Dezeen Magazine

Etirement by Rémi Bouhaniche

French design graduate Rémi Bouhaniche has designed a light that is dimmed by distorting its surface.

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Called Etirement, the light features a translucent membrane stretched over a steel frame which, when stretched by pulling a rod, alters the intensity of the light.

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Pulling the rod also turns the light on and off.

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Etirement will be on show at the Les Ecoles de Design 2009 show at VIA France in Paris from 7 July to 23 August.

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Bouhaniche, who has just graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d'Art et Design de Saint-Etienne, is part of new French collective Studio Matière A, who designed the Vaisselier Système D storage system featured in our earlier story.

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Here's some info from Bouhaniche:

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For this project called « Etirement », I worked on a common gesture that everyone know: the tuning of the light intensity. I concentrated on the working of a very precise and detailed movement focused on one point. "Etirement" creates a flowing and expressive body language, a poetic time from a daily basic action.

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I first thought of a shape which goes beyond all category of design. "Etirement" came upon the surface of a drawing paper as a mental picture. I wanted to paint an abstract landscape. From the drawing I concluded that the user creates the shape by manipulating the surface of the object. This lamp is a temporary form which moves and changes in function  of the intensity of the light.

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The intensity lowers down and rises up according to the distortion of a membrane. I have shaped it on the lines of a human body composed by a skin (fabric) tensed over a skeleton (metal structure). To obtain the visual and tactile effect I installed a mechanism hidden inside the black part.

This object has been created in the frame of my diploma called «  The mechanical of the surfaces » passed at the Art and Design school of Saint Etienne, 2009. I Questionned the role of the surface into the process of making and creating shapes, gestures and images. In this way, I studied and experimented simple materials such as wood , cane, textile, metal rods and pipes…

«  Etirement » will be exhibited at VIA France from July 7th to August 23rd: www.via.fr