FOTO-MA is an award winning independent lighting architects practice based in Edinburgh Scotland. The Practice was established in 2001 by architect and lighting designer Gavin Fraser, former Senior Lighting Designer and Team Leader at Speirs and Major Associates.
We specialise in providing a creative, professional, architectural lighting design service, designing lighting that is considered and integral to a range of building types and architectural structures. In all our work we are collaborators, operating creatively as part of a team. This can range from the comprehensive and complex teams that are required to develop and construct most large buildings to the more intimate and involved collaborations that we have experienced with a number of contemporary artists.
The practice is comprised of a small team of Lighting designers mainly from an architectural background each experienced in contributing creatively and analytically with design teams and professionals to ensure appropriate and innovative lighting solutions. The work and lighting philosophy of the principals has been recognised with several major international lighting awards.
Key projectshave included,FOTO-MA asLighting Designers for the multi award winning redesign of theNational Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh,which is the first complete art gallery project in the UK to be completelyre-lit using high end Museum and Gallery quality,multi-phosphor warm white LED lighting throughout all thegallery spaces. This project won a Highly Commended Award in the Public Buildings Category of theNational Lighting Awards 2013 as well as winning Scottish Design Awards, RIBA and RIAS, Civic TrustAwards in 2012. The projectalso won a coveted Carbon Trust Award 2013 which recognises the projectsattention to sustainability issues and low energy and energy efficient design.
Our most recent award was in the 2022 Scottish Design Awards, for the‘The Bowline’ Landscape andPublic Realm FrameworkatBowling Harbour–Our team wereAward Winners in Masterplanning/Landscaping–Public Realm Landscaping (as part of Rankin FraserLandscape Architecture project teamwith FOTO-MA and Blyth & Blyth).
Our portfolio includes a wide range of lighting design experience including airports, bridges and structures,trading floors, offices, conference centres,residential lighting,hotelsand bars, retail centres, theme parks,museum and gallery lighting, exhibitions, leisure, historical restorations, externalpublic realm lightingandcorporate lighting.
Apart from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery ‘Portrait of a Nation Project our other notable projects haveincluded. Rosslyn Chapel Conservation and Access Project, St Andrews RC Cathedral Glasgow, ApexTemple Court Hotel in London, Regents Bridge Callum Innes Art installation for Edinburgh Arts Festival,ThePier Arts Centre, Orkney, Wolfson Medical School, Perth Concert Hall, The Vincent Building for CranfieldUniversity and Maggies Centres in Nottingham, Oxford, Cotswolds and Gartnavel, Glasgow
Each of our projects is managed and designed with the personal involvement and direction of the principal,supported by skilled lighting designers. Our studio is fully equipped with cross platform CAD and variousgraphic systems. On most of our projects weutilise the latest CAD technology to help develop and quantifyour designs. This includes using ‘real world’ high-end computer3Dvisualisations and lighting analysis.
PHILOSOPHY
Lighting design is concerned with how people perceive their environment. Yet because light is intangible itsintrinsic role in all visual design is often underestimated.Working in a medium which remains invisible until it strikes a physical surface, lighting designers must be asconcerned with the nature of the surface as with the light which strikes it. Our design approach is an organicprocess and perhaps the most important aspect of the process is deciding which elements should not be lit.
The lighting design principles for each project should generally be capable of being expressed as a verysimple diagram. We try to be good editors. Simplicity, functionality, economy, environmental issues must beconsidered together.
This applies not only to artistic and architectural form, but also much of our urban infrastructure, such as civicspaces, roadways and bridges, which blend architectural concept with the pragmatics of structural,mechanical and electrical engineering design.In these, as in many complex modern buildings all aesthetic design proposals must be underwritten bypracticalities that satisfy any relevant statutory requirements and ensure that conditions are acceptable tothe end user
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