INNOVATING LED-LIGHTING FIXTURE DESIGN THROUGH A LEARNING LIGHTING BY MAKING APPROACH

The recent significant transformation in the lighting industry has been driven by the massive introduction of solid-state lighting (SSL) systems. SSL technology opens the potential for designers to develop new lighting concepts by handling both the creative and the technical side of designing a lighting fixture. Designers can handle the creative and artistic side of the profession with more freedom and flexibility in terms of new expressive/formal languages, new aesthetics and functionalities, new configurations of the luminous objects and systems to be envisioned, developed and produced. On the other side, they need to build a strong understanding and to learn how to deal with more complex lighting engines where the thermal, electrical, optical, mechanical properties need to be configured together in a unique solution. In this regard, designers need to ensure technical reliability by defining also the optimization of lighting functionalities. To tackle this complexity, educational and learning experiences should support either the creative and technical side of the subject, by supporting the students with new knowledge but also guiding their design approach through a methodology that encourages the physical manipulation of an intangible and immaterial element such as artificial lighting. The education related to the current technological level of the design of lighting products has to follow innovative learning and educational formats aimed to satisfy the expected level of competence to access the lighting design field. In this challenge, the Digital Fabrication and the crafting of customized and optimized LED-based lighting fixture could be considered extremely useful to compose lighting into forms to prefigure the perception of the luminous effect on the user and the environment. The digital fabrication phenomena can support the design of customized and optimized LED-based lighting fixture in the optical, electrical, mechanical and thermal interfaces: both additive and subtractive manufacturing processes aid the crafting of lighting fixtures and offer the opportunity to the customization of SSL fixtures. This paper presents the results achieved during a series of challenge-based project works held at the Politecnico di Milano – Master in lighting design and LED Technology. Including research, experimentation, concept development, prototyping, iteration and testing, they were aimed at allowing beneficial and reciprocal exchanges between the participants, benefiting from a real laboratory of creativity to bring out idea, proof of concepts, prototypes. The paper includes the analysis both of the educational approaches and also the achieved results. The prototyped learning modules were conceived and designed to empower the culture of the project through learning lighting by a making approach. These modules can be considered practical teaching guidance related to this emerging area of education: they provided the knowledge to handle the design complexity through tools, strategies and methods to tackle both the concept design and the prototyping phase of working LED-based lighting fixtures. Besides, they deliver innovative pedagogical techniques relevant to the product design and engineering curriculum, that can be used across a variety of learning environments.