enwandu_Looking Outwards-10

Filipa Valente – creator of dynamic light architecture

Filipa Valente is a Portuguese architect/environmental designer, based in the Los Angeles, California. She specializes in architecture and new media, interactive and experience design, furniture, and exhibition design. Valente completed her BSc and Masters in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, then went on to receive her Masters in Media Art and Architecture at SciArc in Los Angeles. Valente has created a name for herself over the years, holding design and project management positions at some of the world most prestigious architectural practices such as Zaha Hadid Architects, Amanda Levete Architects, Wilkinson Eyre Architects, and Belzberg Architects and Synthesis Design + Architecture. She is part of the organization limiLAB, which has had work exhibited in the Architecture + Design museum of L.A., at the Lisbon Experiment Design Biennale in 2009, and the ISEA 2012 (International Electronics Art Symposium).

Valente and her work with limiLAB stems from an interest in immediate space (architecture, rooms, cities, people), leading to the creation of these magnificent interactive art and installation pieces. Broadly speaking her work exists as an exploration of how technology connects to all these spaces with each other and their surrounding environments. Her work is truly admirable from an aesthetic standpoint. A lot of the work is visually stunning, and that combined with her thought process of incorporating elements of environmental design, really echo through her work. I think her project ‘Filtered Transparencies’ really represents her ideas about exploring the relationships between the environment, architecture and the body, by using layered light, space and sound to create an immersive experience.