Who We Are
International Light Studio was founded in an effort to bring together the artistic and theatrical qualities that excite our senses with the science of lighting to tackle the aesthetic, human centric and environmental challenges shaping our built environment.
Our diverse international team provides creative design solutions and uses a technique of collaboration that establishes common goals and opportunities, allowing the project and it’s occupants to achieve their maximum potential.
The firm draws upon the diverse backgrounds of its principals who have over 50 years of combined experience to provide projects with innovative and practical solutions that improve visibility, promote health, create atmosphere, direct visual focus, reveal color/texture accurately, and harmonize with surroundings.
Our designers remain actively involved through all design phases to ensure success. ILS does not sell equipment. We focus on designing lighting solutions based on our understanding of light, space, vision and the biologic connection we all share with light. We believe that effective lighting design begins with an understanding of our clients' design intentions and occupant needs.
Lighting is a discipline that requires the integration of art, science, and business. Its implications go far beyond the obvious elements of visibility and lighting levels. It is through an understanding of how light shapes and modifies people and objects as well as how it impacts our health, performanace and psychology that we help strengthen any project with a solution that blends balance of function and aesthetics.
We consider ourselves always a student, researching, assimilating and applying the evolutionary and revolutionary aspects of lighting as an art and a science to create compelling environments that are successfully illuminated.
Greg Gaurnaccia, LC, LEED AP, IES
Principal
A founder and principal designer of ILS, Greg Guarnaccia, has been transforming environments with lighting for over 29 years.
Mr. Guarnaccia works on projects that range from large scale master plans to mid-rise commercial and residential buildings, mixed-use, office, schools, museums, houses of worship, hospitality, senior living, government and performing arts centers. He has collaborated with renowned architectural, engineering and interior design firms internationally. In the world of theatrical lighting design, Mr. Guarnaccia is a United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829 member and has had the privilege of working on and off Broadway, in regional and summer theatre, and on tours of all kinds.
Mr. Guarnaccia graduated from the Lighting Design and Design Management Masters program at the prestigious Hochschule Wismar in Germany, is Lighting Certified (LC) by the National Council on Qualifications for the Lighting Professions and is a LEED Accredited Professional. He is currently a past president and board member of the Baltimore Chapter of the Illuminating Engineering Society and is an active member of two IES national committees; Lighting For The Aged & Partially Sighted committee, for which he currently serves as the chair, and the Assembly & Performance Lighting committee. As a member of these committees, he regularly participates in updating the IES technical publications; ANSI/IES RP-28 “Lighting and the Visual Environment for Seniors and the Low Vision Population”, IES CG-1 “Lighting Your Way To Better Vision” and ANSI/IES RP-41 “Lighting Theaters and Worship Spaces". Greg is also a member of the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Low Vision Design Committee where he has contributed to the creation of their first low vision design guideline called the "Design Guidelines for the Visual Environment”. Greg further represents the IES on the International Code Council’s Committee On Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities that updates the ICC A117.1 “Standard for Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities".
Mr. Guarnaccia is also privileged to be an adjunct professor passionately sharing the power and importance of lighting at Morgan State University for both undergraduate and graduate students.
Jose-Antonio Echeverría, MA, IES, LC, RA
Principal
Jose-Antonio Echeverría is a founder and principal designer at ILS. He has developed a wide project portfolio, spanning from master planning to hospitality, residential, municipal, retail, commercial and workplace environments that weave light and space into a unique experience.
Jose-Antonio is a licensed architect graduating from the Lighting Design and Design Management Masters program at the prestigious Hochschule Wismar in Germany and from the architecture program at the Universidad del Diseño in Costa Rica. Mr. Echeverría has two decades of practical experience focussed on light and its influence on the human experience.
Mr. Echeverría is the first architect in Central America to obtain the ‘LC' Lighting Certification, granted by the National Council on Qualifications for the Lighting Professions (NCQLP) and was welcomed into the Illuminating Engineering Society in 2014 as a full Member.
In 2007 he founded his first design practice Lumina Lighting Design, one of the best design studios in the region focused on light as a design language.
Currently, Mr. Echeverría lectures on lighting for the Costa Rican Chamber of Architecture and Engineering Consultants and the CFIA, the Costa Rican Engineers and Architects Federation, where he has been a member since 2004.