Razmi 1

Sustainable Lamp product eco copper concrete recycle light

Since modernity, design has become a substantial contributor to some of the major issues we’re faced with today. Particularly environmental decay and social iniquity. We need a new way of thinking about what makes for good design.

Beyond mere pragmatism good design should also be gentle to the Earth and serve as a soft reminder of what really matters in our time in this world. This means a shift away from design that promotes mindless consumerism and the unforgiving extraction of natural resources.

I propose a way of designing that considers all of this, and still manages to be beautiful. This project will be my first exploration of this way of designing. The Razmi 1 is a desk lamp that will be made of three primary components: a concrete base, a copper stem, and a steel bowl shade. The idea here is that the main components of the product are all things which are either usually discarded or easily accessible. This puts good design back where it belongs: in the hands of the people, not only the wealthy people.

Some of the planning and development

The bowl that was used as the lamp shade was rescued from this pile of forgotten crockery.

No special equipment or skills were used - the most advanced being soldering with a blowtorch and casting the concrete base. These skills are easily transferable. Everything here was bought at a typical hardware store.

Part of the idea of holistic cognisance would be to consider the origin of each of the components that either form part of the final product or were consumed in putting it together.

Each new item activates a massive set of ripples. Both in the past and into the future. Here's a passage from Stuart Walker's Designing Sustainability (pg. 98) that explains the concept:

To illustrate this, let us consider a disposable plastic cup. In its present state, the cup fully includes its origins via land clearing, oil-well drilling, pipelines, refineries, air pollution, oil spills, thermoforming, packaging and shipping. It fully includes the fleeting convenience of its use, as well as trash cans, garbage collection trucks, exhaust fumes and its protracted existence in landfill, hedgerow or ocean.

By accepting the present state of a disposable plastic cup we cannot but accept these other present states. This applies not only to overtly disposable products, such as plastic cups and plastic bags, razor blades and batteries, but also to phones, computers and appliances; these may be a little less fleeting but they have a similar array of other present states.

The few things that had to be bought would ideally be bought from local businesses, instead of franchises - further uplifting the local community.

In using accessible materials and skills, unskilled people in the local area would be uplifted by even a small scale commercial interest in products designed in this way. Designing in this way supports local businesses, empowers the unskilled, respects the natural environment, and results in good, robust products. This way of designing is in no way my own, I'm merely exploring a way of designing that academics and practising designers have been propounding for decades: a way of designing that dances to the rhythm of the universe.