vimzs

Lighting — 02

Distortion

A pendant lamp of layered, laser-cut steel and aluminium — its silhouette pulled from the way light bends around a black hole.

The Distortion pendant lit in a darkened room, throwing a branching shadow across the wall above a woman reading in an armchair.

The idea

Distortion started as a question about gravity rather than lighting: what does a form look like if it's been warped by something massive and unseen?

Layered spline patterns, cut and offset from one another, stand in for the way light curves around a black hole's event horizon — built up rather than smoothed over. The matte black exterior absorbs, and the inner bulb radiates through the perforations.

Ideation sketches on black: orbital rings, wormhole forms, event-horizon voids and layered silhouettes annotated in white.
Ideation — orbital rings, gravitational pull, and the void that became the shade

Class exhibition

Three concepts went up. One came back ahead.

I took three directions to the class exhibition and collected responses. Design 2, Gravitational Layers, drew the strongest response by a significant margin — so that became the one I developed.

  • Design 1 — Event Spiral
    Design 1Event Spiral
  • Design 2 — Gravitational Layers
    Design 2Gravitational Layers
  • Design 3 — Bending Light
    Design 3Bending Light
  • Silhouette thumbnails — development sketch.
    Silhouette thumbnails
  • Net pattern — plan — development sketch.
    Net pattern — plan
  • Layer stack — elevation — development sketch.
    Layer stack — elevation
  • Lit study — development sketch.
    Lit study

Netting exploration

The nets are what connect and define each layer. I sketched multiple patterns by hand — flowy forms, holes that would have been very time-consuming to cut manually — then narrowed to a design suited to cutting, so the machine could hold the detail I wanted.

Before committing, I printed the design at 1:1, cut out the shapes and connected them physically. Seeing the nets at real size told me the bottom layers were wrong, and I redesigned them.

Cut aluminium net pieces laid out on a grey surface.
Cut nets, laid out before assembly

What went wrong

The plasma cutter destroyed itself on my parts.

Technicians initially advised against plasma-cutting my aluminium at that thickness. Three successful trials suggested it would work, so we went ahead.

We hadn't accounted for prolonged heat exposure. It caused severe warping and ultimately damaged the plasma cutter head.

The James Kirby Makerspace technicians identified my material as Alloy 1100 — a very pure, highly heat-sensitive grade, prone to warping. They pointed me at the metal laser cutter, which uses depth sensors and a far more controlled beam. Cleaner cut, and none of the height-related failure that wrecked the plasma head.

The plasma cutting bed, the machine that failed on the aluminium.
Plasma — warped the parts, wrecked the head
The KERN FC50 metal laser cutter that replaced the plasma process.
Laser — depth sensors, controlled beam

Making it

Bent, welded, riveted, sprayed.

A metal roller couldn't pull tight enough bends, so I used a bending jig — pulling a rod against a cylinder and repeating until the spline matched the drawing. The collar that suspends the lamp doubles as the connection point for the ceiling cable.

  • The bent steel collar frame, dimensioned against a drawing.
    Bending the collar
  • MIG welding the steel bars, arc lit blue.
    MIG welding
  • Marking and drilling rivet holes in the aluminium nets.
    Riveting the nets
  • The assembled lamp suspended on supports for spray finishing.
    Suspended for spraying
The black layers laid out on the workbench mid-assembly, tools around them.
Mid-assembly — layers, collar and tools on the bench

Project specs

Structure
20 × 3 mm mild steel
Layers
0.6 mm stucco-pattern aluminium
Cutting
Metal laser cut
Joining
MIG welded, 5 mm rivets
Finish
Sandblasted, matte black
Recognition
ANTD 2026 finalist
Exploded isometric technical drawing of the lamp with a twelve-item parts list.
Exploded assembly — twelve parts

Reflection

What worked, what didn't, what's next.

Successes

The final form kept the abstract, gravitational pull of the original concept while resolving the technical problems. The layered spline pattern translated into steel and aluminium, and the interplay between the inner bulb and the perforated exterior produced the luminous distortion I was after.

Setbacks

My first lighting scheme ran strip LEDs along every layer — unfeasible once I accounted for wiring, power and future maintenance, so it became a central bulb. Joining mild steel to aluminium ruled out several joinery ideas. And CAD-modelling organic spline shapes was hard enough that I moved back and forth between physical tests and digital adjustments throughout.

Next

Refining the net-layer joinery and making the spline patterns more consistent. I want to try modular or interlocking systems so the layers don't depend on rivets alone, and test more aluminium textures to strengthen the diffusion. With better tooling I'd push into CNC-bent rod or cast components, beyond flat profiles.

  • Distortion — Installed — class exhibition
    Installed — class exhibition
  • Distortion — Lit — the nets glowing through
    Lit — the nets glowing through
  • Distortion — Full height
    Full height

Selected as a finalist — ANTD 2026