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Conference Agenda: Sessions, Workshops, Social Functions

From thought-provoking seminars on challenges faced across the industry, to the studies, methodologies, and innovations developed to address them: over three dozen presentations scheduled for the conference offer innumerable opportunities to expand perceptions, improve professional skills, and consider new perspectives.

Download the EE26 Agenda as PDF

NOTE: The EE26 conference agenda is subject to change.

Wednesday, 17 June 2026

Description
*** A registration fee of €100 is required to attend the pre-conference workshop. Add to your agenda when you register. *** This hands-on design lab equips lighting designers and specifiers with the practical knowledge and tools needed to integrate sustainability into their specification workflow. As the construction industry increasingly demands transparency around embodied carbon and environmental impacts, lighting designers are uniquely positioned to drive meaningful change — and this session shows you how.
Track
Studio 5
Time
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
9:00 AM
Category
Registration
Time
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
9:00 AM
This is an opportunity for casual discussion and open feedback among business owners and leaders across the industry. All are highly encouraged to attend and be part of a lively and constructive conversation.
Category
Forum
Track
Studio 1 - 3
Time
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
1:00 PM
Open to participants in the lighting industry: specifiers, manufacturers, educators, researchers, and more! RSVP is requested to determine headcount.
Category
Meeting
Time
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
3:00 PM
ONLY AVAILABLE TO EE26 CONFERENCE REGISTRANTS Selux invites you to experience Paris from a unique perspective during an evening boat tour on the Siene at dusk. RSVP (seats are limited): IALD Pre Opening 2026 Selux
Time
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
7:00 PM

Thursday, 18 June 2026

Description
Ian’s design approach to light dissolves the boundaries between science, art and engineering, philosophy and technology. He explores both natural and artificial light as the first material of architecture that shapes and animates form, space, material and experience.
Category
Presentation
Time
8:45 AM - 10:00 AM
8:45 AM
Category
Registration
Time
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
9:00 AM
10:00 AM
The legendary "revolving roundtable" session is back! Lighting design specifiers are invited to sit in on a "speed dating" series of table discussions with manufacturers for open discussion, welcome feedback, and quite often, a lot of fun and laughter.
Category
Networking
Time
10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
10:30 AM
Category
Meal
Time
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
12:30 PM
The presentation illustrates the relationship between design decisions made at conceptual level and their unforeseen consequences that often emerge at project delivery stages. Using examples from a handful of applications within large and complex projects, this session will illustrate how mistakes or naive decisions at best, made during concept stages can lead to significant challenges and substantial effort in order to realise those ideas.
Track
Track 2
Time
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
1:30 PM
This session presents Obscura, a real-time 3D lighting simulation platform built on Unreal Engine, designed for lighting designers, engineers, and manufacturers.
Track
Track 3/Studio 2
Time
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
1:30 PM
The adoption of artificial intelligence by Foster + Partners' Lighting Team reflects a broader history of technological evolution in the field of architecture. CAD and BIM revolutionised the way designers draw, coordinate, and collaborate.
Track
Track 1/Ballroom 1
Time
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
1:30 PM
After a successful panel at the 2025 Enlighten Americas conference, the primary feedback received ask for sharing the information with other women and young business owners beyond that session. Bringing together a refreshed group of speakers the panel will address how the models show up in the European market and how they compare to North America.
Track
Track 1
Time
2:40 PM - 3:40 PM
2:40 PM
The past decade has marked an important step in the political recognition of concerns associated with the increased, unnecessary, or inefficient use of artificial light at night (ALAN), which contributes to light pollution.
Track
Track 3
Time
2:40 PM - 3:40 PM
2:40 PM
(Full title: When Light Becomes a Care Tool: Between Evidence and Reality - Making Dynamic Lighting Work in Long-Term Care. A Guideline-Based Approach for Care Facilities.) Dynamic lighting is widely promoted as a valuable tool in elderly and long-term care environments, supported by a growing body of research and well-intentioned design concepts. Yet in everyday practice, many projects fail to deliver their promised benefits. The issue is rarely the lighting concept itself, but rather the gap between evidence, planning, implementation, and long-term operation.
Track
Track 2
Time
2:40 PM - 3:40 PM
2:40 PM
Across Europe, speculative office fit outs are routinely delivered to support leasing and marketing rather than long term occupation. In the UK this is labelled "Cat A", but the underlying model is familiar elsewhere. A visually complete, lettable space is installed to attract tenants, reduce voids, and protect rental value, even though its lifespan is often known to be short at the point of delivery.
Track
Track 1
Time
4:10 PM - 5:10 PM
4:10 PM
Designers, including lighting designers, are frequently faced with dilemmas: how can they respond to a programme that challenges their convictions? How can they satisfy requests that conflict with their own conceptual or aesthetic approach? How do we adapt and offer the most relevant lighting solutions? This presentation will address the issue of flexibility for urban lighting projects by comparing ambitious redevelopment projects in two French cities: the seafront boulevard in Arcachon and on the other hand, Place Cujas in Bourges.
Track
Track 2
Time
4:10 PM - 5:10 PM
4:10 PM
As Concepto is currently engaged in both permanent exhibitions at the Louvre in Paris and temporary exhibitions at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the team has taken a step back to reflect on over a decade of experience in museography lighting. Although widely recognized for its large-scale urban lighting and planning projects, Concepto wishes to share how the diverse fields of lighting expression continuously inform and enrich one another within their practice.
Track
Track 1
Time
5:20 PM - 6:20 PM
5:20 PM
This presentation aims to explore the philosophical, psychological and poetic dimensions of meaning and how light, as both a physical phenomenon and a metaphorical force, influences our understanding of it. Bridging science, art and culture to explore light as the language of human experience.
Track
Track 2
Time
5:20 PM - 6:20 PM
5:20 PM
Time
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM
6:20 PM

