My academic life was focused on Design, first starting with Product design as a Bachelor, Interior Architecture Design for Master then Lighting Design for my Ph.D. at Edinburgh Napier University. My researches were about “place, space, and sense of place” and their relationship with Lighting on historic sites. I am working to find the best way to combine research with practice to Develop Lighting Principles for Social Environments. Behind Best Design is research! Some topics I am working on are: What lighting characteristics and site aspects must be considered for lighting historic sites? What is the role of people in lighting a historic site? How light can be used in the process of place-making?
While my second research topic is about the philosophy of light in human history by focusing on Islamic philosophy such as Al-Ghazali and Suhrawardi. I am trying to find the connection between their idea of light in philosophy and the real world in terms of Lighting Design.
In parallel to my academic life, I decided to implement some of my lighting concepts, which lead me to win some international awards such as LIT lighting design awards, LAMP award, [d]arc awards, creative conscience awards, and Saint Petersburg light festival.
My approach to light is more than electric and psychology, I consider light as an important element of social life. I believe that social life is not only about people’s living in urban spaces with lighted skyscraper facades. In the Middle East and especially in Iran, many people live in under-developed villages, their residents also have the right to enjoy light to enhance their social life. I attempt to engage them, therefore, my research method becomes ethnographic, where I study people’s culture and daily life.
Anna Tomschik is a 30-year old architect specialized in lighting. In the last few years, she has been working in various design studios in Vienna, London, and Stockholm. Her portfolio spans from architectural lighting design for interior and exterior projects to daylight design, as well as product design. Anna enjoys the variety of working on different scales from large-sized and complex projects to small installations.
She believes in sustainable design solutions and minimalistic design with unique character. Anna gets inspiration from traveling, nature phenomena, and meeting new people. Her favorite activities are climbing, hiking, practicing yoga, and doing road trips.
How did you first discover your passion for Lighting Product Design?
I have always loved to design objects and spaces in a functional way. Being trained as an architect, I became interested in the emotional component that can be implemented into luminaires. To me lighting products are small-sized objects that have the power to fill a whole space with an emotion.
What do you think are the main strengths of the lighting product Henyx, and why do you think it deserved to win?
Henyx tells a story. It incorporates the light qualities of sunlight and moonlight. A simple concept that people can relate to.
What does LIT Design Awards mean to you, and how has it helped your career?
I felt honored to hear that my design is appreciated by many people. It has helped me to gain exposure as a designer. After I received the award, I have been working as a lighting designer in London and Stockholm, focusing on architectural lighting design, daylight as well as on product design.
I am still looking for a manufacturer to produce Henyx on a larger scale. Would be glad to receive any help or recommendations on that end.
Where do you get motivation and inspiration from in your work?
Daylight and natural light phenomena are my main inspiration when designing with man-made light. I am aware that nothing competes with the beauty of nature. Therefore – rather than seeking to replicate natural light – I am trying to interpret it in my own way.
What are you working on now? Can you share some glimpse of your next Lighting Product or inspirations?
I am working with the architectural lighting design for three new subway stations located in Stockholm – all very different concepts – a collaboration between art and design with complete darkness as a canvas. Furthermore, I am working on several outdoor projects in the Stockholm area. As Sweden can get long and dark winter nights it is even more important to contribute with pleasant lighting to public spaces.
When it comes to food and drinking establishments, proper lighting is paramount. Lights from both natural and artificial lighting, when properly planned can create an inviting atmosphere. Strategic illumination can set the mood of interior space. This further boosts the occupants’ sensory experiences and provides the desired ambiance.
Aside from creating an atmosphere, lighting is critical when to efficiency, productivity, and safety of the staff and employees.
Your lighting should never be an afterthought. Without proper lighting, it can break the overall look of your restaurant or bar, however beautiful or stunning your other design elements may be.
We’ve listed here the 4 Important Lighting Types for your Bar or Restaurant.
Importance: Safe circulation of space, foundational layer of lighting
Ambient lights are placed to provide general lighting to your establishment, helping your customers and employees to maneuver easily and safely through space. These lights serve as the base lighting when it comes to the layering of your lighting. For ambient illumination, these are usually overhead luminaires, recessed lights, chandeliers, track lighting, or pendant lights.
