Jean-Yves Soetinck is a French lighting designer and founder of L’Acte Lumière, a lighting design practice established in 2001 in Dijon, Burgundy (France). Recipient of the IALD Award of Excellence 2017 for the illumination of Strasbourg Cathedral (five international awards in the same year), he won the 2024 competitions for the lighting of the Palais des Papes in Avignon (UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Lausanne Cathedral. Active member of ACE (Association des Concepteurs lumière et Éclairagistes), associate member of LUCI (Lighting Urban Community International).
« Lighting is carving shadow »
This original motto defines both the philosophy and the method. For L’Acte Lumière, light is never an addition. It is a precise act of revealing what already exists: the materiality of stone, the depth of a facade, the rhythm of a public space, the presence of a building within its nocturnal landscape.
To flood a monument with light is to erase everything that makes it real: its relief, its texture, its symbolic weight, its relationship with the night. The approach is the opposite: mastering shadows, their direction, their intensity, their interplay, so that light becomes a form of restraint rather than excess.
Since 2016, Jean-Yves Soetinck has deliberately chosen to work as a solo practitioner, assembling bespoke teams of complementary specialists for each project: lighting engineers, graphic designers, ecologists, urban planners. This is not a retreat but an exigence: maintaining full creative control from initial concept through to the final on-site night adjustment. He calls it « a craft of light ».
This commitment extends to environmental responsibility. L’Acte Lumière integrates ecological expertise into its projects, working with nocturnal ecologists to address biodiversity concerns, light pollution, and dark infrastructure planning. The lighting design for Lausanne Cathedral, completed in 2025, included a six-month seasonal extinction of an entire facade based on ecological analysis of nesting and migration patterns.
Awards and International Recognition
Strasbourg Cathedral — Five International Awards (2017)
The illumination of Strasbourg Cathedral, inaugurated in October 2016, received five major international awards in 2017:
– **IALD Award of Excellence**, International Association of Lighting Designers (USA). The highest distinction in lighting design worldwide.
– **darc Award**, Best Exterior Lighting Scheme, Structure category, mondo*arc magazine (UK).
– **Codega Award**, First Prize, Excellence in Lighting Design, Assil (Italy).
– **AL Design Award**, Commendable Achievement in Exterior Lighting, Architectural Lighting Magazine (USA).
– **LIT Lighting Design Award**, Lighting Designer of the Year, Heritage Lighting category (USA).
Other Distinctions
– **City.People » Light Award** (3rd Prize), Philips / LUCI, 2014. Place du Château, Strasbourg.
– **darc Awards 2026**, shortlisted. Lausanne Cathedral lighting design.
### Competition Wins (2024)
– **Palais des Papes, Avignon** (UNESCO World Heritage Site). Lighting design for the palace and the Place du Palais. Completion 2026.
– **Lausanne Cathedral** (Switzerland). Complete exterior lighting redesign. Completed November 2025.
Selected Projects
**Strasbourg Cathedral** — Strasbourg, France. Inaugurated 2016. Five international awards. A restrained and refined illumination of one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture, designed to reveal the stone’s depth and the building’s monumental presence through shadow as much as light.
[IMAGE 2 — Palais des Papes — pleine largeur]
**Palais des Papes** — Avignon, France. Competition winner 2024. Completion 2026. Lighting design for the UNESCO World Heritage palace and its iconic square, integrating ecological considerations for the nearby Rhône corridor Natura 2000 site.
[IMAGE 3 — Cathédrale de Lausanne — pleine largeur]
**Lausanne Cathedral** — Lausanne, Switzerland. Competition winner 2024. Completed November 2025. A lighting scheme that evolves through the evening, from an amber twilight wash to detailed architectural highlights as night falls, with seasonal facade extinctions based on ecological analysis.
**Place du Château** — Strasbourg, France. City.People » Light Award 2014 (Philips / LUCI). A seamless transition between ground-level public space lighting and the illumination of surrounding heritage facades.
[IMAGE 5 et 6 — Pont Tournant et Quais de l’Isère — côte à côte, bloc Médias et texte]
**Pont Tournant** — Port of Strasbourg, France. Inaugurated 2018. A play of shadow and light that shifts with every angle of approach, revealing the steel structure of this exceptional swing bridge.
**Quais de l’Isère** — Grenoble, France. A large-scale public space lighting project along the river, combining functional urban lighting with a sensitive treatment of the waterfront landscape.
[IMAGE 7 et 8 — X-Bloom et Place Darcy — côte à côte, bloc Médias et texte]
**X-Bloom** — Plaisir, France. An artistic lighting installation exploring the boundary between design and light sculpture.
**Place Darcy** — Dijon, France. A historic city square reimagined through contemporary lighting design, with bespoke luminaires that contribute to the daytime streetscape as well as the nocturnal atmosphere.
Conferences and Publications
Jean-Yves Soetinck regularly speaks at international conferences and contributes to reference works on lighting design.
Selected Speaking Engagements
– **UNESCO Colloquium**, 30th anniversary of the Palais des Papes World Heritage listing, Avignon, 2025.
– **LUCI Cities and Lighting Summit**, London, 2025. Presentation of *Dark Infrastructure*, the ACE collective publication.
– **Share Architects**, Bucharest 2018 and Ljubljana 2019. Lecture: « How to Highlight a Masterpiece? »
– **Shanghai World Expo**, 2010. Conference: « The French Touch: French Lighting Expertise. »
– **50th BucketLight**, Light+Building, Frankfurt, 2026. Presentation « A Crack of Light » for the 50th BucketList edition (d[arc] magazine / Light Collective). First French lighting designer invited to the BucketList series.
Publications
– « Dark infrastructure and lighting design: creativity in the service of restraint », case study on Strasbourg Cathedral, in Luc Gwiazdzinski (ed.), *Trames noires*, Éditions Le Moniteur, 2024.
– « Lausanne Cathedral, Works 2019-2025 », chapter on exterior lighting, in *Monuments Vaudois*, special issue, 2025.
– « Lighting and Light in the Third Millennium », Éditions Light Zoom Lumière, 2021. Co-authored chapter.
– « Lighting Design » (*La conception lumière*), ACE / Éditions Le Moniteur, 2017. Chapter 25: Lighting Professionals.
Teaching
Guest lecturer at IAE Lyon (urban lighting management, 2003-2010), INSA Lyon (Master’s in Lighting, 2015), and ENSA Nantes (Master’s programme, 2016).
Contact
L’Acte Lumière is based in Jura, Burgundy-Franche-Comté, France. Jean-Yves Soetinck works across France and internationally.
For project enquiries, speaking invitations, or collaboration proposals:
**info@acte-lumiere.com**