About
I am Iara Santos, architect and lighting designer.
I started in 2010, on the building technician course at CEFET. In 2020, I graduated in Architecture and Urbanism.
Along the way, I founded SIS Arquitetura with my sister, also an architect. Six years, and more than a hundred and fifty architecture and interior projects.
At the same time, I specialised in lighting inside a Brazilian luminaire manufacturer. I signed the lighting design for franchises such as Luiza Barcelos, Subway and Sergio’s, as well as hospitals, offices, shops and homes. Each one asked for a different light. That is how I learned to look.
LID brings those two paths together. Here, the interior and the light are designed together, by the same person, from the first line.
I begin by listening. Then I lead.
A good project cannot be explained on a floor plan. You notice it as you walk in: in the stone that catches the afternoon light, in the room that settles down at night, in the wish to stay a little longer.
Iara Santos · Architect · CAU A245075-5 (Brazil) Belo Horizonte · São Paulo · Remote worldwide, including the United States
What LID does
At LID, architecture, interiors and lighting are designed together, by the same person. Each one can also be commissioned on its own. The lighting project is also offered to architecture practices and developers, as a technical partnership.
Lighting design
Light begins before the luminaire.
First, I work out what the space needs the light to do. In a home, these are the scenes of the routine: dinner, reading, the living room slowing down at night. In a shop, the path and the product. In offices and hospitals, the technical standards for each use as well.
Then I calculate. Every room is simulated before anything is specified, and every luminaire is chosen for the performance the room asks for.
Finally, the documentation: lighting plan, details and specification set, with everything needed to install each piece in the right place.
Light that is well resolved rarely draws attention to itself. It leads the eye: in the shop, to the product; at home, to the atmosphere you want to find at the end of the day.
Interior design
Every project begins with listening.
Before thinking about form or material, I want to understand who is going to live there: the routine, the habits, what needs to work better and how you want to feel in the space.
Then I take the lead. Layout, joinery, materials, furniture and light are decided at the same time, and every choice has a reason. A stone is chosen also for the way it takes the light.
Finally, the detailing. Plans, elevations, details and the specification set carry to the building site the same clarity with which the project was thought through.
What remains of an interior is the everyday use, and what still looks good once the novelty wears off.
Architecture
The project begins with the site.
Before the first line, I study sun exposure and slope: where the sun comes in at each hour of the day, what the site offers in view and in shade, and what the topography asks for in cut and fill. Working with the site costs less and turns out better.
Then, the routine of whoever is going to live there. How many people, at what hours each room is used, what needs to be near what. The plan grows out of that use, not out of a ready-made parti. The interiors and the light come in alongside it.
Finally, the documentation. Planning drawings, municipal approval and construction drawings. It is a path I have walked many times, and it tends to be what delays the start of a build the most.
The beauty of a house shows on the first visit. Whether it works, you only find out by living in it.