Hmm, looks a little familiar?
Ben Jakober created "Bucky Life" for the Swarovski exhibit at the 2004 Milan furniture fair, where it was overshadowed by Ron Arad's LED crystal news ticker lamp, the Lolita. Says the press release:
Renowned sculptor Jakober coalesced fibre optics and geometries to create light from air. The chandelier's geodesic shape was inspired by a Buckminster Fuller work from the sixties. Using 270 polycarbonate hollow transparent tubes, 36 Swarovski optical fibres and 72 Swarovski crystals this retro shape was realised using modern materials and technology.Hmm, even if I didn't despise Swarovski for their rampant colabo-whoring--everything does not look better with your friend's family's rhinestones on it, hipster designers--I don't think I'd be all that into this.
The prisms set light in play across the whole thing, not just pinpoints at the corners. Plus, it's just hard to beat a futuristic chandelier, hand-tied and with no actual lights with anything, but plastic straws? Uh-uh. Jakober should've gotten ahold of a batch of Fortress of Solitude-style Swarovski prisms, then we could talk.
Still, it gets an A for inspiration. [press release in pdf, image via mocoloco]
