Why we created Bloomlight
In the summer of 2020 we placed a PVC pipe upright in our studio. At the top, we had mounted a lamp and attached a string to it that ran all the way down, enabling us to pull the lamp in any direction we wanted. It looked a bit like a wandering ghost, but still looked promising. There and then, we realised that we could create a nature-inspired alternative to street lighting.
Everything in nature is in motion. From the flowing of a river to the swaying canopy of a forest and the passing of the clouds: nothing is motionless. This vibrancy makes nature the greatest source of inspiration for our studio’s designs - whether it's for City Gazing, where the growth of a city is comparable to the growth of tree roots, to the Chairwave, where the chairs wave up and down and flicker with light like rippling water.
The human world, on the other hand, is defined by straight lines. Our cities, houses and furniture consist predominantly of repetitive geometric shapes. After all, the straight line is the shortest and therefore the cheapest way to connect two points. Yet, this geometric world has completely lost the human dimension, making people feel isolated.
One of the most common designs of this geometric world is street lighting, which is often nothing more than a straight tube that holds a lamp high up in the air. Distributed evenly along straight roads, these lamps form a repetitive element along our roads that’s the same everywhere in the world. So we thought, what if we create a streetlight that's irregular, breaks this repetitive pattern? A streetlight that is friendly and flexible rather than unresponsive and motionless? Can't we let the streetlamp's pole move the way the wheat plant does in the wind?
And so the idea for Bloomlight was born. In addition to this, we considered where current street lighting still falls short. Streetlights are always on, even when no one is around. This wastes energy and causes unnecessary light pollution. Having streetlights turned off or dimmed when no one is around not only saves energy and gives us a better view of the night sky, but also makes lives better for migratory birds and insects.
This brought everything together: Bloomlight would not only move, it would bend towards people and light up when they walk by. This creates a friendly and safe environment and ensures that the night sky is dark when no one is there.
Starting as a tube with a string, Bloomlight has now been developed into a friendly streetlamp that is strong enough to be installed in public space and can withstand heat, cold and wind. This friendly lantern blends the human with the natural world and makes our environment more dynamic and less repetitive. Bloomlight brings us one step closer to a Slowtech future. One where people control technology and not the other way around. A future where we use the power of technology to create the world that we want to live in.