Importance: Highlight important areas or features, creates overall contrast
Creating visual interest and makes a lively and dynamic atmosphere. You can highlight décor elements such as paintings, feature walls, or any other artwork. This lighting level is also perfect in accenting points in your operation, such as menu boards, advertisements, or open kitchen areas. Emergency lights should also be highlighted using focal luminaires like troffers or recessed lights.
For a dramatic effect, your focal lighting should be 3x brighter than your ambient lights. Sconces or pendant lights, adjustable track lights, torchiere lights, and cove lights are a few focal lights that can be incorporated.
Importance: Safety of kitchen staff, ensures the efficiency of employees
If you have excellent task lighting, you’ll expect employees to complete the task accurately. Task lights are generally placed in the kitchen, reception, or counters. Kitchen areas should be well lit, as safety is a priority. With proper lighting, kitchen staff should able to see clearly all the kitchen utensils and ingredients being used.
Task lights include both fixed and adjustable luminaires. Adjustable task lights include gooseneck, balanced-arm lamp, and track lights. Fixed task lights on-the-other-hand include pendant lights and downlights.
Importance: Natural anti-bacterial properties, creates a lively mood, saves on energy costs
Regardless of what restaurant or bar business you have, natural light from the sun is beneficial, and it should go hand-in-hand with your artificial lighting. Natural illumination should be maximized, but glare and heat retention should be avoided. Surface materials can also affect your overall lighting, so be sure to include all design considerations when planning.
To control natural lighting, blinds and draperies can be installed as well as smart windows that can self-tint during the day when the sun is at its highest.
Just like in a theater stage, layers of light create, enhances, and highlight key elements. Regardless of what type of restaurant, lighting is critical. It’s not enough in having beautiful luminaires, all your lights should work harmoniously, and it helps to have controllable features on your lighting system. This makes it easier to adjust the degree of brightness and color.
Around 50% of the energy consumption of bars and restaurants comes from lighting alone. You can choose LED or sensory lights to cut off costs. Along with a properly planned lighting system, you can ensure that your costumers and staff are getting the optimum benefits of natural and artificial illumination.
Originally from China, Xiaoqing Long is now a product designer living in Germany. The design had become part of her life since she decided to continue her study in Düsseldorf. Her minds and understanding have evaluated and somehow change her daily life deeply. Long likes abstract elements, using different materials to achieve her original ideas. The interaction between products and humans is one of her sources of inspiration.
Tell us a bit about your background and how you discovered that you wanted to work in the lighting industry? Was it an easy path to pursue?
First, I studied in China then continued with a master’s degree in Hochschule Düsseldorf under New Craft and Object Design. During my study, I had the possibility to try “ Design» in different fields like jewelry and furniture. Prior to conceptualized the ‘Ecliptic’ lamp, I attended an exhibition in Berlin about visual light which became the starting point of this lamp idea.
Compared to my previous study, I was now free to test and try which ‘Ecliptic’ came out as a result. In the beginning, it was a struggle as the entire making process was different from everything I made before. Thanks to my professor for his advice and encouragement, this helped me to achieve this work.
Your winning projected ‘Ecliptic’ is inspired by Kenneth Snelson’s linear sculptures. How did this idea come about?
Ecliptic starts as a model that contains three wood sticks. While discussing with my profession, he advised me to have a look at Kenneth Snelson’s works. Those linear sculptures inspired me a lot which initiate my vision of transforming lines into three-dimensional works.
During the model making process, I kept asking myself, ‘Why not keep both, two, and three dimensionalities at the time? This was an important step while testing the wood sticks started to rotate and lines became alive when the angles changed.
What were the biggest influences in your life that shaped your Lighting artistic vision?
My stay in Germany influences me a lot, especially ways of thinking. Düsseldorf is a cultural and artistic city; I have the opportunity to visit many exhibitions and meet designers. Every year; I visit Imm Cologne, Dutch Design Week, and Munich Jewelry Week which allow me to be up to date with the latest information or trades. Participating in exhibitions and competitions also pushes me forwards; Design comes from life and hope appears in the design.
