With over 22 years of experience in the architectural lighting design field, Claudia Saavedra has been involved in a wide and challenging range of design projects. These include the typical New York City office fit-out, transportation, high-end residential projects, higher education, healthcare and state-of-the-art laboratory buildings.
As a director of Lighting, for the past 13 years with Vanderweil Engineers, with offices in Boston, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Alexandria and Miami, she has been leading lighting design projects for large-scale Higher Education, Science & Technology, Healthcare, and Multifamily Residential projects awarded by the company.
Some of these are laboratories mix-use (lab and work) with Genmab, Sandoz, Insmed, Nokia; Ramapo Library, Lehigh University Science Center, Rutgers University Athletic Center, Stockton University Science Building and Educational Building, Mount Sinai Emergency department renovation, Flamingo Residential Towers interior and exterior Lighting in Miami, Grenada House of Parliament, Grenada The Point at Petit Calivigny high end residential, Mission Critical projects, among others.
She is currently working on several new laboratory and healthcare projects, while closing some other large projects, such as Penn State University Physics Laboratory Building and Osmond Building Renovation, which started in 2020 and it is expected to finish construction this year 2026.
Originally from Chile, where she studied architecture, Claudia was always drawn to the lighting aspects of design. Having received her master’s degree in architecture, she then began working on urban design projects in Santiago, the capital city of Chile. She later moved to New York to study architectural lighting at Parsons, the New School.
Claudia loves lighting. Both, the artistic and challenging technical aspects of it.
She lives in the East Village with her daughter now finishing College in Oberlin, OH and their 4-year-old dog Cleo, a cute mini-Schnauzer.