Sara DeShong-Baker Project 6: Architectonic Lamp

(week 11)
INSPIRATION & TEST SHAPES:
Most of my inspiration came from looking at past examples of these lamps. I was drawn to those pieces composed of the fewest ribs.

Tip Jar shape

The first lamp idea of mine was for the front counter of the bike shop - in the same vein as some of the slots examples. The shape comes from needing an extrusion that would create a small set of shelves after the rib creation, as well as having a concave area in which the tip jar would fit.

Bathroom Light shape

Another idea I fleshed out was a night light for the bathroom in the shape of a toilet. Originally, I wanted to run with this design - mostly because I thought it would be the most fun to make. In practical use I would want to keep this as a smaller piece, however I think it would transfer best with ribs as a larger piece. Because of this, I decided not to use this design as the lamp.

Twin Bulb shape

This is the shape used as raw material for the lamp design. The simplicity of it will transfer into ribs nicely, and having 2 bulbs adds interest. 

(week 12)
DESIGN & LAYOUT:
From raw shape, I offset the double sphere and played with booleans to create a more interesting inner silhouette. Eventually, the shape was turned upside-down after some thought process on ease of changing out bulbs in the future.

After creating the ribs, modifications were made to the bottom two layers to account for the light kits (1" hole) and a guide for their cords below (.75" hole). Those bottom two layers also required special pipes. The radial ribs were done with sections, and I only wanted to have the four corner ribs - but that left the bottom vertical rib with a strange support. The solution was to 'christmas tree' the structure - adding the additional needed vertical ribs to one side only. This lets the finished product have two different faces.

*'christmas tree' - having one denser side, where the denser side is usually the showing face. 

notched surfaces

ribs

The final design measures about 14" wide x 8.5" deep x 9" tall. I chose an 1/8" MDF substrate in a light ash color for the final piece. The final shape and setup reminded me of the first division of an embryo, so I've titled the piece 'Blastomere Lamp'. A blastomere is a type of cell formed by cleavage (cell division).

RENDERS:

 

Render in an Ash color and bump map similar to actual material. 

Render in glass with inner glow from opposite side (without additional radial ribs).

(week 14)
BUILD OUT:
The build out gave me many lessons, the majority of which had to do with material selection and thickness.  A lesson learned in the shape of this type of waffle structure was that rounded or bulbous shapes tend to be difficult during assembly. As well, I had a difficult time finding help with piecing together a light kit utilizing two bulbs on one plug.  In the end, improvisation gave the lamp its final character.