Zuzana Basterrech
Ph.D. students
Product Design
today
Zuzana Basterrech is an architect and designer. She studied Architecture and Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture, Czech Technical University in Prague, including a specialization in Landscape Architecture. She completed parts of her studies at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico and the University of Adelaide in Australia. She gained professional experience in Norway, Slovenia and China, where she worked on large-scale urban design projects. She currently runs her own practice in architecture and design. She is the founder and designer of the fashion label Soolista and co-founder of Showroom Dot, a shared space for contemporary Czech designers in Prague. Since 2025, she has been a PhD candidate at the Department of Design at UMPRUM.
Public lighting as a cultural phenomenon and a design challenge in the interdisciplinary context of the contemporary city
The dissertation project examines public lighting as a city-forming tool that shapes the character, legibility, atmosphere, and urban quality of public space. Light represents a significant cultural, spatial, and visual layer that fundamentally contributes to the formation of the city’s nocturnal image and identity, while during the day it appears as a distinct element of urban furniture. The research operates within an interdisciplinary framework connecting architecture, urbanism, design, technology, ecology, and health, while also addressing historical, legislative, and social contexts. It focuses on the relationship between types of public space and their lighting conditions in relation to the ongoing transformation of public lighting in Prague. The aim is to formulate principles for a sensitive and systematic approach to public lighting and to develop design tools for shaping the luminous environment of the city.
