Dandelion
This is a biomimicry light design which takes the structure of dandelions as inspiration.
The fluff of a dandelion come from its yellow flower, all the seeds are sticked to a core but remain detachable. Since I use fiber optical as the main material to illuminate, every fiber needs to connect to a strong light source, otherwise it does not light up. Under this case, the structure of the dandelion become a proper reference to look at. By putting the light source into the core and extend the optical fiber from the core to outside, I come up with a form similar to dandelion and a functional light mechanism.
Although the idea and design sounds simple and straight forward, the modeling process was tough. The major problem was dealing with optical fibers. There are many optical fiber lights on the market but few of them are designed to be in a static gesture and small scale. The common air-based heating processing used to form the fibers isn’t work in this case because the mould interrupts the air from evenly spreading out. In the end I put the fibers in a mould and bathe them in boiled water to form them. The design of the interior has also been changed for several times to reach the best lighting effect, which means having all the tips of the fibers facing the light source.
