Based in Santander, the summer workshop welcomes around forty design and architecture students each year. The courses are supported by RIBA and focus on the importance hand crafting 2D and 3D models has with visualising design plans and helping to uncover any potential issues within these concepts.

Contributing to the students’ learning experience, Applelec supplied the summer workshop with a range of LED Light Sheet and opal acrylic samples. The inclusion of LED Light Sheet helped to demonstrate to the students how illumination can transform a material by highlighting subtle detailing and patterns on a decorative surface and enhance the material’s overall appearance.

Armor Gutierrez Rivas of KPF architects, and one of the summer workshop’s tutors, said: ‘LED Light Sheet is an extremely relevant architectural product and all of the students recognised the lighting product’s creative possibilities and design potential. The addition of LED Light Sheet for this year’s summer workshop enabled the students to discover the different effects the light would create when overlaying various materials such as textured glass, where amazing visual and tactile results were achieved.’ 

The students were encouraged to investigate different techniques and experiment with various materials to create architectural models, mock-ups and prototypes. The completed models were then presented to the rest of the summer workshop using the LED Light Sheet samples as a display platform.

Ian Drinkwater, Applelec’s managing director, said: ‘We were extremely pleased to have been approached to sponsor this great institution and to see the creative and inventive work the students have produced. For LED Light Sheet to be used within an educational capacity is a new experience for us and we’re delighted this has been a successful addition to the summer workshop courses, and for LED Light Sheet to have engaged the next generation of talented architects and designers.’