/ Andrew Saunders, Assistant Professor /

/ FLATCUT / Acadia 2011 Competition /

LIGHTING Category Winner: LUMINESCENT LIMACON by Andrew Saunders

LUMINESCENT LIMACON is a folded lighting design by Andrew Saunders, an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. The Luminescent Limacon is inspired partly from the Dutch Ruff, or flamboyant linen collars considered fashionable in 17th century Europe, as a vehicle for the manipulation of light. The light is the product of an integral design process that combines computation, mathematics, material performance and fabrication. To achieve both the lighting affects and the geometric configuration, the light is composed of 3form Ecoresin. When folded and nested, the ecoresin ruffles are laced together with an associative woven lattice of aircraft suspension cable, which, when combined produce a combination of tensile and compressive forces for rigid structural stability.

“The fineness of the line work of this thread that ties it together is really critical,” said Tom Wiscombe. “That it is two systems, one of a surface system and one of a kind of vector, is what I think together makes it look so beautiful and elegant, the pairing of those.”