December 20, 2007

No condom shaped lights for the Warmoesstraat

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 6:21 pm

The Warmoesstraat is one of the oldest streets of Amsterdam and the gateway to the famous Red Light District. The street’s business association wanted to see the wares it sells reflected in its seasonal lighting, and therefore ordered the manufacturing of lights in the shape of condoms, handcuffs, magic mushrooms and so on. But it wasn’t to be: due to a construction error the light that would have been revealed tomorrow turned out to be too heavy to be hung.

The lighting idea was the result of a competition held by the business association and won by Toko 73 and Coolpuk, who also came up with a new logo. I also liked the idea of Carmela Bogman to use LED lights to create an understated, moon-shaped display that would bring visitors back to a darker bygone era, thereby underlining the age of the street—although the actual designs were a bit “Ot en Sien” (tacky).

Illustration by Toko 73 and Coolpuk.

Via Dutchnews.nl.

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November 1, 2007

Levitating lamp models presented at Dutch Design Week

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 6:52 am

A popular meme has people ask of every new gadget they see: will it blend? (make good use of that iPhone!). Well, us Dutchies just aren’t into blending. Our meme is: will it levitate? Having started with the levitating frog, invented the levitating bed, and re-invented the levitating man, we have now gone on to the levitating lamp. All thanks to designer Angela Jansen, who created these lamps using Crealev technology. I have no idea if these computer rendered designs will ever translate to real, buyable products though. On her website Angela Jansen writes that several of these models were shown at the Dutch Design Week.

For the religiously inclined Jansen has also come up with the levitating buddha and the levitating chalice.

(Via Engadget.)

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September 25, 2007

Lamps in a box made to look like lamps

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 12:34 pm

The designers at Huh have come up with lamps in boxes with cut-outs that look like lamps. Think Jack-o-Lantern gone meta. In one design the light coming from the box paints a table top lamp with a long and bendy three-armed stand, and in another it paints the ceiling lamp that it is. BoingBoing, who wrote about this, call it “a witty little play on the IKEA-style flatpack world of fixtures and furniture.”

Interior Matters sell the Not A Lamp online for EUR 55. They also sell other Huh products. Unfortunately their site is only in Dutch.

(Orangemaster’s tip: These lamps have been adorning a newly opened clothing shop called Das Wella Warenhaus on the Keizersgracht corner Berenstraat in Amsterdam.)

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