Life Lamp: Connecting Design and People Through Emotion

Life Lamp represented a dual endeavor, serving as both a project and a research initiative. As a freelancer, I dedicated my afternoons to collaborating with Estúdio Guto Requena, contributing to the computational strategy to bring the already established concept to life.

The design process is a hybrid between top-down and bottom-up approaches. We worked both with predefined heart-like 3D models as the design base and with agent-based modelling, widely explored by Craig Reynolds in the 1980s.

The programming part was developed using Grasshopper 3D, the two-weeks old plugin Culebra v2.0 for the agent-based modelling in conjunction with the plugin Firefly to capture the heartbeats.

This work became later a paper presented at the ECAAD 2020

Connecting Design and People Through Emotion

Nowadays it is possible to use technology to achieve emotion-oriented products related to the user experience. The aim of this paper is to address a design exploration that combines the use of algorithmic modeling in order to create a design that seeks to express meaning through emotional bonds with people.

Life Lamp was created to represent a life cycle as a sensitive object consisting of three layers and a unique shade that produces a complex image, expressing the paths and surprises of our existence.

The design process is a hybrid between top-down and bottom-up approaches. The designers worked both with a predefined heart-like 3D model as the design base and with agent-based modeling, widely explored by Craig Reynolds in the 1980s.

Life lamp is a product that emerged as a result of Estúdio Guto Requena's research that investigates the impact of digital culture through design by seeking to merge technology and affection.

Workflow diagram.

Path diagram and section of thickened paths.

©️ Cover photo: Decimal