Littoral

Decorative Lamp

The objective of this project was to create new materials with specified properties by deconstructing and re-combing existing materials together. The resultant material is used to create a decorative lamp.

January 2022 - February 2022 | 8 weeks

Design Process

01.

Lamp Base and Shade Experiment 1

02.

Experiment Set 2

03.

Form Exploration

04.

Work in Progress & Final Model

05.

Why Littoral (Design Rationale)

Lamp Base Experiment 1

My keyword was impenetrable. The material in the first set of experiments is sawdust and paper/cardboard with white glue as the binder. I blended the paper/cardboard with water to make a paste and squeezed the excess water to form a pulp. I mixed it with sawdust to create the material. On the other side, I also experimented with different ratios of paper pulp, and sawdust to see how the strength of the material is affected.

Lamp Shade Experiment 1

My keyword was reflective. The material used in the first set of experiment is blue raffia strings. For this, I wanted to see how I could create different textures by ironing raffia strings together and how it would affect the material's reflectivity. I cut raffia strings into small 10cm pieces and split the pieces into thinner pieces, curled them up and uncurled the rest. In the end, I ironed the thin curled pieces of raffia strings between the uncurled strings to create blocky and uneven textures. As I increased the number of thin curled up pieces of raffia string between the uncurled pieces, the material started to get less refective.

Experiment 2

For the second set of experiments, I decided to continue exploring different techniques and material combinations.

Lamp Base Material 1: Made from finely blended sawdust, paper, and cardboard binded together with white glue.

Lamp Base Material 2: Made from blended cardboard paper stock, cardboard pulp and sawdust binded together with white glue.

Lamp Base Material 3: Made from white paper pulp mixed with sawdust and white glue.

Lamp Shade Material 1: Made from small cut-outs of crumbled white plastic bags, melted together using indirect heat from an iron.

Lamp Shade Material 2: Made from different colours of plastic bags cut into small pieces to create a gradient between the layers and melted together from the heat of an iron

Lamp Shade Material 3: Made from raffia strings layered between two plastic bags, melted together using heat from an iron.

Form Exploration

Work in Progress

I used base material 1 and shade 3 for the final lamp. The below pictures show the process of how I made the final lamp.

Completed Lamp

WhatsApp Image 2022-02-28 at 13_edited.jpg

Why Littoral?

Overall, the lamp reminds me of the seaside, especially since the base looks like sand and rocks near the sea and the blue-to-white gradient reminds me of the sea. I also used warm white light to give the effect of sunrise/ sunset over the sea.