The CMYK Lamp
To create a functional lighting piece, I learned to form acrylic, persist through setbacks, and utilize rapid prototyping. This process resulted in a beautiful, interactive lamp that utilizes CMYK color-mixing in order to produce a gentle yet vibrant light.
Ideation
This idea was selected due to its unique functionality features and colorful theme that matched with maximalist interior design trends.
Iteration
It was essential to find a way to connect the "petals" to the "stem," so a plastic connector was created. The petals would be friction fit into the slots of the connector, and the connector itself would be fixed to the stem. This way, the petals could be rearranged with keeping the height of each row consistent.
Acrylic was chosen due to its clarity, flexibility, and ability to be laser-cut for identical petal shapes. To color the acrylic, dye was initially used, but using car headlight wrapping material proved to be more effective. It was more pigmented, yielded more consistent results, and was faster to produce.
Final Model
The base of the CMYK lamp was created by gluing together many layers of doughnut-shaped laser-cut MDF to form a cylinder. This allowed be to create an inner hole that would perfectly fit the bulb and wiring, as well as create a notch for the wire and switch to exit the lamp. The base was sanded and painted gray to allow the petals to really shine.
In this final model, spray paint was used to make any glass foggy. By spraying this on the acrylic petals, I was able to better diffuse the light. However, this did take away from the color-mixing effect of the petals, so moving forward another way to diffuse the light more effectively would be explored.
