Lighting Design Proposal · 41 Arvida · Confidential

For a lifetime the light has been pointed at him.
Here, he decides where it falls.

Studio Valle de Valle is reimagining the interiors of 41 Arvida. We were invited to design the light that lives inside them — for a client who has spent a career being seen, and a home built so he can choose, for once, when he isn't. This is how we'd read this house, and how we'd light it.

↓ Read the house
ScopeRenovated interiors
WithStudio Valle de Valle
LocationGables Estates · Coral Gables
StudioLima · Miami · Madrid
01 — The Invitation

We don't pitch.We partner.

You chose plaster, iroko, microcement, felt — surfaces that were chosen to be felt, not to shine. Our scope is the renovated areas, and our role is singular: to reveal what you specified, never to compete with it.

This is the part most lighting plans get wrong. They light the room. We light the material, and let the room follow. The plaster wants grazing light; the felt wants to be lit from anywhere but the front; the microcement gives almost nothing back, so every fixture has to earn its place. None of that is visible in a render. All of it is the difference between a space and a space you don't want to leave.

What follows is how we read this house, the work that stands behind us, and the way we'd light it — in dialogue with you, at every stage.

Scope · Renovated interiors · with Studio Valle de Valle
02 — The Approach · i

Long before the music, there was the cinema.

The person who will live here thinks in frames before he thinks in rooms. Before the stage, before the records, the first language was film — and film taught him that light is never neutral. It withholds as much as it reveals. A face half in shadow. A room you read by what's left dark.

So we don't light this house to be seen. We light it the way a cinematographer lights a scene — for control, for restraint, for the feeling before the eye even names it. The artist has spent a career inside the most engineered light in the world. The person comes home to the opposite.

Not lit for the camera — lit for the person who steps out of frame.
02 — A Shared Language · ii

We light in the grammar he already reads.

A film lover's eye is trained on a specific kind of light. The controlled dark of Kubrick, where precision is the whole point and nothing is lit by accident. The low, uneasy glow of Lynch, where a room means more for what it hides than what it shows. That isn't decoration — it's a way of seeing, and it's exactly how we work.

Single, intentional sources over flooded rooms. Gallery-grade light that lets material lead. Deliberate pools of shadow that make warmth feel warmer. You won't have to translate your references for us.

The studio that knows when not to add light is the one that understands it.
Reading Arvida — 01

Material first.

This house was designed to be touched. Plaster, iroko, microcement, felt — surfaces chosen for warmth and texture, not for shine. They don't reflect light; they hold it. Our work isn't to add brightness, but to let each material reveal what it already is.

Light as a way of seeing the craft — not hiding it.
Reading Arvida — 02

The screening room is the heart, not an amenity.

In most homes the cinema is a feature. Here it's the center of gravity — the room a film lover actually lives toward. So we treat the whole house with a director's logic: light built in scenes, not switches. Pools of warmth and deliberate dark. The dome above the stair that stays dark on purpose, so the glow below feels warmer. A home where atmosphere is composed, the way a scene is — and where, when the lights go down, nothing pulls your eye away from the screen.

Lit the way a film is graded — for feeling, not for brightness.
05 — Our Craft

How we light
what you're building

Four materials, four decisions. This is the difference between a lighting plan and a room you don't want to leave.
Plaster

Curved, hand-finished, no shine to hide behind. Grazing light only — a low raking wash, close to the wall, along the curve. Skim it and it reads as texture, not surface.

The quiet drama of the stair.
Wood — iroko & teak

Warm, directional, full of grain. Tight accents raked across the figure, color temperature held golden. Never flooded — the grain reads as depth, not gloss.

Lit from within, not spotlit from above.
Microcement

Soft, matte, seamless — almost no reflectance. One well-placed source, grazing or concealed, over many. Restraint keeps the surface continuous.

Less light, better placed.
Acoustic felt

Absorbs sound and light alike. Indirect, warm, layered low — never aimed at the panels. The surface stays matte, the room closes in around you.

Light you sit inside, not under.
06 — The Arrival

The spiral stair.

The first thing the house says about itself. We'd light it as a slow reveal — soft grazing along the curved plaster, so the wall glows from within. The palms catch a quiet, low accent. And the dark dome above stays dark, deliberately: a pool of shadow that makes the warmth below feel even warmer.

Nothing should feel switched on. It should feel like the house was always this way, and you simply walked in at the right hour.

Arrival as atmosphere — the first note of the house.

07 — The Company We Keep

We've done
this before

We light homes for people the world recognizes and rarely gets to see inside. The discretion is the point — we speak this language fluently, and we keep it to ourselves. The stakes here are familiar to us.
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Superyacht

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Private Asset · Aviation

Private Jet

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On the world stage
Cultural · Venue · Abu Dhabi

Saadiyat Nights

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08 — Selected Work

A portfolio,
by typology

The same studio that lights an art collector's home lights a tower, a beach house, a flagship. Click any project to open its story.
01
View gallery
Residential · Private Collection

A Private Art Collector's Residence

Confidential
02
View gallery
Residential · Wecselman Design

A Palm Beach Residence

Palm Beach
03
View gallery
Residential · RAMSA

Pezet 3

Lima
04
View gallery
Residential · MORPH Studio

La Moraleja Residence

Madrid
05
View gallery
Residential · Private

A Private Apartment

Confidential
06
View gallery
Residential · Private

A Private Family Residence

Confidential
07
View gallery
Commercial · Wellness

Viva Gym Building

—
08
View gallery
Multifamily · RAMSA

Blas Cerdeña

Lima
09
View gallery
Residential · Beachfront

Poseidón Beach House

Lima
10
View gallery
Residential · Adriana Hoyos

Fisher Island Apartment

Miami
11
View gallery
Residential · Oppenheim Architecture

A Private Residence

Golden Beach
Light as the soul of the architecture — Light as the soul of the architecture — Light as the soul of the architecture — Light as the soul of the architecture —
09 — The Studio
For 33 years, Karen Mannheim Lighting Studio has done one thing: make light give a space its meaning.

