Born in Stuttgart in 1991, Mara-Madeleine Pieler is a stage, space and lighting designer based in Hamburg. Her work unfolds between scenography, architecture and installation—creating spaces that think, feel and narrate. She explores how atmosphere, material and perception can become agents of storytelling, and how spatial experience itself can carry emotion and meaning.
She studied Stage and Costume Design at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (2012–2015) and Stage Design and Fine Art at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, completing her studies in 2019. From 2020 to 2022, she earned an international Master’s degree in Architectural Lighting Design at the University of Wismar, where she developed her research framework “Narrative Lighting – How does light shape narrative experiences?”
Her artistic practice is rooted in the dialogue between structure and emotion. Through shifting levels of abstraction, she creates associative environments that oscillate between clarity and ambiguity—spaces that invite reflection and association.
Mara-Madeleine Pieler has designed for institutions such as Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Kampnagel Hamburg, Thalia Theater Hamburg, Staatstheater Cottbus, and the Korean National Opera in Seoul. Her international collaborations include 129 BPM – Động Phách Tách Kén, a dance production with the Goethe-Institut Hồ Chí Minh City, exploring transformation and collective memory through immersive spatial design.
Across theatre and installation, her work examines how light, material and rhythm can transform architecture into narrative space—how the intangible becomes spatial, and the spatial becomes emotional.