The brief in the fourth annual contest staged by the Middleton Grove lighting design specialist was to design a luminaire for a high-end market using Philips matchbox gear and fluorescent lamps.
McClintock, 37, won the competition - it encourages innovation, raises awareness of the potential the lighting sector can offer and recognises and rewards good ideas - with his entry Lumin-Eye,centred around a sustainable world theme.
He explained: "My inspiration came from the sea, with the design based on brain coral and blown glass, which is made from sand, a highly sustainable resource with excellent reflective qualities and producing beautiful colours, though my winning entry was made from polycarbonate, which can itself be recycled.
"Bio-mimicry was also central to the project, taking further inspiration from nature and mimicking it with a modern twist. The globes were coated on the inside with aluminium through metalization to give a mirror effect, with a final layer then being applied utilising an age-old, but now little used process known as flocking, producing different reflective qualities and shades both day and night. I wanted to have a nice, warm feeling inside the lights, in which I used Philips TL5C Illumini sustainable bulbs."
McClintock originates from Taupo on New Zealand's North Island and arrived in the UK in 2000 to first study at Leeds College of Art and Design, before becoming a BA (Hons) Design student in Leeds Metropolitan University's School of Architecture, Landscape and Design. He has just completed the three-year course and gained his honours degree.
(Jim Evans)
