#HTE

The Komorebi Lamp Provides the Illusion of Filtered and Reflected Sunlight

A design problem many attempt to tackle: How to get sunlight into an interior space. 3M does it with materials science. Dr. Diva Tommei does it with robotics. Ross Lovegrove does it with tubes and reflectors.

Product designer Leslie Nooteboom is trying it with technology. During her final year of studying Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art, Nooteboom designed Komorebi, an indoor lamp that visually mimics what natural sunlight would provide:

komorebi is sunlight filtering through leaves, creating a dance of light and shadows where filtered sunrays hit a surface. It is the reflections on pavements underneath centuries-old trees on a sunny day, and moving, framed lightboxes through windows of homes onto walls.

komorebi is programmable, this means that it can change shape, location and interact with its environment. The product exists of three parts. The first is a dynamic projector that is able to change the location of the light. This projector is informed by a platform where people can upload light experiences that can then be inserted in their living space. Thirdly there is the projection itself, which is a computer generated visual for which I’ve created artificial sunlight, but which could be any type of visual.

Lastly, here’s a word of unsolicited advice (from someone who sits through dozens or hundreds of videos each week) for those of you releasing DIY videos of your designs: My suggestion is to avoid including avant-garde music. Music is such a subjective thing that what you might find pleasing to the ear, others may find distractingly dissonant.