Archive for the ‘lighting’ Category

Knappa Klöver Lamp from IKEA

February 21st, 2007

Ken’ichi wrote me the other day, asking about the Knappa Klöver lamp from IKEA:

Do you know the lamp sold in Ikea called Knappa Klöver? I am more interested in the floor lamp version. I have attached a pic of this lamp, and I was wondering if you know how one comes about in making it?

So I sat down and thought about it a bit, and came up with a solution. Here’s my reply:

I haven’t seen this lamp in IKEA- I try to avoid going to the local IKEA and wandering through the lamp area, because I want to buy them all… but looking at the picture, I can make some guesses at how it is made.

If you look at the attached image, I traced over some of the shapes on the lamp: the basic structure is an icosahedron (nice info here: http://www.miracerros.com/artwork/g_sphere_layout.htm)

So, since the basic structure is an icosahedron, that means that each vertex of the icosahedron has five lines meeting together. This means the lamp is made up completely from pentagonal petal shapes.

I can’t tell how the five petals are held together at the center; maybe either glue, or some little connector piece? or perhaps they are cut lower down, and connected together with another spherical shape that has five slots in it? Anyway, they are connected together somehow- I’d probably make a small plastic piece to hold them all at the right angle- and they all have identical slots cut below the center line of the circle, to connect the pentagonal flowers together.

There should be 12 flower shapes, as the icosahedron has 12 vertices; this would require cutting out 60 circles of some sort of plastic, maybe light polypropylene?

A very simple lamp, but nicely designed. I’m sure, given IKEA’s “flat pack” philosophy, that all of this is stamped or laser cut and bundled together in a small box. With the right cutting equipment you could make a lot of these, really fast.

Now that I think about it, since they are cutting all this from one sheet of plastic, the connector piece for the center of the pentagonal flowers is probably also cut out from this same plastic, because that would make the design a lot cheaper. Some experimentation with cutting smaller disks of plastic with 5 slots in them would most likely find a solution.

I’d love a job designing such things, I think it would be a lot of fun!

Here’s the image I was working on, which shows the icosahedron hiding underneath all those circular petals.

(image from anjapepunkt on flickr)

UPDATE:

Ken’ichi found someone with photos of the Knappa Klover construction manual on flickr! That helps a lot, and it shows that the lamp is much simpler than I thought.

It’s just triangle-shaped pieces with circular tips, and slots cut in them- so you just assemble all the sides of the icosahedron from these triangle bits, and they lock together. Very neat. I should have expected it would be something so clever, coming from IKEA…

Posted in art, design, lighting | Comments (8)

Owesen’s Lightbox Tessellation

September 27th, 2006

Astounding. Fredrik Owesen has a fantastic tessellation mixing illustration and non-regular polygons. This is the sort of irregular pleating that I have dreamed of making, and here it is!

Again, Fredrik produces some first-rate work, showing us all something new and wonderful. Make sure to look at it large size and check it out!

Posted in art, design, flickr photos, lighting, origami, origami tessellations, paper | Comments (0)

Lightbox Testing: Joel Cooper, RAW vs. JPG

August 22nd, 2006

Hey there- I’m doing some testing with a lightbox setup, and I could use some feedback. I’ve got a few photos in my photostream- more to come tomorrow- and I would like to know how they look at full resolution to you. good? bad? fuzzy? clear? I’m leaning towards shooting RAW files and doing a lot of post-processing, but it’s a lot of work to do. Maybe I’ll need to switch to film or actually go out on a limb and find someone with a 12+ Mpixel digital camera to do this thing right.

Anyway, take a look- http://www.flickr.com/photos/origomi or look on my Photos Page and click on “Recent Photos” to see them.

Thanks for your feedback.

-Eric

Posted in art, flickr photos, lighting, origami, origami tessellations, paper | Comments (0)

folding paper lamp by Kouichi Okamoto

March 13th, 2006

From the website:

This beautifully unique lampshade is expertly handcrafted from Denguri paper found locally in the Shikoku region of Japan. The honeycomb paper diffuses the light creating a soft, gentle glow.

It is designed by Kouichi Okamoto, and manufactured by Kyouei Co. Ltd., Japan.

