Form-Giving, Wood-Working, Rapid Prototyping, Design for Manufacturing
Experimenting with the natural qualities of mahogany and linen, we fabricated a lamp that explores rotational form characterstics. In this project, I collaborated with my partner to create a cohesive form that synthesizes the two materials. We fabricated our lamp utilizing the lathe and sewing machine.
3 Weeks
Course:
Designing Products for Interaction, Spring 2025
Role:
Partner
Collaborator:
Luke Shen
Tools:
Lathe, Sewing Machine, Adobe Illustrator
Materials:Mahogany, Linen, LED lightbulb
With only the materials and the prompt of “rotational form” as restrictions, we were pretty much free to decide the overall aesthetics of our lamp.
Some questions that we examined are:
“What aesthetic direction do we want to take the lamp?”
“What feelings and emotions do we want to lamp to convey?”
“How can we make a visually and functionally cohesive design between the linen and mahogany?”
“How might we want others to interact with it? Is it a desk lamp, hanging lamp, etc.”
Luke and I worked towards a lamp with this silhouette. Through our iterations, we decided that we wanted to make a hanging lamp. The adjective we strived towards was “elegance.” We were gravitated towards a coffin-like proportion, with a tapered top that reaches maximum width 1/3 from the top.
The curves we aimed for for the linen were lines that conveyed a sense of calmness and elegance.
We finalized our wooden and linen forms using Illustrator, then mocking it up in 3D on Solidworks to get a feel of how our form would turn out.
Our fabrication process required both work on the fabric and the wood. We began with the linen, which involved laser cutting the interface and linen pieces out, then ironing them together. Finally, we pinned the folds together to sew each of the pieces.
Sewing Machine:
Lathe:
One of our final steps in the process was to work out the logistics of how to attach the linen to the wood. Some of our previous ideas was to use a rubber band to tie the fabric to the wood, use hot glue or another adhesive. Yet, all of these options seemed to squish the fabric at the ends, which would compromise the folding form.
As a result, we thought of using a wire that threads through the fabric, which we folded and glued down to create a loop hole for the wire to go through. Then, by bending the wire to the exact folds, we were able to hold the shape.
Additional Interactions with the linen: