Undergraduate students enrolled in CLTC Director Michael Siminovitch’s Design with Light (DES 136B) class focused on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology for this year’s luminaire design challenge.
The 11th annual Luminaire Design Competition, which was held March 12, is a key component of the course. The competition challenged students to apply industrial design principles to create a luminaire from a kit of parts provided by a lighting industry partner.
Professor Siminovitch’s class is part of the UC Davis Department of Design, which is under the College of Letters and Science’s Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
This winter quarter, students created OLED luminaire prototypes using components provided by Acuity Brands, this year’s competition sponsor. The 10-week design challenge focused on developing next-generation lighting products. Acuity Brands provided OLED panels, drivers and dimmers for the design challenge and its OLED design team mentored the participating students.
Students presented their designs before a panel of lighting design experts. The panel of judges included representatives from CLTC, Acuity, BANKS|RAMOS Architectural Lighting Design, Birkenstock Lighting Design, and Leslie Davis Lighting Design.
U Teng Long won the top prize prize. Sally Chae was selected for the second prize, while Tom Chen received the third prize. Cydne Hirstein and Luyao Zhang garnered honorable mention awards for their designs.
OLEDs are thin, lightweight, dimmable, and energy-efficient. Many in the industry consider this emerging technology the future of lighting. The square shape and lightweight characteristics of the OLEDs provided open them up to infinite possibilities for task lighting design, which was the focus of this year's competition: exploring design of light in the near environment.
The top winners will attend the 2015 Lightfair International Tradeshow and Conference in New York City and showcase their luminaires at the Acuity Brands Booth #1640. Past winners who have attended the conference have had multiple job interviews while there. Most of them have used the opportunity as an entry point into careers in energy efficiency, industry design and lighting.