Studio
The first word was lamp – and that is where his fascination and passion for light began.
In La Garde-Freinet, the village above Saint-Tropez where he grew up, Oscar Nyström was the boy who collected light bulbs instead of stickers. By ten, the neighbours were asking him to light their garden parties.
As a teenager he rigged the lights for a travelling disco along the Riviera. Lighting schools wanted professional experience, so he went and got it: two years touring Europe’s opera houses – the Bastille and the Palais Garnier in Paris, Marseille, the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm – as assistant to one of the great stage lighting designers of his generation.
At seventeen he left for London and City of Westminster College, spending his days in the West End theatres and his nights behind the lighting desk of a famous club. He graduated in 1992, worked freelance, and in 1999 founded his own practice in Saint-Tropez.
The stage taught him what still defines the work: light tells the story, and the audience should never be looking at the lamp.
Principles
Light that ennobles what surrounds it
- I
Shadow is a material
What is left dark matters as much as what is lit. Contrast gives a room its depth and a garden its distance.
- II
Daylight is the reference
Artificial light should take over from the day without a seam, and follow the hour and the season rather than fight them.
- III
No two scenes
A house is not lit once. It is lit for dinner, for late evenings, for the moment of arrival and for the hours when it stands empty.
- IV
Made to be used
A concept that is hard to live with is soon switched off. Every project ends with controls that anyone in the house can use.
What we do
From the first vision to the final touch
- Lighting concepts for new builds and restorations
- Architectural, interior and façade lighting
- Landscape, garden and pool lighting
- Custom luminaires, developed with manufacturers
- Lighting control, scenes and programming
- Site supervision, focusing and commissioning
- Seasonal illumination and event lighting
How we work
Led by one. Delivered by many.
Oscar Nyström leads every commission himself, from the first site visit to the final aiming night. Around him, the studio assembles the team each project needs – lighting designers, controls engineers, draughtsmen, luminaire makers – and works with long-standing partner practices abroad when a project calls for local presence.
It is a model built for the kind of work we do: a single point of contact for the client, the capacity of a much larger firm when the brief demands it, and no overhead that has to be fed between projects.
“Outdoor lighting creates a new experience. What the sunlight may never reach, or what the eye passes over by day, slowly emerges at dusk – and that light creates a new experience.”