Iron Lighting Products and Fixtures Design · 2024
Swirl Lamp Lighting
by Zeynep and Konstantinos Paradeisopoulos
- A' Design Award 2024 Iron Winner in Lighting Products and Fixtures Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- CLIENT: Kazoo Design
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 14,133
- Verification code D82E863C61 · Verify this award
About Swirl Lamp Lighting
The Swirl pendant lamp, designed with the delicate shape of a meringue cookie in mind, adds character to various rooms in a home. It is particularly striking when arranged in clusters above a long table or as a solo piece above a coffee table. The lamp's symmetrical structure and flowing curves, reminiscent of piped icing from a pastry bag, bring a touch of Pop Art-inspired home decor to the space.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Inspired by the soft form and delicate curves of a Meringue cookie, the Swirl pendant lamp brings the fun character to any the space whether it’s hanging as a cluster of pendants over a dinner table or as a single bedside lamp. The lamp was designed and crafted in many different pop colors as well as two different shapes for matching and grouping.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The dimensions are 162mm x 123 mm
- Tags
- pendant lamp, lighting, contemporary, lighting design, product design, home decoration
- Production Technology
- The Merengue lamp stands out due to its intricate mold-making process. The mold requires both an inner casting as well as an outer casting to achieve its distinctive curvatures both inside and outside. The lamp's unique design also includes a white inner color that reflects true light emitted by its temperature accurately. Notably, the Merengue lamp has been released in various pop colors, but each have white inner coloring.
- Project Duration
- The Lamp design started in late 2020 and was completed in 2021. The design appeared in Maison Francaise December 2022.
- Operation Flow
- The Swirl lamp's material allows for translucent properties that show through intricate details of the lamp's curves when illuminated, creating a surprising detail in visual display when the lamp is lit.
- Research
- The Swirl Lamp design has emerged during a design research/challenge to find foods that can be turned into practical home decorations. Many food scan data has been formed during this research, but The Meringue cookie's scan was selected since it had a great pattern. Through 3D scanning and careful remodeling, the unique meringue shape is transformed into a symmetric lamp, complemented by carefully chosen brass accessories that follow the lamp's curved form.
- Inspiration
- The inspiration behind the lamp's design stems from the Meringue cookie, with a process involving 3D scanning of edible items and translating them into practical design elements for everyday household decor. The lamp's symmetrical form and the curves that flow through contribute to its charm in enhancing living spaces with a touch of Pop Art inspired home decor.
- Image Credits
- Image #No 1: fizkes, Courtesy of Shutterstock, Inc. The photo integration was done by Kazoo Design Studio.
Image #No 2: Courtesy of Shutterstock, Inc. The photo integration was done by Kazoo Design Studio.
Image #No 4: Pinkystock, Courtesy of Shutterstock, Inc. The photo integration was done by Kazoo Design Studio. - Patents
- Patent number is 2021/004916
Patent Application Date is 15/04/2021
This lamp also has a CE certificate as of year 2023
Colors of Swirl Lamp Lighting
Design Interview about Swirl Lamp Lighting
We wanted to see if we could use a food decorational element as a functional household object and specifically a lamp.
We wanted to make a lamp that would not only produce nice lighting but would also be charming to look at and would put a smile on someone’s face.
We would like to make different versions using different coloring techniques.
The protoype took a few days to be completed. Most of the time spent went into all the different versions of the molds we had to make when we shifted its’ production to acrylic resins from ceramics.
The project was an idea that came to mind and turned into a final product.
We’re in the process of producing different colour variations. In the future, if we decide to go with another material we may consider working with another producer.
We wanted to get into designing lamps and we wanted our first lamp to have a funky, minimal but also edgy character.
None we can think of.
People who like unique pendants.
The swirl is referring to the nature of the object’s rhythm from base to tip.
Softimage for designing the object as well as the molds and Zbrush for creating booleans.
We like how the lamp hat flows into the brass tip.
The first versions we released were made out of ceramics so we worked with some local craftsmen/producers for the molds and the copies. Since we shifted the production to acrylic resins we designed and made the molds for them as well as produced the copies ourselves.
The object and its’ mold were designed digitally and were then 3d printed.
The biggest challenge was figuring out how to make a shelled object using acrylic resins.
We decided to see what an international board of judges would think about this design.
We strengthened our mold making skills and learnt many new methods for creating shelled objects with acrylic resins.
A few months after releasing the swirl lamp, we created its’ complementary partner, this time using convex profile curves instead of the concave ones found in first one.
