Where the practice comes from.
The Night Office was founded by Tim Hunt in 2026, drawing on more than two decades at the forefront of night-time strategy, architectural lighting design and media architecture.
Originally trained as an industrial designer, Tim spent 18 years with Arup across Sydney, London and Melbourne, where he helped define and establish night-time design as a recognised discipline. During this time, he authored Arup's global night-time design methodology and guidelines, creating the framework, language and evaluation approach used to shape projects and cities around the world.
His work spans city and precinct strategies, public realm and transport infrastructure, universities, cultural institutions, workplaces and major urban developments across Australia, New Zealand and internationally.
The Night Office was created to address a critical gap: the distance between night-time ambition and real-world delivery. While many projects articulate aspirations for safety, vibrancy, identity and economic activity after dark, few have the expertise to translate those ambitions into measurable outcomes.
What has remained constant throughout Tim's career is a commitment to evidence-based decision making and human-centred design. Every project begins with a simple premise: environments should be experienced, not simply illuminated. The result is places that are beautiful, safer, more welcoming, socially connected, culturally vibrant and economically productive.
We do not simply design for the night. We help shape how people experience cities and spaces after dark.
Tim Hunt
Tim Hunt is a night-time design specialist, creative lighting designer and strategic adviser with more than 20 years of experience helping governments, universities, workplaces, transport agencies, developers and cultural institutions improve the performance of places after dark.
Known for combining creativity, research and practical delivery, Tim helps clients navigate complex urban, technical and governance challenges to achieve meaningful, evidence-based outcomes for the night-time environment and spaces.
The Night Walk.
Every engagement begins the same way: on foot, after dark.
Before strategies are written, designs developed or recommendations made, we experience a place as it is actually encountered at night. Not through plans, photographs or desktop analysis, but through direct observation of the human experience.
The Night Walk is a structured, evidence-based site immersion led personally by Tim Hunt. It evaluates how safety is perceived, how light performs, where activity succeeds or fails, how ecology interacts with illumination, and how people move through and occupy a place after dark.
More than a site walk, it is a methodology developed and refined over more than twenty years of practice. Tim has personally led more than 50 Night Walks and counting, across the globe, building a body of knowledge that informs projects ranging from city-scale strategies to major developments and public spaces.
No other practice approaches night-time assessment in quite the same way.
The Night Walk consistently uncovers insights that conventional studies, audits and reports miss. In a matter of hours, it reveals the opportunities, constraints and priorities that become the foundation for better decision-making across strategy, lighting design and media architecture.
The result is a sharper brief, clearer priorities and more targeted outcomes from day one.
Because the most important questions about a place at night are rarely answered from behind a desk. The Night Walk is where every project begins. Because the difference between a place that functions after dark and one that truly comes alive can only be understood by being there.