Dominic Harris is the founder and creative director of Cinimod Studio. He qualified as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, where he was awarded a Distinction for his work in interactive design in architecture.
Dominic Harris’s interest in integrating technology and interaction within architecture has been evident through much of his professional work, and now forms the basis of the design studio he formed several years ago. Dominic Harris has a fascination with lighting and electronics, which is evident in the highly innovative lighting schemes that he brings to each of his projects.
His strong architectural experiences comes from years of being an architect for top design-led London firms Future Systems (Lords Media Centre, Selfridges & Co Birmingham, and New Look Flagship store on Oxford Street) and Softroom (Virgin Atlantic Upper Class lounge at Heathrow).
Under Cinimod Studio, Dominic was named “Breakthrough Talent of the Year” at the design industry’s FX Design Awards in 2008. In 2009 he was awarded the FX International Interior Design Awards “Best Bar or Restaurant Design” for his work on Snog, and in 2010 won the Lighting Design Award for “Best Hotel or Restaurant Lighting Scheme”.
Most recently, Cinimod Studio scooped 2 top prizes at the 2012 Lighting Design Awards. The winning projects were Itsu T5 Butterfly In Flight in the “Small Retail” category, and DJ Light in the highly competitive “Special Projects” category.
The UK and international professional and main stream press has been equally fascinated by Harris’ project. In the UK, Lighting Magazine said: “Snog’s second frozen yoghurt outlet in the UK again showcases striking lighting”.
Design Week has also written about Harris, saying: “Putting everyday technology at the heart of bespoke lighting installations may be a simple idea, but it’s led to high-profile projects across the globe for designer Dominic Harris. […] He’s part of a coterie of London designers working at the cusp of interactive and lighting technologies.”
The exposure afforded by the press has greatly helped raise the profile of not only Cinimod Studio, but also of the lighting industry as a whole. This attention to the lighting industry is important to Harris, who already devotes a large amount of energy to ‘educating and exciting’ others to the potential of what can be achieved in lighting. This includes making regular lectures to design students at universities, to fellow designers at professional events, CPD lectures on lighting design to architects, and writing articles for various media publications.
Cinimod Studio is a cross-discipline art studio based in London specialising in the fusion of architecture and lighting design. It was founded by Dominic Harris, whose passion for interactive art and lighting design has produced built projects now found across the international art and architecture scene.
The on-going work of Cinimod Studio is both visually stunning and technologically advanced. A dedication to research and development ensures that the studio stays abreast of the latest technologies and fabrication techniques. The studio is currently involved in several projects in both the UK and abroad, and has designed bespoke lighting products that are now in production.
Among the projects carried out by Cinimod Studio there are: Deep Blue Interactive Aquarium (Lima, Peru) (also exists as Artwork) is an interactive video canvas which enables viewers to interact with a number of highly detailed marine life scenes and scenarios. Instead of fleeing, as in real life, the fish and sea life are subtly, actively attracted by and perform for the viewers.
Halo (London), Cinimod Studio has delivered the most epic of public lighting installations to mark the launch of the new “Halo 4” Xbox game. The “Halo 4” Glyph symbol was one of the largest and brightest man-made structures to ever fly over a capital city.
Walk the Light (V&A Museum, London) was a site specific installation commissioned for the London Design Festival 2012 14 – 23 September 2012 and sponsored by Philips Lighting.
DJ Light (Lima, Peru) is an exhilarating lighting installation that gives visitors the power to orchestrate an awe-inspiring performance of light and sound across a large public space.
Peru National Football Stadium (Lima, Peru) is a lighting control system where up to 55,000 spectators are monitored to determine their ‘collective mood’ which is then depicted on the stadium façade.
Eclipse (London, UK) is a collective light experience allowing the public to intercept and interact with the visual movements of a rare occurrence, a full solar eclipse.
Ice Angel (artwork) is an interactive white LED artwork that depicts the subject of the live portrait with imagined angel wings.
Cinimod Studio has won the coveted “Best Luminaire” award for their win at the Lighting Design Awards 2014. Moon Chandelier, project presented in GIS Warsaw 2015, proved to be a winner amongst the judges who described it as “absolute genius” and ”beautifully engineered”, observing ”this is the first time a significant lens has been used to control OLED”.