Available Light, the experiential lighting design firm, announced that Founder and CEO Steven Rosen, FIALD, CLD, will retire in December 2026, after more than four decades in lighting design and 35 years leading the firm he founded.
Rosen’s lighting design career of more than 40 years includes more than a thousand projects, plenty of awards, and 35 years of Available Light history. In that time, Rosen has been actively involved with the community of designers, collaborators, clients, students, and friends, both has as student and mentor.
Long before Available Light, Rosen started with a plan to spend a life of design in the theater. He supplemented his burgeoning theatrical career by lighting tradeshow exhibits alongside one of his mentors, Rick Chamberlain. A chance tradeshow collaboration with renowned museum exhibit designer, Nick Paffett, led to his first museum commission: the Virginia Air & Space Center. A few years later, another fortuitous encounter with architect Bob Schaeffner, led to his first architectural lighting design assignment, a new earth sciences building at Amherst College. “Why focus on one discipline when I could do it all?” Rosen mused, reflecting on a career that spanned theater, tadeshows, museums, and architecture.
Rosen built Available Light with the belief that unrestrained theatrical storytelling could serve a more expansive audience. What began as a single drafting table in his living room apartment in 1992 has grown into a national lighting design practice with six studios, almost 40 people, and a portfolio spanning museum exhibition, architecture, themed entertainment, trade show exhibits, and immersive environments around the world. Rosen’s wife, Susan Gochenour, believed in this vision and soon signed on as the young firm’s first Managing Director.
Rosen won the first-ever IALD Radiance Award for Available Light’s work on Building 7 at MIT. He received Lifetime Achievement awards from both LDI/Live Design and The Edison Report, and became a Fellow of the IALD.
“My greatest achievement has been assembling this team of passionate, talented, and hard-working professionals at Available Light,” says Rosen. “Serving as their leader has been an honor and a privilege. Realizing that we have multiple layers of people ready for the challenge of running the firm, I made my decision that the time is now to hand over the reins and cheer on their success. I am a very proud Founder!”