Initial Brief
I was tasked with redesigning a product that was inspired by Richard Sapper’s Tizio Lamp.
From the Tizio Lamp I was influenced by the form; skinny parts with spaces in between. I was also influenced by the movement; although I wanted my product to include a movement I didn’t want it to be the exact same as the Tizio Lamp.
I did some research on Richard Sapper’s other products to see his overall design concepts. Many of his products have a minimal form.
When I realised I wanted to design a new lamp I researched already existing lamps because I didn’t want my design to be the same as a lamp that is already available.
Initial Idea
Once I knew I was going to be designing a lamp that moved I already had an idea in mind. Most lamps that can move, it is just the neck section that moves to change the direction of the light. I wanted my lamp to change from one shape to another.
The movement for my lamp was inspired by a kids toy. The ball can be round and flat, I wanted my lamp to do a similar thing.Instead of it being a ball I wanted mine to be a box because it would have a better aesthetic appeal when closed.
Being able to choose the amount of light produced means the user can interact with the lamp.
I initially designed it as two panels that are connected by dowels and the lightbulb would sit between them.
To get started I made each part separately. I originally thought that they would overlap when flat and a dowel would go through them but when I made it I realised if the parts overlapped they would not be able to bend.
Development
Once realising that having two panels wouldn’t work I started wondering what it would be like it there was only one panel that was wider. I added sides onto the ones that originally didn’t have any to make it look more like a box with the 6 sides.
I still wanted the sides to bend so I had to come up with a new way for that to work. I found out that scoring along the centre horizontally allowed for the material to bend without breaking.
From first glance the shape makes it look interesting but I wanted to add something more so I tried cutting out parts of the side.
It looked nice but to much light would escape even when the shade was closed which would defeat the purpose of being able to choose how open it is.
Tried increasing the number of sections on the sides to increase the look of a 3 dimensional hexagon.
Due to the rectangular base when the shade was close there was no space for the light to come through. Since this didn’t work I decided that I was going to keep it just having 4 sides.
I then moved onto thinking about where the lightbulb would be going. Naturally I would have it hanging from the top, so that is where I started. A rectangle was the easiest shape to do but when I made it I could see that it would produce to much escaped light.
To avoid the user getting burned by the bulb I decided to add a protective shade on the inside although it didn’t effect the function of the lamp it did have a negative impact on the aesthetics.
With the rectangular cut out I couldn’t think of a way that a bulb could be safely attached.
Then moved on to having a circle cut out on the top cause many bulbs have circular ends. This idea started of well as it allowed space for the bulb and no extra light would escape from the top.
Also wanted to add a bulb protector with this idea. I didn’t want the protector to effect the direction of the light so I made it a lamp shade (rhombus) shape so the light would spread, sadly this idea did not work either. The top circle has a diameter or 3cm and for the rhombus to work the bottom circle would have to have a diameter of 9cm, this meant when the box was closed the protector was being squished. If the product was real this would cause damage to the product and make it not work correctly.
I then decided to rethink the type of bulb that would be used; standard bulbs are to big and will not fit the style of lamp.
I then though of a group of LED’s; these takes up less space and, produce the same amount of light and the user is less likely to get burned.
Final piece
The lamp now appears like a box when closed and a hexagon style shape when the sides are bent.
The bent sides are all one piece which made it easier to assemble the parts.
Have kept the idea of the user interacting with the lamp as they can decide how much light can be let out.
The use of LED’s means that the lamp can just have the ordinary rectangular shape no extra parts were needed inside.
The inspiration from the original lamp can be seen as the sides are thin with the spaces between them and although it is slightly different movement is involved.
Design Evaluation
The problems I came across included:
Assembly
Bent sides
Assembly
Due to the sides bending they couldn’t be totally joined to the top and bottom only the outside edge could be glued together
This meant when the lamp was pushed down the sides would come away from each other, the glue wasn’t strong enough.
If I was to redo this task I would spend more time on being able to join all the parts together in a better was so it stayed together when it was closed and open.
Bent sides
Cutting the material half way through allowed it to bend which was fine but it also meant that when the box was closed the sides couldn’t totally flatten, they were still slack.