What began as one person knocking on doors in Lima is now a practice of more than 80 people across three continents, with offices in Lima, Miami and Madrid. For a Coral Gables home, our Miami studio is already next door — not flying in, but here.

We've delivered more than 2,500 projects across six countries, working alongside firms like RAMSA, Oppenheim and Adriana Hoyos. But the number that matters most isn't on this list: it's that after three decades and that much scale, the studio still designs each project as if it were the only one. The throughline never changed — light, here, is never decoration. It's the soul of the architecture.

33+
Years of practice
2,500+
Projects delivered
80+
People in the studio
6
Countries · 3 offices
Who we are

Karen Mannheim.

Founder & Creative Director

“I don't design light to be noticed. I design it so the room, the material, the person living there all feel inevitable. The best light in a home is the one no one ever thinks about. They just never want to leave.”

Karen has spent more than three decades building one of the few lighting practices that works at the level of the world's most demanding architecture firms — and keeps the soul of a studio. She leads the design on every project the studio takes, and she'd lead this one. When you work with Karen Mannheim Lighting Studio, you're not handed to a team. You start with her.

10 — Trusted By

The firms who trust KMLS

RAMSA
Robert A.M. Stern Architects
MORPH Arquitectura
World's Top 100 Firms
Oppenheim
Architecture
Adriana Hoyos
Design Studio
Wecselman
Design · Florida
Kobi Karp
Architecture & Interiors
Fernanda Márquez
São Paulo · Lisboa · Vancouver · London
Legeard Studio
New York
2id Interiors
Miami
Llosa Cortegana
Architects
Studio Valle de Valle
Interiors · New York · 41 Arvida
Four Seasons
Residences
11 — Scope of Work

A complete methodologyOur Scope of Work

Organized in the three contractual stages, in coordination with Studio Valle de Valle. Click any stage to open its full deliverables.
01

Stage 1 — Lighting Design

Concept, fixture design, control system, photometric calculations and a full construction dossier.

Open stage →
02

Stage 2 — Lighting Design Management

Coordination, change management and scene calibration through construction.

Open stage →
03

Stage 3 — On-Site Management

Site visits, supervision and light testing until everything is exactly right.

Open stage →
12 — The Renovated Areas

Room by room,
a point of view

Per Studio Valle de Valle's drawings. Lighting scope covers the renovated areas only — but we don't read them as a list. Each room already has an intention.
First Floor · 8 rooms Second Floor · 4 rooms [ 000 m² · to be confirmed ]
01First Floor

Entry Stair

A slow reveal. Grazing light on curved plaster; the dome left dark.

02First Floor

Entry Room · Bar

Low and intimate — the first shift in mood as you arrive.

03First Floor

Entry Room · Library

Warm pools for reading; shelves lit to invite, not to display.

04First Floor

Great Room

Layered scenes — from full gather to single-lamp quiet.

05First Floor

Breakfast Room

Morning light extended; tuned to the body's early clock.

06First Floor

Dining Room

One considered source over the table; everything else recedes.

07First Floor

Office

Focused and glare-free, calibrated for long hours and the screen.

08First Floor

Powder Room

Flattering, soft, never clinical — light you look good in.

09Second Floor

Primary Bedroom

The last light of the day — dimmable to almost nothing, warm at the floor.

10Second Floor

Primary Bathroom

Vertical, even light at the mirror; a separate calm layer for night.

11Second Floor

Home Studio & Booth

Indirect and warm, never into the felt — light you sit inside.

12Second Floor · the heart

Screening Room

Graded for cinema. Zero glare, scene-controlled — the room the whole house is built toward.

13 — The Proposal

Investment

Integral Lighting Design
Renovated areas · Concept through Supervision · all stages included
$ 00,000 USD
Placeholder — fee to be confirmed on final scope

Payment terms

  • 70% Upon signature, to begin
  • 30% Before delivery of final drawings and documentation

Optional · Rendered Lighting Simulation

  • + $ Photorealistic visualization of representative spaces, before installation — placeholder amount
Proposal to be addressed to

Tropic Estate Land Trust
c/o David Weise & Associates
15821 Ventura Blvd., Ste 370
Encino, CA 91436

The Beginning of a Conversation

Every room he's ever been in had an audience.
This one won't.

We'd be honored to design this alongside Studio Valle de Valle. We don't pitch — we partner. You've spent months understanding who this house is for. We've spent every day since you reached out doing the same — studying the materials, the rooms, the person who'll live here, as closely as we could. And if we do our work right, no one who lives here will ever think about the lighting at all. They'll just never want to leave the room.

Start the conversation +