Reverse Melodi Lamp: a corrugated cardboard light
Lamps and light fittings
Product and structural design
Corrugated and honeycomb board
The project
With Reverse Melodi Lamp, Archicercle takes a familiar form and changes how it is perceived. The silhouette of Ikea’s Melodi lamp becomes a void within a corrugated cardboard cylinder: lighting the interior brings that form into view.
The studio’s contribution is the reinterpretation of an existing design. Rather than reproducing its shade as a solid body, the project works with its negative form. Subtracting volumes transfers the lamp’s profile to the inside of the cylinder, placing the relationship between material, void and light at the centre of the proposal.
The body is built from sections of corrugated cardboard. The successive layers define both the outer geometry and the internal cavity, where their edges create a stepped surface. The cylindrical outline thus contrasts with the profile revealed when looking inside.
The suspended piece has a dark exterior and an illuminated interior, with the layers visible at the lower opening. Views of the arrangement in the workspace place the cylindrical bodies alongside a white, bell-shaped shade. The original phrase, ‘When light is the object itself’, captures this reversal: light makes the silhouette within the void perceptible.
The interior detail reveals the stacked sections and the stepped surface defining the cavity.
The outer cylinder contains a second geometry: the shade’s profile reinterpreted as a void.
Processes and materials: fabrication services · available materials · studio machinery.
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