed look at what has shifted in the last five years—and where discipline and imagination still lead the way.

Digital collaboration has made clear and concise communication non-negotiable.

While the fundamentals of lighting design remain unchanged, the profession exists to serve architecture and the human experience through both physical, and sometimes ethereal, space. The last five years have brought recalibration, and in some ways, a reshaping to our discipline.

Designers have grappled with clear advances in technology, from the sources we use to the ways we model, document, receive, and share information, and most recently with how we choose to leverage AI responsibly and at pace. The speed of change leaves no time to “wait and see.” We ride the wave, monitoring and adapting constantly.

Manufacturers and designers have explored nearly every way to use an LED source, from the purely efficacious to the deeply decorative. Recently, the focus has shifted toward more data-driven control. Staying ahead means understanding the full and nuanced capabilities of controlling LEDs and unlocking performance that strategically supports code compliance while fulfilling the project vision.

The pandemic shook our discipline, proving that we can take a meeting, and our work, anywhere in the world. It also reminded us how much we cherish those moments around one desk, one piece of paper, and one pencil. Digital collaboration has made clear and concise communication non-negotiable.

Our role is more critical than ever as clients increasingly recognize how lighting supports well-being, brand identity, and storytelling, and as collaborators understand that lighting design is a craft that, while technology-driven, is perfected with emotional clarity.

Understanding the moods of a space, and our role in shaping them, remains core to our discipline. The rest, whether incandescent bulbs or LEDs, paper or tablets, rotary dimmers or smart sensors, are just tools. The craft is in knowing how to shape light so it serves the space, the architecture, and the people within it. ■