Last week, we determined that Studio1Thousand had created a chandelier worth selling your soul for. This week, I get to pick the brains of the design team behind the constellation chandelier.
A Q&A, courtesy of Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn, the mastermind behind the magic:
1. What led you to focus your work on LED lights?
Initially, with the very first lights...the idea that the light did not need to be replaced was very
attractive. That pushed me to think of ways to use it where this was
highlighted. But that was 4 years ago, and that is only half the story. LEDs really offer lighting
designers amazing opportunities to offer lights in forms that have
never been seen before. They give designers a chance to stretch,
contort, distort, and generally knead what we think of as lights, or
what we think lights can or should look like.
2. How large is your design team, and how does such a
collaboration work from project to project? More specifically, how did
the constellation chandelier come into being?
The Constellation comes from a large cloud of ideas. Studio 1 Thousand
is actually only one person, with help, lots of help, from friends and
acquaintances. One person who was a ton of help was Michael Nuzzi. He is an electrical engineer, who had some (lots) of spare time. Other people include a community of designers who I went to Pratt Grad ID with: Ebbin Martin, Keen Gat, and Kandice Levero.
The Constellation was originally something that was based around an idea to
mimic Queen Anne's lace. There is a feeling that the multiplicity of
the flower was a good model on which to base the light. I thought a lot
about the illumination plane, and what the lights would be supported
by. That was very important because it would become the fixture
itself. There is a sense that LEDs are not powerful enough by
themselves. While that is true, it is important to stress that if we
are to move to an LED-lit world, we have to understand a paradigm
shift. This is more than just lighting. As consumption gets more and
more expensive, we must try to consume specifically what we need. The Constellation was my effort to try to present a mass of LEDs,
enough to be effective, in an enjoyable manner.
3.
Do you plan to market and sell this chandelier?
The light is being made
right now. The first run consists of ten units. The retail price is
$5,000. I am looking for shops to carry the light. I will also take a
limited number of custom jobs. People who are interested in buying one
should start by contacting me first.
4. What recent design trends are you most excited about?
Design and creation in general is
starting to move too fast for me. Through blogs (my frienemy), I get a
lot of publicity, but looking at them too much, looking at design
magazines too much, is overloading. One of the goals of these lights is
to connect people with a feeling that is closer to their heart, to make
things that remind people of things from their past. I am way more
interested in things that a normal consumer with taste will like. I
look at a lot of Japanese craft, baskets, George Nakashima, craft
perfected over generations. My issue is that many things we create
now do not engage people at the heart level; they engage people on a
brain level. That said, the most amazing thing I have seen recently is
Arik Levy's Fractal Cloud.
5. I feel as if your designs are aimed toward
a more high-end market. Do you have advice for fine design-loving
homeowners with a smaller budget?
This is one of my biggest
complaints with my own designs. In conversations with the designers at
Niche Modern, one of the gripes from their products was that it was
not acessable to the average person. I feel the same way. I am working
to try to make products that are accessable to all sorts of budgets. I
think my advice for households with a more meager budget is to sharpen
your eye and broaden your horizons. Deals can be had all over. I would
like to be able to design things that I or my friends could purchase,
but I resort to finding things on the street, craigslist, yard sales
upstate...if there are any DIY people
out there, they can talk to me about buying parts.
...
Related: Chandelier Is Out of This World
