Header: Xuanhao Li
Polycycle Illumination is a lighting collection developed by Xuanhao LLC and designed by Xuanhao Li that recently won the Decorative Accent Lamps at the LIT Lighting Design Awards for its take on material reuse.
The collection consists of decorative accent lamps produced from upcycled polyethylene (PE) plastic bags commonly used in global packaging and retail. Due to their widespread use, they can be seen all over the earth – but not just for the above reason, as many end up travelling through our oceans.
The team of designers collects these materials and cleans them thoroughly. Later, they pass them through heat fusing and eventually create translucent, flexible sheets. The final material is lightweight and semi-transparent, which is central to the lamps’ visual and functional qualities.
Each lamp in the collection has a form inspired by jellyfish, referencing both the translucent properties of the material and its relationship to marine ecosystems. To achieve this, the production process combines computational design, digital modelling, and manual shaping techniques to generate the variations while maintaining consistency in structure. The result is a series of lighting fixtures that rely on the optical qualities of the fused plastic for diffused illumination.
The project engages with sustainability through material reuse and waste reduction. It redirects discarded PE bags from potential ocean pollution pathways, thus extending the material’s functional lifespan while removing it from circulation. However, the design process only supports small-batch production and relies on accessible fabrication methods suitable for localised or distributed manufacturing.
