In a previous post here on upcycleDZINE I wrote about upcycling an iconic classic. In that case it was a Willys Jeep turned into an office desk.
Today it’s about a very familiar and everyday object that over the years has turned into a real design icon. I’m talking about the BIC® ball pen. This brand has actually another design icon, the BIC® Maxi lighter. Both products are in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
Ball pens used in Art Deco style lamps
Great thing about design icons is that they inspire lots of other designers with their function and/or design. And this also happened to Lucas Muñoz, a Spanish designer, artist and craftsman based in Eindhoven and Madrid. He founded enPieza! eStudio in Madrid, with David Tamame.
Lucas designed a series of BIC® ball pen lamps. The series consists of chandeliers and desk lamps and is called VOLIVIK.
This amazing lighting collection is also inspired by Art Deco, a style born in the 1920s in Paris. It was an era where those stunning chandeliers first were created with lots of quality glass prisms, arranged in concentric rings. These lamps would create a wonderful play of sparkling light.
You can see the resemblance between the Volivik series and those glass fringe lamps. Lucas exchanged the crystal drops for BIC® ball pens hanging from a metal structure to which they are fixed with paper clips.
The two versions, a chandelier and a desk lamp, are both available in a range of colours. The clear pens though, do create a shining reflection thrown by the translucent fixture. Never new a bunch of ball pens and paper clips could create such an impressive piece of upcycle design lighting.
Photos © enPieza!
The Volivik series is also another reinterpretation of matter consumption, which is always very present in the work of Lucas Muñoz. Like many upcycle design projects, it makes one look at objects, consumption and waste in a very new way. The only criticism is that I wish the designer would use old and discarded ball pens. Then it would really be upcycle design [IMO]. But I wonder if the lamps would be clean and pristine.
Design by Lucas Muñoz | Facebook
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