Some places ask for light that behaves like weather. This open-air installation in Paris, in 2017, sat across a garden and a walled courtyard that had to keep their daytime composure and change completely after dark — without one fixture announcing itself.

Light carried outside

We worked with the Nomad family from our More Outdoor collection: hand-shaped glass spheres on slender stems along the path, small glass table lights left on the stone benches, a single pendant held over the long table where guests would sit late. Glass keeps its warmth outdoors. It gives a flame-colour back to a place that has already lost it to the sky.

Around the edges of the site the Sypha Outdoor forms did the quieter work — low, steady, set into the planting so the light arrives before the object does. Shadows lengthen over the gravel. The courtyard walls turn soft. Nothing here is lit evenly, and that is deliberate: a garden reads as space when part of it stays dark.

The installation ran through a full season. Visitors walked it twice, once coming in and once going back, and the second walk never looked like the first. Light outdoors is temporary by nature. We only give it a form to pass through.