Lighting designer and technician based in Prague and Berlin 

Off-Location
Club Installations
Festival Work
Crochet Lights
Exhibited Work
Theater


ellapavel21@gmail.com

x daycare

HDV, Berlin 
Lighting design and operating
In collaboration with Pablo Garduño 
14 November 2025 
special thank you to Keo Sket and Matteo and also Zikmund for helping with the build up 

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Harmony collaborated with Daycare for a party in HDV in Berlin, a massive industrial space-turned club. The design challenge for us was how to make the space feel full, especially since the expected amount of guests would not fill the room. 


This was an exciting opportunity for us to showcase Prague-style lighting in Berlin. Everything about it felt large scale - the budget, the size of the space, and the expectations. 









We used Capture for the first time, which is a software that allows you to place lights and smoke in a 3D render of the space to create a digital model of your design. We took a 3D scan of HDV, modeled it in Blender, and imported it into Capture. 
The benefit was that we could easily visualize and present our ideas to Harmony and Daycare, while also using the scaled model to calculate the exact number of cables we needed. (This was a big deal because about 90% of lighting design is cabling but it’s rarely mentioned in portfolios because it’s boring).  






Once we were in the space we tweaked the placement, condensing all the fixtures and the sculptures to the center of the room. This made the space feel a bit smaller and cozier. The light brought the people together like moths, and the rest of the dark and negative space in the room went mostly unnoticed. 

We used mostly analogue light, with the addition of blue neons,  cameo thunderwashes on the columns, and a laser. The idea was to pay tribute to the theatrical, monumental, and thoughtful lighting design scene in Prague, while creating something that felt very playful and fitting to the Harmony visual identity.








It’s important to us to add some other elements besides light fixtures to our stage design, some kind of eye candy that brings the whole story together. 



We were inspired by László Moholy-Nagy’s "Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light-Space Modulator), 1930". It’s one of the earliest examples of a kinetic sculpture powered by electricity.  Similar to us, Moholy-Nagy was interested in technology, new materials, and light. What we took away from his work was the use of metal materials, the incorporation of movement, and the interaction of the object with light. 




What resulted was a much simplified but still impactful version: three 2 meter metal rods with metal ‘waffles’ attached on each side, with plexiglass attached to the middle of these waffles. The sculptures were attached to disco ball motors, so they were in a constant state of movement. Each sculpture had a par 56 fixture pointing directly at them to illuminate them, as well as laser beams that bounced off the reflective surfaces. 











We also used car lights found at a flea market in Prague. Each one had an E14 refridgerator bulb inside and they were hung from various points at the center of the room by chains. 


Photos by Otko and Julian Lietz