Cranespotting

“My designs are often inspired by the everyday, and this lamp for Tala was no different.
I love taking something familiar and placing it in an unfamiliar context as this can make
us consider these objects differently. This lamp was inspired by trips through London at night, watching cranes loom overhead as their lights flicker on. These temporary fixtures of the city are present in every urban landscape yet are so commonplace that their functional beauty
is often overlooked.

I wanted to utilise the precision possible with CAD CAM as opposed to traditional craft for this distributable design. This delicacy and detail is only possible when using these machines, so I wanted to celebrate this unique quality of this process. It was important to me that this lamp not only looked like a crane but functioned like one too, using counterweights to mimic their smooth movements, highlighting the complex engineering involved in these graceful machines.

This lamp is designed for customisation, the file can be scaled to work for different sizes and lengths and can be cut in anything from ply to steel. My drawings may be developed into other crane-inspired lamp structures – tall tower crane floor lamps or a mobile desk crawler crane.

I’ve used everyday objects to increase the functionality of the piece. The rotational base uses a castor wheel mirroring the lamp’s industrial theme. The counter weight is a concrete-cast coffee cup yet can be replaced with almost anything, encouraging experimentation with different weights and movement. Similarly the castor can be attached to any dense material as a base – I’ve used some rubble here that I found in the street; it’s a natural environment for a crane.

I hope this lamp inspires people to look at their city in a different light.”