Luke Smith-Wightman

Luke Smith-Wightman studied furniture and product design before entering the field of architectural lighting design. Much of his time is spent on lighting projects and daylight design consultancy for architecture, through his company Fine Science. His interest in developing useful objects is driven by dissatisfaction with much of what is presented as contemporary design and a fascination with production technologies. He believes good design is too often presented as added value, something in addition to the process of developing a useful thing. An object may be described as ‘designer’ or may reference the person who designed it but this is rarely because the object is good but is more likely a marketing ploy. There are design shows, design blogs and design awards, there is too much design, it is being devalued through saturation. He feels the answer is to put the designer behind the object, let the object speak for itself, if it is good enough it will be heard.