WL Design 25 Winners 2024: Golden Glow

Matthew McCormick’s lighting designs quickly became classics when he launched his studio over 10 years ago (landing our 2016 WL Industrial Designer of the Year shortly afterward). This latest piece, Ova, feels right in the family with his Mila and Halo designs, without being derivative. Handmade in dimensional glass layers, Ova literally glows from within: a womblike, translucent inner body casts diffused and ambient warmth through either a clear or frosted outer layer.

“The magic in Ova is what you don’t see right away,” writes McCormick in the studio’s submission. “I love how the light becomes a curious oddity when the fixture is illuminated. The iterative process of creating the shape was consciously considered, from the amount of space between each layer of glass to the primal spine detail, which adds a depth to the shape and obscures the light source inside.”

The handmade nature of the design means that the team had to embrace the imperfection that comes with working with glass. Instead of producing a flawless design, they note, Ova’s production process strives to maintain precision while allowing the glass to reveal its natural attributes. The result is a design that feels dramatic and thrilling in a double-height entranceway, and mood-setting and charming over a dining room table.

Project: Ova
Designer: Matthew McCormick Studio
Location: Vancouver

Meet all of the 2024 WL Design 25 winners here.