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Yea or Nay?: What You Get When "Package Is Lamp"
A low waste, highly idealistic light
Cardboard, like reclaimed wood, continues to provide inspiration for materials-minded designers. It's tough but soft, ubiquitous and underrated, and incredibly easy to source. Letting the material drive the object is a similarly tried and true source of both innovation and "innovation." The R16 Lamp project aims to join the shipping durability and lo-fi looks of cardboard in a DIY pendant light.
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Enter a caption (optional)The team at Waarmakers, whose designers proudly state that their "package is lamp," are so enamored with shipping tubes that they based the whole design around them. The shipping tube for the self-assembled lamp turns into the housing for the lightbulb. The tube is laser cut and scored, designed to arrive safely while allowing the user to pop out panels for hanging and fitting the bulb.
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Enter a caption (optional)The height of the lightweight light is adjustable by a cork at one end of the tube, and the horizontal placement of the bulb is fixed by a pencil or coin.
The bulb is an unremarkable 15 watt Philips LED tube, which is pretty lightweight for output, but probably fine for statement lighting or in work environments with other sources of light. A full day of 15w LED overhead sounds like a headache, regardless of how ecologically minded its packaging design was.
The lamp first debuted in 2016, and has been followed up with a rectangular wooden version called the Ninebyfour.
The lines are lovely, the assembly and adjustment flourishes are fun, and the instructions (.pdf) are neatly designed, but the familiar banal-material-turned-chic falls a little short of exciting. What do we think? Good, bad, eh, or other?
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Comments
I like the tone of the author. As well the 'yea or nay' term really sends out a message. Fits the irritated-machine lover in the bio as well.
To me it looks more like a statement and a perfect example of using materials in a completely different way. As well the fact that all the components actually fit inside 1 package suits. So no, you probably will not be spending your workday all day long under the lamp if 15W does not suit your environment. But that`s okay, there are many more lamps on the market with a brighter output.
It has a timeless feeling to it. Something that future generation industrial designers can look back at and learn from. Now, you could state that this "timeless" feeling is a typical buzz-word. Although.
Some products, whether they are cars, haircuts, interiors or packagings kind of do give us a clue when they where brought into the world. Maybe these products are therefore just less timeless, while other products are being analysed and studied year after year.
We could also take the critical look on objects and as ourselves: "do we really need another lamp? Does the world really need another minimalistic looking chair or sofa?" Even then I would think the world can really use examples like the R16.
Price too high? Well, sometimes examples have a higher price.
Using the packaging as part of the product is actually a really nice idea that I've been studying since a long time. But knowing how the shipping companies handle the packages in an international shipping scenario make me wonder if this is really a viable product.
I think that this is a good "idea" if you consider it as a work of art though.
If you take for granted that the shipping company will take care of the package why don't use directly a nicer material? It doesn't need to be cardboard, the risk of receiving a bent tube is considerably high.
If you're using very good quality cardboard coated with something that protects it from moisture I don't know if it as cost effective as a simple pvc water tube. If you use reclaimed pvc, that could be more interesting and way more "ecologic".
I understand also that there's a trend about kraft paper these days, so basically is also an easy-to-advertise product to the ecofreak-hypster with a pockets full of money.
It is a really expensive product, which is a bit non-sense in my opinion (if we consider this as an Industrial Design Product), i mean, if you make an ecofriendly product costing 4-6 times the cost of the traditional "ecomonster" counterpart you're just playing solving a problem that doesn't exists.
Is really funny that all the pictures in their website are of rooms with lots of natural llight...