Duncan Meerding, Propeller Bloom 1500 (ART & OBJECTS 2024)

Photos:

Chris Crerar

Video tour

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzbDy3QPrDl/

The Propeller Bloom 1500 pendant was an answer to a brief that a client gave me in 2022. The client liked the propeller Light and the Propeller Blossom light (500 mm and 850 mm in diameter) but they wanted something for a large architectural void space with a ceiling which was more than 5 metres tall. The name Propeller Bloom references the meshing of industrial and natural forms. Bloom also references the concept of enlargement when flowers bloom –the up scaling (growth) of the original design to this new feature lighting size as counterpart to this. Realising this design proved not to be a case of just up scaling the design, a full revisiting of the original concept and how it was constructed was undertaken. Due to the large span, we had to increase the rigidity in flex. A range of research and experimentation was done with fibreglass in between the layers to add this rigidity but not drastically increase the thickness. After deliberating, an increase in thickness was decided upon, in order to eliminate using fibreglass for various reasons, in particular health WE ended up increasing the thickness of the blades, whilst keeping thin laminates to keep the visual and actual weight down and maintain rigidity through increased glue layers. A two-part Mold was used for press forming the items together with hand operated tools used for shaping the final petal inspired blades. The nose cone on top was hand turned and fitted to the final disk. With the new span, came a lot of extra fulcrum effect. As a result, the disk was also increased in size, from 120 mm up to 360 mm diameter and a revisiting of the entire system for mounting the blades to the disk was employed. This new disk system was made utilising a third party manufacturer who had a multi axis CNC milling machine. Materials used: Tasmanian Eucalypt (Tas Oak), Tasmanian Blackwood (nose cone, anodised aluminium for the central disk and various lighting and rigging components. Dimensions: 1500 mm x 640 mm Designed and Made 2022

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.