Friday, 19 June 2026

Description
Time
8:15 AM - 3:00 PM
8:15 AM
As a lighting designer do you think about what you want from lighting control? Or do you leave it to someone else and assume it’ll be OK?
Track
3
Time
9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
9:15 AM
Lighting designers are being pulled into lighting control decisions more than ever, yet many feel the process is opaque, overly technical, or simply too complicated. This session is designed to give practising lighting designers a clear, unbiased grounding in what actually matters when planning or reviewing a control strategy - with no brand agendas and no unnecessary jargon.
Track
Track 2
Time
9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
9:15 AM
The lighting design for Stuttgart 21 was conceived as a long-term vision—imagined before the technical means to realize it were fully available. This session begins by emphasizing the power of visionary thinking: how ambitious concepts were defined with only a conceptual framework, anticipating technological evolution and design challenges over more than 25 years.
Track
Track 1
Time
9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
9:15 AM
10:15 AM
The Hindu Mandir in Abu Dhabi, the first traditional Hindu temple in the Emirates, is a powerful symbol of cultural diversity, interfaith harmony, and contemporary sacred architecture. For Studio Lumen, the project demanded a lighting approach that was not only technically rigorous and environmentally responsible, but spiritually sensitive and deeply rooted in cultural meaning.
Track
Track 2
Time
10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
10:45 AM
The Reserve, Singapore is one of the world's highest capacity vaults in the world. It is featured in Wallstreet Journal, Bloomsberg and won numerous architectural and lighting awards.  Learn more about the challenges behind illuminating the luminous onyx facade which has no backing, and the facade also appreciated from inside the building.
Track
Track 1
Time
10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
10:45 AM
This session explores the outcomes of SHAPE-THE-LIGHT, a 30-month European initiative co-funded by the EU Commission under the Creative Europe Programme, bringing together four lighting clusters from Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium to bridge the worlds of art, design, and technology.
Track
Track 3
Time
10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
10:45 AM
While lighting technologies, research and pedagogic strategies have changed dramatically over the years, lighting design in school classrooms has stayed very similar throughout the decades, promoting even, diffuse illumination in line with guidelines. Based on a multi-year research project situated at a school in central Sweden, this session will discuss lighting design processes and proposals for educational spaces focusing on children's vantage points, and their activities throughout the school day.
Track
Track 1
Time
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
12:00 PM
This session offers an in-depth exploration of the lighting design process for one of the world’s most significant Gothic landmarks: Cologne Cathedral. The project addresses the inherent tension between celebrating spirituality through light and preserving the integrity of a UNESCO World Heritage site, while also responding to increasing demands for environmental responsibility and the reduction of light pollution.
Track
Track 2
Time
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
12:00 PM
Category
Meal
Time
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
1:00 PM
Lighting designers didn’t enter this profession to spend hundreds of hours on repetitive admin: proposals, luminaire schedules, tender reviews, regulatory notes, and endless coordination loops. This session shows how AI augments Lighting Designers by handling the “grunt work layer,” so designers can spend more time doing what they love: “creating magic with light.”
Track
Track 2
Time
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
2:00 PM
For more than a century, the way we design and implement urban street lighting has barely changed. We have moved from gas to discharge to LED, but the underlying logic remains the same: fixed grids of poles, uniformity targets, and “better safe than sorry” light levels. The result is familiar to all of us: chronic overlighting, light pollution, light trespass, and wasted energy embedded into our cities for decades at a time.
Track
Track 1
Time
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
2:00 PM
A review of projects from the FMS studios trace the evolution of the practice of lighting design over the past 25 years as our design strategies have responded to increased understanding of the effects of electric lighting at night on flora, fauna, and dark skies, and the arrival and dominance of the LED in architectural lighting.
Track
Track 2
Time
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM
3:30 PM
We all experience lighting intuitively, but clients often struggle to describe what they see, feel, or expect. This gap between perception and language can create hesitation, misunderstanding, or decision-making lacking intent. In practice as lighting designers, a significant part of the process is not only designing light, but helping others learn how to see light.
Track
Track 1
Time
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM
3:30 PM
This presentation explores the evolution of urban lighting in Paris, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It examines why Paris is known as the “City of Light,” considering not only technical and physical aspects but also the social, political, and cultural dimensions.
Time
4:40 PM - 5:40 PM
4:40 PM

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