About the project
“How can we use distributed manufacture to propagate strangeness?
How can we complicate regularity?
Distributed manufacture seems to demand simple, replicable designs. How, within these, might we show the uncertainty of our current partnership with the environment?
This lamp idea was inspired from a piece of packing material. The material is made to be regular and robust, and its design allows it to warp in uneven ways. The look as well as the metaphor inspired the Frag Lamp. The name comes from the Latin frangere, to break, which is also the root of the word fragility.
The structure is broken into three functions: the seating for the bulb at the center, the verticals that generate enough space for the bulb to shine, and the covering that fractures the light into a more complex pattern. It is the outer covering that offers the space for great customization — you can hang nearly any old flotsam off the surface, creating an irrationality encouraged by the design.
Readily available materials in easy sizes have been the constraints: the Tala bulb used is the one that comes in the most common shape, the jagged verticals nest together to exploit as much of a flat acrylic sheet as possible, the paper and packing material on the outside is easily sourced.
The Frag Lamp uses a replicable substructure to make a canvas for local expression of materials. The designer’s motivation to make designs that are globally accessible comes from living a life in many countries and knowing the work it sometimes takes to decipher cultural codes. Her background in shadow puppet theater is also noticeable in the design.”
