Post Thursday Group Concept Crit

For out tutor group we were asked to bring in a small conceptual model of our lamp design regarding what we wanted to achieve through our design. I created a small checklist of what my goals were:

1. Create a lamp which embodies both the Beaux Arts style, while also giving it a sense of revitalization through a modern form.
2. The light either affected by the lamp or coming from the lamps bulb should aim to recreate the patterns of the window mullions on the old hotel as well as other light influences such as fans, art deco/nouveau motifs, chicken-wire, etc.
3. The shape of the lamp should be evocative of movement while also demonstrating the idea of a changing of light quality when one awakes from darkness to light.

My little cardboard model aimed to recreate these ideas as shown in the top photos. I created a mixture of diagonal sections and gridded areas to represent both the industrial qualities of the many supports for the off-hanging emergency fire-escapes, chicken wire, sun burst angle lines and window mullion shapes.

While a conceptual model, i still got a sense of how this sort of truss pattern would be able to be combined with many sides to form long or short boxes, depending on my development of my design, with a variety of different light effects and silhouette lines being formed as the light falls through the gaps, one of my goals for this lamp design.

I also thought that with letting different light amounts through the different patterns i could create three distinct patterns of sides or however many i need with a slow progression of limited light going through the first one symbolizing the initial waking up leading a patterned side that allows a larger amount of light to go through representing the awaken visitor finally experiencing the maximum light of the day (with a couple of designs seen as the long rectangular boxes shown with shaded interior areas about half way down the page).

I also played around with a large number of different head types for the lamp, possibly where the lightbulb would be and shapes that would potentially allow the head or lamp to transform to allow that transition of light from dark to light, while the shape of the head was also important in allowing different directions and effects of light to occur. What I really did like was the idea of a grill like covering to the lamp head, allowing for a clear connection to the gridded lines created by the external features of the hotel and the potential impacts they can have on the interior of the hotel rooms and it is something that i will definitely explore more.

Another aspects was the shape of the lamp and while wanting something that would evoke the sense of movement, as if moving towards the exterior light source of the hotel room, i wanted the shape of the many sides to have the form be as if almost a lightening bolt moving horizontally, with my depicted developed light solution being down the bottom after a number of small sketches and thought processes.

The final development solution addresses my final goals in a number of ways. Firstly through the use of the laser cutter as our tool for this week, through the use of Autocad I can recreate or use inspiration of Beaux Arts patterns and designs to give the lamp a sense of old-worldliness, while also giving it a very modern look through the horizontal sense of movement as specified as my third goal. Finally the lamp, as demonstrated by my model would aim to incorporate both the silhouetting of light in the surrounding that would cause patterns to be created from its main shaft but also to come from an array of light bulbs from the top through a grill form that i found extremely evocative of both the Art Deco and Beaux Arts styles on the window frames of the Old Railway Station and the Railway Hotel building. By doing so, it would also seek to accomplish my second aim of the light either being either affected by the lamp or coming from the lamps bulb thus recreating the patterns of the window mullions on the old hotel as well as other light influences such as fans, art deco/nouveau motifs, chicken-wire, etc.