Adam Nathaniel Furman on his new Flute Lamps
The London-based designer and Designer in Residence at London's Design Museum last year, talks to Cate St. Hill about his latest series of porcelain lamps. Developed with 3D modelling technology in Southwark, then manufactured in Hackney, and
assembled in Soho, they are a proper little London-wide design project.
Adam Nathaniel Furman photo: Julian Furman
How would you describe the Flute Lamps?
Flute lamps are a series of colourful porcelain lamps designed, developed, manufactured and assembled in London, for a small run of 30 pieces the development of which was paid for by subscription.
What was the inspiration behind your Flute Lamps?
I generally have a two-fold set of opposite inspirations which keep me fed with ideas. On the one hand there are a group of architects from the past who I admire and study constantly, architects who reduced their conception of design down to almost algebraic precision, from Alberti to Butterfield, to Rossi and Kahn. It is from them that I try to achieve a certain level of formal abstraction andclarity combined with a degree of historical allusion.
On the other hand I am always inspired by the wild, abundant, colourful and ever-changing world of fashion, media, pop culture, digital art and design. From that side of our culture I try to absorb a certain superabundance of colour, joy, exuberance, and wilfulness. It is
these two things that I try to bring together in my work, and are evidenced in the Flute Lamps through their combination ofPopcolours, historically reminiscent forms, and combination of high tech and ancient craft.
What is your design process?
I always start off in my sketchbook, for instance these lamps evolved through a series of drawings made over the course of a holiday, from a tripod holding a dome to the form you currently see. This was then drawn up as a very simple series of technical sections and plans which I immediately began to discuss with the 3D-printer and the ceramic studio. I prefer to get everyone in charge of the various stages of the fabrication process involved as early as possible, so that its not a matter of shoe-horning a design into a process for which it is not ideally designed, but rather a matter of the design growing to match perfectly its means of making.
How are the lamps made?
The process was a combination of some very recent technologies and some of the very oldest. The initial design was developed inindustry standard 3D modelling software. Prototypes were then 3D-printed from the virtual model. This was done in close collaboration with a start-up firm in Southwark, as the process involves a large amount of hand finishing, and involved some experimentation to get the form geometrically rigid enough for it to withstand the temperatures and pressures involved in plaster casting. These prototypes were then cast as moulds in Hackney, after which the pieces were taken to Soho where all the electricfittings were installed, and from where the lamps were mailed out.
How do digital and traditional technologies crossover in your work?
For me there isn't really a separation between the digital and the traditional anymore, or at least I go out of my way to mix the two together as intimately as is possible. I like to explain to people how the 3D-printers I work with are as much craftsmen as the potters or the joiners or the stonemasons I work with. It is simply a matter of their tool being new, but it is still a tool at the service of a human controller, and a large amount of human interjection is needed to make a complex, beautifully crafted final product. It's never,ever, a matter of click and print. Essentially I would like to convey the fact that digital manufacturing and design is traditional crafts best friend, and I try to embody this attitude in my work, not by having in any way at all a "digital aesthetic", but rather through the project development process and constitution of each project team.
Is it important to you that your products are made in London?
Not particularly, however as my friends often point out, I love my city very, very much, and I love finding people to work with here, discovering new workshops in interesting parts of the city. It deepens my appreciation of the possibilities inherent in this metropolis, each project gives me further ability to be an optimist about my hometown and offset a lot of the general negativity about the fate of manufacturers and designers here. When I work with people in the same city I also feel much more confident that the process is somehow under control - if any issues arise, one can just hop on the tube and meet up to resolve the problem. You can't do that over email. I think the further the distance between you and the maker, both culturally and geographically, the more margin there is for misunderstandings and error. I would love to work with people in other countries, but in that case I would want to go there and spend
time getting to know the people and place, to engage in careful translation of ideas and take the process very seriously and not makeany presumptions. If its all in London, things can very much be managed "on the fly", as it were.
What else are you working on at the moment?
I have just completed a range of 3D-printed ceramic items that are available to buy, made to order, over on shapeways as well as a new collection called Babelle, which is going on show in the Future Heritage Feature in Decorex during London Design Festival. I just won the UK Rome Prize for Architecture, and will be moving to Rome shortly to pursue a project at the British School at Rome called The Roman Singularity, a design voyage through the intersections between the city's ancient archaeologies, the recurring reinventions of its religion and politics, its defiantly progressive architectures, and the representations of its massive weight in our imaginations through film and fiction.
