Sugar. So simple and perfectly sweet, this edible crystalline carbohydrate gives our bodies a boost of energy whenever we consume it (often followed by the all-too-familiar “sugar crash” shortly thereafter). Korean artist and designer Won Joon Lee uses it to charge his lights.Presented at this year's Milan Furniture Fair, the Stardust Lamp is a delightfully sweet project that explores the use of sugar in design. From burning, melting, freezing, breaking, and growing sugar, Lee, who is currently a design student at SAIC in Chicago, experimented with just about every possible method for appropriating this often spurned and vilified substance into a functional initiative. And after much sugary turmoil, he came to the perfect resolution. By placing LEDs in a bath of concentrated sugar water for 10 days, Lee takes advantage of how the light-diffracting sugar crystals grow around the diodes, thus creating these delectable crystallized illuminations.
Incorporating these sugar bulbs into an iron modular structure, the lamp itself resembles the actual shape of the sugar molecule. With iron and sugar combined, the Stardust Lamp highlights two of the most precious industrial elements known to mankind. As Lee notes, this is only the beginning stage of his project, and we can only begin to imagine the possibilities. Maybe Lee should team up with Japanese tech duo Ishibashi and Manabe… LED lollipops, anyone?
