Over on Pinterest lampshades are one of the most popular applications of 3D printing by way of the number of Pins. Pins being akin to timeline posts on Facebook, for those of you who have yet to give in to spending even more time online with yet another social network and avoiding yet another feature of pre-online existence: pruning the bushes, restringing the guitar, washing up, daylight, etc. But fear not, whilst you are 3D printing your washing up robot’s body parts you can now make exposure to daylight a thing of the past by browsing the ‘lampshade a week’ collection by 52shapes.
Whilst “I’d have called it ‘52 Shades Of Day’” comes to mind, this really is a great project to see online. Every Sunday 52Shapes will share an inexpensive but beautiful lampshade design with the public. What makes lampshades absolutely ideal for 3D printing is the capability of our favourite tri-dimensioned technology to form intricate shapes with gaps, holes, and other facets that would otherwise simply be impossible to make. Light, that most precious of resources, fascinates the human mind, and 3D printing simply makes complex shapes that play with light easier to make.
The aesthetics of form, scale, hue, luminescence, direction, gravity, and particularly texture and structure, are all ultimately augmented in the hands of the competent designer with 3D printing as a craft tool at their disposal. Adding materials together via a digital production process creates a vast range of possibilities, of which only a limited number have yet been explored. The breadth and range of shades created by our subject technology is rapidly increasing however, and I believe that we will witness a permeation into fashion and other artistic disciplines from the design permutations already explored in thin texture and structure based house-ware design.
A picture says a thousand words, and my words could never touch the beauty of many of the following designs. Here are some of my favourites in the realm of 3D printed lampshade design from the whole of mankind’s creations to date, if you will indulge me, it will be my pleasure to share them. You can catch the exciting website for 52shapes itself here and see the whole collection of the year to date over at their Facebook page here.
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