Heavy-Looking Bulbs Droop to Look Like Water Balloons
Water balloon fights are always fun (in warm weather, that is), and Torafu Architects wanted to bring that fun into the home. These fun pendant lights were inspired by water balloons: or, more specifically, transparent water balloons as they’re being filled from the tap.
The pendant lights feature bulb-shaped glass with tons of little bubbles inside. They aren’t lit like you might expect, however; they contain LEDs which light the glass from its top, highlighting the beautiful imperfections in the glass pieces. It’s a subtle effect that ultimately makes these pendant lights more like illuminated sculptures than functional lighting, though they’ll certainly bring some ambiance to a room.
The glass has been recycled from fluorescent lamps. Like water balloons in the middle of being filled or just about to burst upon hitting an opponent, each “bulb” has a unique shape. The bubbles in the glass naturally vary from one fixture to the next, looking a little like a moment frozen in time: that delicious moment just before you tie the end of the balloon and lob it at an opponent.
More from the designers
“IFFT interior life style living Lighting designed for the exhibition ‘9lass’ held in the special project zone CREATIVE RESORCE Material and Power of Creation. With the theme of ‘Hikari,’ he created a collaborative work with a glass artist using glass as a material. The lighting that overflows with Hikari that honestly expresses the presence and beauty of solid glass and the uniqueness of the hand-made shapes that I saw during the workshop tour.”
“Like water balloons swelling from insulator sockets, each glass has a unique and charming shape, and the bubbles that enter it diffusely reflect the light source. For the glass material illuminated by the LED light source, we aimed to create a new relationship between the materials by using recycled fluorescent lamp glass.”
