LATE Floor Lamp

‘LATE’ (ليت) is a bespoke 3D printed floor lamp, designed for a friend of MEAN* as a one-off rather than for mass production. It is an experiment in making light fixtures with robotic 3D printing.

The lamp is designed around industrial robotic 3D printing from polymer pellets and the forms it makes possible.

Nagami printed the lamp in Ávila from polymer pellets in three colors: maroon brown, tangerine orange and clear. The pellets are distributed during printing to give a smooth gradient from the dark color to the clear. Getting the gradient right took several prototypes.

An industrial LED rod lighting fixture emits light equally in a straight line. The conical lampshade covers the lower part of the LED with a broad base and narrows toward the top, where it encases the lamp. The color gradient hides the lower part of the fixture and lets more light through toward the top. Lit, the lamp is brightest at its tip, like a shooting star, which draws out its tall proportions.

In plan, the form is also achieved by rotating and reducing the scale of hexagons incrementally toward the top. The rotating and overlapping hexagons are generated using a Python script and provide an outline shape used as the layered pathway curves for 3D printing. The result is a spiral like the leaf arrangements (phyllotaxis) found in many plants. In elevation, a diagrid lattice is generated by the corners of the hexagons, adding articulation and structural support to the lampshade shell.

The name comes from how long the lamp took to design, prototype and finish, and so how late we were in delivering it.

In Emirati and other Gulf dialects, ‘Late’ (ليت) is also an everyday word for ‘light’.

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