The Language of Light
At ADesignStudio, founder, artist and designer Alex Fitzpatrick approaches lighting as both science and poetry, with handcrafted glass forms diffusing, refracting and transforming the atmosphere of a space.
If shards of light can be held, shaped and fractured into sculpture, then Alex Fitzpatrick has found a way to do it. Through ADesignStudio, the Sydney-based artist and industrial designer works at the intersection of object and atmosphere, where one-of-a-kind, custom and limited-edition luminaires become vessels for memory, perception and meticulous art practice.
“Lighting is not just functional. It is a way to shape atmosphere, memory and experience.”
Fitzpatrick’s path to lighting was neither linear nor accidental. Trained in industrial design at the University of Alberta, Canada, his early practice moved between disciplines – drawing, sculpture and material experimentation – before settling into the language of light. As he reflects, “The moment that really solidified my passion for lighting happened during my time in Canada. I began to see how lighting sits between narrative and science.” That duality underpins his work now, where a dedicated focus on technical precision is entwined with poetic intent.
Founded as both a design and manufacturing practice, ADesignStudio’s focus on craft feels increasingly rare. Glassblowing and metalworking sit alongside contemporary LED technologies, each informing the other. The studio’s collections – from sconces to pendants, portable lights to chandeliers and floor lamps – are not driven by trend but by inquiry: how light behaves, how it can be shaped, the crackled patterns of glass’s fractured state and its method of altering the experience of a space. “Lighting is not just functional,” Fitpatrick says. “It is a way to shape atmosphere, memory and experience. For me, light is treated as both science and poetry.”
This philosophy finds its most distilled expression in the Jagged Edge series, recently part of Set / Scene, an exhibition of spatial vignettes shown at M Contemporary Gallery in Darlinghurst, Sydney, curated by Emma Elizabeth. Conceived as artworks first and luminaires second, the two iridescent pieces are both sculpture and illumination, inviting a prolonged gaze. “Jagged Edge 001 and 002 are my exploration and experimentation with glass and light. They are a reinterpretation of stained-glass, not as an image held in lead lines but as illumination held within structure.”
Like columns of glowing copper refractions reaching up from the ground, each work is composed of hundreds of hand-cut glass shards. Hand-scored, snapped and assembled into meticulously layered surfaces, they catch and scatter light in shifting gradients. The process is intentionally laborious. The slivers of glass – new, reclaimed and offcut – are stacked and bonded, their jagged edges preserved to retain a sense of fracture and unpredictability. Viewed from a distance, Jagged Edge 001 and 002 are almost fluid totems of rising light. Up close, they reveal a granular landscape of texture, tension and time.
In these works, an alchemy of how light is handled plays on. The material refracts, absorbs and releases illumination in ways that feel almost organic. Colour shifts with the viewer’s perspective. In this way, each piece moves beyond illumination, becoming an atmospheric instrument responding to both space and observer. For Fitzpatrick, this is where lighting finds its fullest expression: not as an object alone, but as an experience. Across ADesignStudio’s evolving body of work, from custom installations to limited-edition pieces, comes a consistent thread – light, when artistically considered, transforms how a space looks and how it feels to inhabit.
