Lamp

One tube, one line, one wire. The aluminium tube folds through space into a tangle of rectangles, and deep inside it lies the light.

What it is

What looks like a stack of separate frames is in fact one continuous line. The tube begins at the outside, turns at right angles again and again, and works its way inwards. From a distance you see a tangle; follow it, and you end up at the lamp.

The electricity does exactly the same. The cable does not run alongside the structure but straight through it, the full length of the tube, all the way to the bulb at the heart. The structure is the conduit; no flex hangs loose, and there is no point where one thing is fixed to another.

How it was made

The aluminium tubes are mitred and joined with plywood connectors — no welding, no soldering. Every corner is a peg that slides into two tube ends and holds them at exactly ninety degrees. That turns building it into a matter of sawing and fitting rather than of heat.

The light sits in a small box of opal perspex with a bulb inside. The perspex turns a point source into a plane, so that the light falls outwards between the tubes instead of shining into your eyes.