James Clar is a multimedia artist based in NY who light-centric pieces emphasize the marriage of technology and art. I’m going to give you a little bit of background info on him before launching into the mind-boggling reason why he’s one of the coolest designers out there…

Besides his personal works (like the collection Acceleration that he recently showed in Dubai), he also started a six-person design firm in NY called James Clar & Associates that focuses on interactive and architectural lighting installations. His portfolio spans a broad range of projects, including a public art piece titled “Tunnel Vision” in collaboration with New York City based Vito Acconci Studios, and the Habitat Hotel in Barcelona. In an interview with Architectural Lighting, Clar says that lighting is an vital part of his artwork and how he chooses to convey information because, “I grew up with computers, video games, and the Internet. It has always amazed me that when you look at a computer screen there is a seemingly infinite amount of possibilities and information staring back at you. But if you break it down into its simplest form it is just light that is entering your eye. This is one of the key ideas that struck me when I started to get into media theory—as you look at light your brain is interpreting it as shapes and colors. Over time these are combined to become storylines that begin to evoke an emotional response. That’s a powerful tool.”

And, not surprisingly, Clar frequently uses LEDs in his lighting art pieces and design. Take his patented “3D display cube,” for instance, which uses a pattern of LEDs to convey a s-dimensional object floating in space.

But the thing that really made my eyes pop was his model of the Habitat hotel in Barcelona. As far as I can tell from digging around on the internet, the hotel is not yet complete, but when it is, me thinks guests will feel like they’ve entered some other realm. And in fact they just may have, thanks to LED lights. Here’s what the Habitat Hotel, designed by James Clar, is all about: