Available Light has announced the retirement of founder and CEO Steven Rosen, FIALD, CLD, ending a lighting design career that has spanned more than four decades and produced over a thousand projects.
The firm described Rosen's most enduring contribution not as awards or project counts, but as the community of designers, collaborators, clients, students and friends he influenced and learned from along the way.
A Career Across Disciplines
Rosen began with a plan to spend his life designing in the theater, where he found his greatest joy in interpreting dramatic works with light. He supplemented his theatrical career by lighting trade show exhibits alongside one of his mentors, Rick Chamberlain. A chance trade show collaboration with museum exhibit designer Nick Paffett led to his first museum commission, the Virginia Air & Space Center.
A later encounter with architect Bob Schaeffner produced his first architectural lighting design assignment: a new earth sciences building at Amherst College. Rosen framed the path from theater to trade shows to museums to architecture as a deliberate choice, asking why he should focus on one discipline when he could do them all.
Building Available Light
That approach shaped Available Light, which Rosen founded in 1992 on the belief that unrestrained theatrical storytelling could serve a more expansive audience. What began as a single drafting table in his living room apartment has grown into a national lighting design practice with six studios and almost 40 people. Its portfolio spans museum exhibition, architecture, themed entertainment, trade show exhibits and immersive environments around the world.
Rosen's wife, Susan Gochenour, believed in the vision and signed on as the young firm's first Managing Director.
Recognition
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, became a Fellow of the IALD, and was named to the 2025 blooloop 50 Top Museum Influencer list.
Handing Over the Reins
Rosen said his greatest achievement has been assembling the team of passionate, talented and hard-working professionals at Available Light, describing the role of leading them as an honor and a privilege. He added that with multiple layers of people ready for the challenge of running the firm, he decided the time was right to hand over the reins and cheer on their success, calling himself a very proud founder.
Available Light said the company Rosen built will continue to evolve, push boundaries and create meaningful experiences through light.