Sustainable Lighting - Designed Considering Emotional Aspects

Global warming challenges designers to pay attention to environmental effects of manufacturing when designing new products. This examination project was a personal challenge to uphold ethical responsibility as a designer and consider emotional aspects of design while aiming to create a pleasurable lighting for the home environment. The underpinning idea for the project was to promote the use of recycled materials and an environmentally friendly light source aiming to create a sustainable everyday commonplace product that it is possible to manufacture. High power LED-technology was chosen because of its energy efficiency, flexibility and a particularly long life-cycle. Recycled plastic and fibre cardboard were chosen to be applied as the shades of the lamps. Both these recycled materials can be broken down and recycled again after use. Emotional design aspect was the leading theory in the design process. The intention was to consider different levels of emotional aspects when defining the main characteristics of the lamp to create pleasurable lighting: Among usability and aesthetics the concentration was on the semiotics of the product and its usage context. It was designed with the aim of evoking pleasurable feelings in users who desire to lead an active and urban life-style but who are simultaneously worried about global warming. Both of the lighting designs are for a dining context. They are supposed to create a pleasurable atmosphere around a dining table while separating the party around the table from the rest of the space. Other lights can be dimmed or switched off when it is time to gather around the table to accentuate the illumination and feeling of togetherness. Inspiration for the project came from sustainability, contemporary thoughts and trends embodied into maps. The products turned out to be silent statements of today’s global world; Antarctica refers to glacial retreat while Town symbolises the importance of people’s own origin in this globalised world