"HL2" is Sanning Arkitekter's entry to Arkipelago Stockholm's furniture workshop 2018, "One Light Stand". Arkipelago Stockholm (the KTH Royal Institute of Technology instance of the overarching student organization of Sweden's architecture schools, Arkipelago) invited the contestants to design an armature consisting of beech and rice paper, and required the use of a specific light bulb of warm temperature. In our home we had converted a physical model in the scale of 1:50 from a first-year project, with checkered openings in the façade, into a lamp. We realized that this workshop was an opportunity to make a worthy successor to that makeshift lamp – this time with the use as armature intended from the beginning.

Below follows a number of images depicting the contest entry as well as the process behind it.

HL2 has grown entirely from the rich conceptual soil of a school project, the motto of which is abbreviated HL, also giving the successor its name. Early on after the conclusion of the school project, we converted the physical model in a scale of 1:50 into a sort of lamp screen, by lifting out the roof and filtering the light of an external desktop lamp through the openings of the façade.

By creating a 3D model we made sure that the conceptual vision was translatable into a producable physical object. While doing this, we also adjusted any measurements which would be better suited to the beech material and the machining of the elements. Here the 3D model is shown in a practical scenario, also demonstrating how the roof of the armature reconquers most of the space it occupies on the surface it rests upon.

Here the 3D model is shown in a more atmospheric than practical scenario.

We machined, in our WorkBee, the nine beech elements which the armature consists of, and glued these together.

We tested the lighting with the light bulb attached to the armature.

Lastly, we attached the rice paper to the inside of the armature.

The completed armature.