Grand Interview about Swirl Lamp Lighting
After getting inspired to use the meringue cookie as a form for the lamp hat of a pendant light we went ahead and photographed a meringue cookie we bought from a bakery. With the use of photogrammetrical software we created a 3d model of the cookie. This 3d model was only used to carefully study the meringue’s form. In the end, to achieve a more refined and symmetrical look, we connected a series of different curves, adjusting the proportions of the original cookie to acquire a clean symmetrical look. We modified the height-to-length ratio and altered the "belly" size of the cookie to ensure the desired design that we were looking for. The technical challenge was in balancing the organic aesthetic of the cookie with the precision needed for a lighting fixture, ensuring that it would be both elegant and structurally sound.
We’ve always had a strong appreciation for playful, vibrant hues, and we felt the Swirl Lamp would be a perfect canvas for a variety of color options. Regardless of the lamp’s exterior color, all the lamps’ interior dome is painted white. The white interior helps ensure the light reflected from the bulb remains neutral, preventing any color tinting since this makes for a more hard-to-use light while doing tasks like reading or dining, where natural, untinted light is essential. Beyond the functional aspect, we believe the combination of the bold exterior colors with the white interior adds a dynamic character to the lamp, giving it a versatility that allows it to fit seamlessly into different environments. The addition of two-tone variations, aside from the all-white version, enhances the lamp’s visual appeal, giving each piece a unique personality.
The Swirl Lamp Lighting is made from eco-resin Jesmonite, a versatile material, but it presented a unique challenge when creating shelled objects such as the Swirl Lamp. The primary difficulty with such designs is ensuring the mold can capture both the exterior and interior surfaces, especially when dealing with undercuts—features where one part of the design overhangs another. For objects without any undercuts you can use one mold that wraps around the object and get the desired thickness. However, in the case of the Swirl Lamp, since the design has an undercut, it becomes more complicated.To create the mold, we used a two-part molding technique. The outer mold, made from silicone, forms the external surface and is supported by a 3D-printed shell. The inner mold that’s used to render it’s internal surface and defines it’s thickness, is supported by a removable 3d-printed part, inserts into the lamp’s tip and this insert is designed to be rigid enough to maintain its shape during the casting process, yet is also flexible enough so that it can collapse to be inserted and removed. Finally the inner mold mounts on another 3d-printed part that in turn mounts onto the shell of the outer mold ensuring that the lamp’s thickness is maintained around the whole perimeter.
After carefully analysing the scanned Meringue’s form we designed the curves that defined its’ final form in a way to maintain the organic nature of the object as much as possible. We paid attention to all the peaks and valleys of every single curve in order to apply subtle changes that in the end made a big difference. For it’s practical lighting functionality we made sure to give it an appropriate scale primarily in order for all the lighting accessories (G9 light fixture, threaded cylinder, braided cable) to pass through and fit inside the lamp, but also to make sure we have the desired dome size for the light’s cone.
Our background proved to be helpful in a few different ways for the object’s creation. First of all being proficient with photogrammetrical software allowed us to capture a model of a small meringue cookie and analyse its form. Secondly, our modelling experience allowed us to come up with its’ modified symmetrical design, but most importantly gave us the ability to create the most complicated mold we had made up to that point. Thirdly, experience with 3d printing allowed us to print many different versions of the prototype in order to see how it looks in a given space. Lastly, experience with shading, lighting and rendering allowed us to previsualize it’s color and finish as well as the lamp’s light cone.
We’d like to think that this object will inspire other lighting designers to create lamps with forms deriving from everyday objects.
Since the beginning, we decided to use technology for designing, prototyping and mold-making but not for creating the final copies. We hope our customers understand the passion and hard work involved in creating any object from a cast and not from a direct 3d print. At the same time, we try to make every cast as clean as possible, knowing that this strips away it’s hand-crafted character.
Translucency is something we always really liked in so many different lamp shades. We knew from tests that we had performed in the past, that the material we wanted to use did have a translucent property up to a certain thickness. We made sure to design our molds in a way so that certain areas of the lamp have a thinner thickness allowing the object to be translucent when the bulb is switched on, while others areas had a thicker thickness, thus leaving them opaque.
We will surely be using similar concepts for future lighting projects. We already have a few concepts in the works for releasing more lamps that reference other types of food, but we don’t want to limit ourselves only to this type of lighting. Generally speaking, we prefer not to use traditional forms for the lamps we design and try to come up with something fresh.
After coming up with the swirl lamp idea, designing it and making it a final product we realized that any object’s form can serve a multitude of different purposes. It has made us observe the outside world even more and try to come up with different ideas for all sorts of objects. The biggest take-away from this project though is to not be afraid to design a mold as complicated as it may be, since in the end holding the final hand-crafted copy makes the whole process worth it.