After creating the paper prototype with working electronics, the next step was to work with the actual materials that we had to design our lamp with.

None of us had ever worked with concrete before (we also kept mixing up ‘concrete’ and ‘cement’ – but now we know better), so having to design a lamp with this material was a daunting task. Due to this, we conducted a handful of tests and experiments to see how to work with this material. We acquired Quikrete Fast Setting Concrete mix and began creating some moulds. We met with Maja – the SolidSpace coordinator – and based off of her advice started to form some concrete.

Our initial test taught us how different amount of mix vs water would affect the strength of the concrete.

We then tested different materials to make moulds out of – to see how they would affect the finish of the concrete.

After many trials – and even more errors – we felt confident enough to make our final form out of concrete (also we only had enough concrete mix for one more form at this point)

In addition, we had to test different types of paper, to see how they would affect the structure of the form, and how they would affect the lighting. We tried different textures and thicknesses of vellum paper and Grafix draft paper. Folding this paper to make it work with our form was very difficult – as we learned – it was easy to rip and difficult to correct any mistakes.