Lighting Design Award winners announced

Over 700 people gathered at the London Hilton, Park Lane on Wednesday 21^st March to celebrate a decade of design at this year’s Lighting Design Awards.

The big award of the night was undeniably Design Practice of the Decade, introduced to celebrate 10 years of the event in its present format.

The accolade went to lighting design practice Speirs + Major, described by this year’s judges as “an iconic global lighting design practice that has helped greatly to guide and shape the world of lighting design”.

Founded in 1992 by Jonathan Speirs and Mark Major, two trained architects, the practice now employs over 30 people across a range of disciplines including art, interior design, lighting, graphic design and theatre.

“Speirs and Major are deserving recipients of this award in recognition of all their fantastic projects over the past decade. The diversity, standard of work and professionalism has done much to raise the profile of lighting design,” said the judges.

Mark Major said of the win: “We are really honoured to have received this award. We don’t take these things for granted. As we have seen tonight there are a lot of great lighting designers producing a lot of great schemes out there so we know what it means to be singled out like this. It is therefore a privilege to accept this award on behalf of everyone who has contributed to Speirs + Major, and to the amazing projects we have been lucky enough to work on, over the past 10 years.”

It was also a successful night for Sutton Vane’s Michael Grubb, who walked away with the award for Lighting Designer of the Year. Grubb has had a stellar year in the profession after being appointed to a team of Learning Legacy Ambassadors for the London Olympics, as well as completing a number of significant projects including: Cathedral Square, Peterborough, winner in this year’s Exterior category and the A11 underpass in Lea, which was highly commended in the Low Carbon category.

“Michael Grubb has worked hard for the lighting industry over the last 12 months and has contributed to a number of significant schemes, including his work on the Olympics, and is a thoroughly deserving recipient of this award,” said the judges.

The trophies were evenly spread in the remaining categories but Cinimod Studio was toasting a particularly successful evening after scooping both the Special Projects category and the Small Retail Award.

This year the project judging panel travelled over 8,500 miles visiting lighting schemes across Britian. In a first for the event, the Awards team also offset the carbon emissions of the judging process, choosing to invest in renewable power generation projects around the world.

After the awards were presented it was on to the aftershow party. This year, in keeping with the event’s retro’ theme, guests raced against each other on a giant Scalextric. They were also invited to gamble for a good cause at a casino organised in aid of the Thomas Pocklington Trust. The Lighting Design Awards team was also grateful to Cinimod Studio for providing its Four States interactive artwork which captivated guests at the post-ceremony party.

Have your say

You must sign in to make a comment.