Parametric Light

For our second assignment, we were to create a parametric lampshade to put over an existing lamp. However, as I do not own any lamps and I am a lover of plants, I wanted to create a standalone light that functions as a plant holder too. I love the design of the cellular light shade and wanted to incorporate it into my own design as it reminded me of the roots of the plants.

The first step in my design was creating the light shade that the plant holder would rest on top of. To design it, I used Grasshopper and an extension called Weaverbird. I first created two circles in Rhino3d and connected them to generate a cylinder in which I would generate the voronoi design on top of. After playing around with the components in Grasshopper, I settled on this final design. I attempted to mimic the complex design of the cellular lampshader, but I faced issues of Cura needing to add in supports to print the model, which I didn't want. Once the design was completed, I moved on to designing the other components of the plant holder.

For designing the plant holder, I needed to base my design off of three things. The first of which was to create a plant holder with drainage holes for the water to seep through and a circular indentation in it for where I could place a 2.5 x 2.5 in circular lamp I found on Amazon. The design for the plant holder went through a few iterations as I had forgotten that overhangs pose a difficulty in printing. This led me to having to separate out the walls of the plant holder from the base itself. For the parametric light design, I attached it to a cylinder where the plant holder could sit on top of. I put in an indent in the holder and a circular cut so the light from the lamp could reach through while the water gets trapped in the holder and doesn't spill onto the table. After playing around with the designs and trying to cut down on the printing time, I finally had the final designs I wanted to print.

The final model is made up of three parts. The first is the parametric light design that will hold the plant holder. On top of that is a cylinder that will collect the water that seeps through the plant holder. The plant holder is split into two parts where one is the outer walls and the other is the base. The outer walls has a small border at the bottom whose diameter is smaller than the base so that the base could be easily popped into it.

The final result! There are a few artifacts that were generated when printing the parametric light design, but they are pretty minimal and not noticeable unless a closer look is given.