Kairoz – Handcrafted wooden lamps - Distributed Design Platform

Useful information

Team members: Julia Fischer
Country: Austria
Keywords: handcrafted wooden lampshades laser cut plug system plywood

Short Description

Wooden lampshades designed to bring cozy atmosphere lighting into every room.

Detailed Description

Kairoz is a small manufacturer based in Salzburg, focused on beautiful design and handcraft with a bespoke quality, founded in 2018. With my background in graphic design and a passion for handcraft and creating physical objects, these two interests of mine came together in a perfect setting for Kairoz to come to life when I started experimenting with a laser cutter.

Taking inspiration from beauty found in nature, the lighting structures are fashioned after fir cones, drops, leafs or other elements and shapes. Due to the character of the wood they give off cozy ambient light and their unique shadowing allows for special accents to fill the room around them.

High quality beech, pine, and poplar are cut with modern laser technology and then lovingly treated with oils, glazes and varnishes to achieve a fine-tuned polished finish. The treated wooden elements are then pieced together in a sophisticated technique, limiting the need for additional materials to fashion the ideal shape.

Project Details

Does your design take social and cultural challenges and human wellbeing into consideration?: The aim of my designs is to bring cozy atmosphere lighting into every room, to increase the wellbeing of the people who live in it.
instead of mass-production, highly standardized products and overconsumption Kairoz focuses on sustainable, local production and high quality products. Customization and possibilities of adaptation to special customer needs are almost unlimited and new implementations are always welcome challenges for me.

Does your design support sustainable production, embodying circular or regenerative design practices?: The essence of the products is down the wood construction. The plug-in system enables simple replacement of individual parts if necessary. I use simple veneer plates, made from European beech or poplar and hand selected from a local wood source to create solid lampshades. The wood is then lovingly treated with oils, glazes, and varnishes as organic as possible. The product packaging consists of self-made recycled laser cut cardboard inlays to avid plastic waste.

Does your design use principles of distribution and open source?: By now the lampshades are all handmade in a fab lab in Salzburg of European wood from a local wood shop. From here they make their way to light up the homes of many within Europe. There are considerations to distribute the design also open source in the future as it fulfills the requirements to be manufactured anywhere in the world.

Does your design promote awareness of responsible design and consumption?: Kairoz is a small manufacturer based in Salzburg, focused on beautiful design and handcraft with a bespoke quality. It all starts with thoughtful and deliberate designs, where I take a lot of inspiration from the world around us. I craft each piece myself, starting with processing and refining through to assembling the final product. This ensures a high quality light fixture down to each detail.