Design Brief: Design a Lampshade

In the second week of foundation of my course I was given a new project. It was a little different from the earlier ones and thought it was very challenging. It was indeed. The only constraint this design had was about Green Design. It means I was not allowed to use plastic or in other words I had to make the lampshade from recyclable material. I thought about different materials like thermocol, plastic and all the similar kinds. Still I was not able to get out of the box and think how to go around it. I kept on thinking about the materials I can use. During some interactions with my friends I saw a piece of thread on the floor and that very moment I thought of using thread as a material for my lampshade. Cotton thread was fitting completely into the constraints of Green Design. Then I started developing idea on it, and I wondered in all the directions how could I had used it in the most creative way? Soon an idea struck to my mind of using fevicol (an adhesive) as a binder for it. Then I had I question of how to get a unique shape, that would make it really cool and hep. I got the idea of using an inflated balloon as a mould for my lampshade. I also had no idea how it was going to work and was planning to experiment. I bought a 2-3 reels of cotton thread (a coarse quality one) some fevicol and a balloon. I inflated the balloon to get some weird but unique shape. At the start I had to cross many hurdles, sometimes the fevicol used to drip on the floor, sometimes the thread used to come out of the reel, and not to mention but the balloon was roaming around in the room!! With lot of patience I finally started winding the thread on the balloon with little bit of application of fevicol on it. The fevicol was dripping on my legs… my clothes… and what not… my room mates were just looking at me and kept smiling… they were thinking that I was gone crazy and they were not ready to believe that I was gonna make some kind of lampshade. Finally after 2 hrs of winding of thread I applied 2-3 coats of diluted fevicol on the thread and just kept praying that the balloon should not burst. The next day I took it to my school, people started starring @ me, and I had guessed well about what must had gone through their mind. I got a little unconfident on what I was planning to. Later I showed it to my faculty. They gave me enough sigh of relief saying “hey it’s a nice idea, you better apply more coats of fevicol, I m sure it will work out”. At that very point I regained my confidence and worked more enthusiastically, whole heartedly. It looked something like this when I had shown it to my classmates and faculty.

I applied 8-9 coats of fevicol on that day. One after the other. It was now the strength. It was hard enough to take its own weight. That night I got the winded balloon back to my room and hanged it leaving it to dry. The next morning was the judgement time. It was the moment to see if I could achieve the fruits of my hardship. I went to my design studio next morning and started working on it again. Initially I deflated the balloon a little bit so I could remove the adhesive layer between the thread and the balloon. It was working!! I was delighted to see it. Deflated the balloon more and took out the balloon from my just baked n fresh lampshade!! The lampshade was quite stiff to bare the load of its own. It was looking simple and beautiful. I decided to make some art on it using sparkle gel . And this is how my lampshade looks like..

In the Day...

In the night..