What does LIT Design Awards mean to you, and how has it helped your career?
LIT Lighting Design Award is my first award in the lamp industry. It has a special meaning for me. It means a starting point and also a strong support. The bonus from the award is a fund for my future development, though I still need more time to create the new series. Ecliptic is a table lamp at the moment, I hope I could continue and finish it as a series which might combine table lamp and suspended lamp together.
What do you think are the biggest challenges and opportunities in the Lighting world today?
There are different lamp designs in the market nowadays which basically follow trends, most recently we are back to “Classic”. Energy saving is also a popular topic, where technologies like sound-activated and remote control are involved. Lamps are considered to be multifunctional. However, the sustainability of generating new ideas is still a challenge for designers. Personally, the lamp design could be more playful. The functions and appearances are important, but there is also a need for fun.
What are you working on now? What is in the pipeline for you?
I am currently working for a furniture company which includes furniture design, brand building, and online network platform. Due to Coronavirus, the online platform becomes the main source to gather opinions from the users. I am also looking for a new opportunity relating to decorative lamps and home display. It’s now time for me to gather more experience, either in Lighting or other Design fields, always happy to try.
Massimiliano Moro grew up in Lugano, Switzerland, and studied in Barcelona where he began with a sculpture’s academy and then a bachelor’s degree in art and design, followed by an intensive course in Light Design. He considers himself as a sculptor. His artistic focus is the act of viewing, all his sculptures, installations and designs circle around on the same theme: reveal the action of seeing to enhance its beauty and fragility.
Moro is always looking for new equilibriums between light and architecture through design and sculpture to research sight. He uses artificial light, the shadow as matter, the reflections, the movement, and their perception to generate new small and intimate worlds that open intangible spaces of reflection.
How did you first discover your passion for Lighting Design?
While exploring all the academic mediums to express myself in the art field, assignment after assignment I shifted more and more toward light and movement, realizing that it’s something I can work on hours and hours and discover always new things without getting tired. From there I searched for a way to share it to others, so that’s why I’m always shifting between art and light design.
Also most of our culture is based on what we see, so working with light is working with our understanding of the world: using artificial shadows is creating a difference between what we know and what we see and by this breaking the structures that sustain our beliefs. This really fascinates me, this power to change things without physically intervene on them.
Your winning project, Monstera Deliciosa is a site-specific project made for Palazzo di Napoli. Can you please explain to us, what was your creative journey?
This exhibition took place in an abandoned palace in the center of Palermo, and in this case, I wanted to forget for a moment about the abandonment and focus on what was still there.
With light, I transformed the atmosphere making it lived again. With plants, I generated an immersive ambient where the human scale got mixed with the plants and their shadows, while other interventions accompanied you in discovering the beauty of the ancient architecture. It has been the start of a deep journey into the shape of shadows and how they can change the relationship we have with the space we move on.
What does this award mean to you, and how has it helped your career?
It meant a lot, as it was my first big solo exhibition, and being recognized by the jury gave me a big impulse for the next projects, knowing I was on an interesting path. Also, it gave me the economic possibility to create a custom heatsink for my lights, giving me a unique way to develop aesthetically my sculptures and designs. I am still using it for the majority of my projects!
What do you think are the biggest challenges and opportunities in your career now?
Right now, I’m “recalculating” as the GPS navigator would say… For many years I focused on portability and fast-moving the exhibitions, but now something has changed, mostly in the way we travel, so I’m investigating which way could be a new interesting strategy to show my work.
I don’t know where art is going to go, but I hope that this time we spent confined in our homes makes us more conscient about the little things that are around us. Allowing us to appreciate details of what is directly in contact with our bodies, to start work again in a way that soothes us instead of creating more contrast. To create art that fits more in a home and can be lived rather than stored in a collection. Or at least this is what I was doing, and I will continue even more convinced of it!
What are you working on now? What is in the pipeline for you?
I’m working with a colleague and friend to make an intervention in her exhibition in Barcelona, where our two artistic languages can dialogue (it involves plants again, after many years without using them as an artistic material). I am also finishing up the launch of Palmyr.art, a website that sells my line of limited editions sculptures that blur the limit between lamp and sculpture.