He’s got some rather impressive and unique design concepts- you can see some more information on his designs here.

This is a really neat design, and I like the shipping/packaging of it. I’m wondering what this Denguri paper is?

[via designboom]

Posted in art, design, lighting, paper, papercraft | Comments (4)

Another fascinating lamp

March 13th, 2006

My good friend Mélisande pointed out this fantastic, funky lamp- guessing quite correctly that I would want to add it to my collection of strange lighting designs.

Spoiler, though- as near as I can tell, it’s made entirely of wire. As a huge Slinky fan this works for me, but your mileage may vary…

You can see more photos and info here:

http://www.neweba.com/index-Dateien/Page540.htm

Posted in design, lighting | Comments (1)

Octuple Helix Compass Rose Jar

March 11th, 2006

Oschene does it again.

He’s an endless source of interesting geometric folding ideas, it seems!

He posted a CP at the link above, I highly suggest downloading it and trying it out. His work is easy to learn and remember, and makes for great on-the-road folding!

Posted in diagrams, flickr photos, lighting, origami, paper, papercraft, weblinks | Comments (4)

organic lamp

February 14th, 2006

I promise that I don’t fixate on lamps all the time, honest.

I just really like lights, and created sculptures lit from within. Always have, actually, even when I was a little kid.

Thanks for the photos, Jane!

UPDATE: Jane says she got the instructions here, and also uploaded photos from a magazine (in Portuguese) here.
here’s another shot of it:

Posted in art, design, flickr photos, lighting | Comments (4)

Joel folds a hat

February 8th, 2006

Lots of new origami content being posted these days on flickr- almost too much to try to keep track of! I have a bunch of backlogged posts, which I will get punched out once I tie up some loose ends at work (work, you know, the thing we do when we aren’t folding?)

However I feel I need to point out Joel Cooper’s Hat model:

I suppose it’s bad that I think of everything in the context of it’s lamp-worthiness; I honestly don’t, but when I see things like this I really can’t avoid it.

I also think this would morph really well into an egg. I’ve been in need of a good tessellated egg for a long time now, so if I can pull it off using this as a base I’ll be deeply indebted to Joel for the insight and inspiration. I still can’t get over how well he folds his work!

Posted in art, lighting, origami, origami tessellations, paper, papercraft | Comments (2)

tessellated origami lamp

February 8th, 2006

new flickr folder freeflyfrog77 created this beautiful lamp out of a 5-foot sheet of paper!

watching the build process on this is fascinating- make sure to read the notes, too. here’s the description of how it was designed:

I used a piece of paper from a roll we have at work (kids draw on it off an easel). I liked the stiffness of it. I used a yard stick and ruler to score all the folds before hand. With a little pressure the paper just “popped” into its fold. It required fine tuning at the points though. As for the pattern it is actually really simplistic. I took a piece of paper one pleat wide and simply folded it to a shape I liked the profile of the lamp to be. I then transferred it on to the paper flipping the angles every pleat…The clincher I think was the scoring. I did it with a mechanical pencil tip with no lead in it. I went through in a few spots due to over pressure but nothing a spot of tape can’t fix.

you can see the whole project photo set here: Lamp Project.

Posted in flickr photos, lighting, origami, origami tessellations, paper, papercraft | Comments (4)

Identify me?

January 17th, 2006

I received an email from Florent, looking to identify this origami design and hopefully find diagrams for it.

It looks like a modular piece, but with a rather unique folding structure; somewhat like a hexagonal rose.

While I am obsessed with geometric origami and lighting, I can’t say that I know the creator of this piece… anyone out there have an idea? contact me.

UPDATE: I queried the Origami-L mailing list, and got many useful replies from people who have identified it. the most concise is here, from Sky:

Aperture - folded paper by Claire Norcross.

Claire Norcross has created lampshade designs that give different light
patterns depending on how they are folded.
She also gives lessons in origami in design.

She taught this lamp a while ago at The Hub in UK - www.thehubcentre.org

-Sky

Thanks also to Mark Bolitho and Peter Mielke for the tip-off and the link:

http://www.habitat.net/uk/main_uk.htm

Posted in geometry, lighting, modular origami, o-list postings, origami, paper | Comments (13)

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