Icosphere Lamp Shade

I designed and built a paper icosphere pendant lamp shade for a second-year Sheridan course called How Things Work.

This assignment required us to make a prototype of a functional lighting system. We needed to resolve how to shade, diffuse, and/or focus the light source. Our light was to be constructed from materials of our choice that best describes our visual intentions and style.

My pendant lamp shade is in the shape of an icosphere (a form of geodesic polyhedron). For sustainability reasons, I chose to make the lamp shade out of craft paper, and the internal structure out of wood. The lamp shade keeps its spherical shape by the rigidity in the folds of the triangle tabs. The five sides of the rim are connected with splines, and the spline slots were cut with a biscuit joiner. The lamp shade measures approximately 19-inches in diameter. The light bulb was 800 lumen, warm white.

The images below show some of the build process.

Potentially, I see this lamp shade used as ambient light for a restaurant or hotel, perhaps several lights clustered together. As it is, the single 800 lumen light bulb isn't enough to serve as a functional light source. The lamp shade could probably be more functional if the bulb was brighter or if multiple bulbs were used. 

Crafting this lamp shade was difficult, but fun.