Apart from those specific things, I’m investigating the control of caustic reflections and how to take them to a more controlled level.
Moodable is an interactive light. The light quality can be variably adjusted by a simple and intuitive movement. The dynamic light can be adapted seamlessly to any situation and thus changes the mood in the room. By opening the luminaire, the light temperature, brightness and propagation angle can be varied.
The luminaire is based on a simple mechanism supplemented by a complex invisible digital component that creates a pleasant user experience. In contrast to other individually adjustable luminaires, the control works directly on the object. This creates a new way of interaction between user and object.
The mechanics are openly visible, so the function of the luminaire is self-explanatory due to its shape. The two halves of the luminaire balance themselves so that the luminaire can be stopped at any angle. The two halves of moodable are rotationally symmetrical, which makes production and installation easier.
The A-Light design team has a deep understanding of lighting’s contribution to architectural design intent and has been using this passion to develop beautiful and high-performance architectural lighting systems since 2001. Our Montreal (Canada) and Oceanside (California) based in-house industrial design teams are built on award-winning DNA. They follow a rigorous process to ensure the development of products that have superior optical engineering, contemporary design, unparalleled build quality. And, products are designed to be highly configurable to meet the needs of the architecture and design communities.
To us, successful product development is the result of a passionate and multi-disciplinary team that focuses on the ever-evolving needs of the environments we work in. To this end, our designers work closely with our production engineers as well as our sales and marketing teams to ensure the best quality and most relevant products possible. Along with the 2019 LIT Lighting Product of the Year award, we have been fortunate to have won many other awards over the years and this recognition motivates us to continue and lead in our exploration of new forms, functionality, and applications to meet the needs of the architectural design community.
Alfred R. Borden is the principal and the founder of The Lighting Practice (TLP) in the Philadelphia office in 1989 with an expansion to New York in 2018.
Al’s background in theatrical lighting taught him the importance of story and the powerful role light can play in how individuals experience an architectural space. He has taken on the major task of relighting many iconic buildings and landmarks, including the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Philadelphia City Hall, Thomas Edison Memorial, and Trinity Centre.
He was part of the project team that completely replaced all vertical circulation within the Statue of Liberty’s stone pedestal and created life-safety egress paths across the pedestal’s terreplein and through the walls of Fort Wood.
In 2016, he designed the lighting system for the conversion of the historically landmarked Temple-Tifereth Israel into Case Western Reserve University’s Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center. When the Empire State Building’s tower lighting became outdated, Al was tasked with changing the existing metal halide lighting system to color-changing LED.
From arts and entertainment to hospitality to transportation environments and more, Al’s designs have provided comfort, safety, and breathtaking beauty to hundreds of buildings and landscapes. To learn more…
Cue to Covid-19 health crisis, the LIT winner event has been postponed to 2021; therefore 2019 Grand Winners have received their Trophy by mail and sent a video acceptance speech.
July 2, 2020 (Los Angeles, CA) – The 3rd LIT Design Awards winner event originally planned for March 2020 is now officially postponed till next year due to the current global health crisis caused by Covid19. With over 100 attendees registered from 20 different countries, the safety of our winners and organizing team are of primary concern.
Therefore, we have decided to postpone the 2019 LIT Winners evening reception. This decision has not been made lightly, as it’s a key yearly event amongst the leading global Lighting and Lighting Product Designers.
The LIT 2019 Winners will be celebrated together with the LIT 2020 Winners at a future date and location which will be announced early 2021.
LIT Design Awards was assembled by the Farmani Group as the sister initiative of the IDA International Design Awards, which has been recognizing and celebrating smart and sustainable multidisciplinary design since 2007.
The Farmani Group, established in 1985, is responsible for many successful awards around the globe. Farmani Group organizes the International Design Awards (IDA), Architecture Masterprize (AMP), DNA Paris Design Awards, London International Creative Awards ( LICC), Prix de la Photographie in Paris, and the Annual Lucie Awards for Photography, which has emerged as one of the world’s most prestigious awards.
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