Do you want to know the shape of the wind? “Then blow a giant bubble,” writes Jing-Cyuan Tang, industrial designer at Sunriu design studio, remembering what someone told her long ago. Tang retains fond childhood memories of summer days spent blowing bubbles through a small circular hoop. Now, the Taiwan-based designer, inspired by these memories, is turning heads with Air Shape—a line of wall lamps and pendants constructed from a black aluminum ring embedded with LED strips. The light shines inward from the ring—to illuminate above and below—then out from the ring is a traditional blown-glass half bubble that catches the room’s light in such a way as to reveal an array of colors on its gentle and uneven surface.
“It’s as if time stopped at the moment of birth, stopping at a beautiful hazy memory of our childhood,” says Tang of Air Shape’s unique emotion and look, which mimics a would-be bubble, frozen in time at the moment it is about to be formed. “It sways in the breeze until it becomes spherical, revealing the different colors of the rainbow on its translucent surface. Its form holds an element of uncertainty and fragility, but also conveys a message of potential and vitality.”
This article appeared in the November 2022 issue of Architectural SSL magazine.
