Photos by Kathreen Fontecha, Nicole Pierce, Xi Lin Yeh and Karin Higgins. Produced by Sylvia Wright.
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Competition results
- First place: Tieni Wu
- Second place: Jana Sharmir
- Third place: Amanda Radatz
- Honorable mentions: Jenny Zhouchen, Melina Prokopakis
Design course is an illuminating experience
It is mid-March, the day of the “final exam” in the winter-quarter course Designing With Light. In a few hours, a panel of UC Davis design professors and lighting industry experts will judge lighting fixtures the students have spent three months designing and building.
The top projects will earn the best grades, naturally, but this year there are additional incentives: The winners will be displayed at the lighting industry’s mammoth trade show in New York City.
Tieni Wu is optimistic about the chances for her project, which is an illuminated address sign with a twist — the numbers not only shine on the front of the sign, but also are enlarged and projected onto the wall behind and above the fixture.
Wu spent most of the quarter refining the artistic elements of the luminaire, but right now, with judging at hand, she faces a practical problem: Time is running out to get the light mounted on the display wall and wired to the judging room’s power supply.
As she waits in a long line for soldering help, another student’s luminaire falls off the wall and shatters on the floor. A collective shudder runs through the line as the student leaves in tears.
‘Both the aesthetic and the practical’
“We teach both the aesthetic and the practical,” says design professor Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center at UC Davis. “Prior to this class, many of these students have never used a power tool, but with this project they are asked to come up with an idea as well as bring it to life. They develop both creative and technical skills.”
“This puts them in an advantageous position as young designers looking for work after graduation.”
Another advantage of studying lighting design at UC Davis, Siminovitch said, is the opportunity to work with the newest technologies beside national industry leaders, through the lighting center’s corporate affiliates program.
The center is known for its emphasis on environmentally friendly, or “green,” design. This year, for example, the student projects used energy-saving light-emitting diode (LED) lamps. Each student was issued a box of components — LEDs, wires, whip, connectors and power supply — and assigned to build a stylish product with it.
Exploring fundamental concepts
In the process, they explored fundamental concepts in lighting, materials and aesthetics.
In her luminaires, student Tieni Wu combined LED lights with hidden mirrors to make address numbers visible on both the front of the fixture and in the projection onto the wall. “I spent a lot of time refining the shape of the numbers, which had to be legible without distortion, but also elegant and attractive,” she said.
When Wu and her colleagues finally have their finished products wired for judging, they take their seats and the room lights dim. Then, with the flip of a switch, the luminaires come to life simultaneously. They glow, as do the faces of their creators, the next generation of lighting design professionals.
The critique begins.