The Manuka lamp is named after the Manuka tree, a tree or shrub bearing small white flowers with five petals that is native to New Zealand and southeast Australia. Trubridge was inspired to create the lamp after designing a screen based on leaf shapes for his house in Mahanga. Amy Lynch, one of Trubridge’s designers, then took it a step further by rearranging Trubridge’s original leaf-shape design into the five-pointed shape of Manuka blossoms.
Like some of Trubridge’s other lamps, the Manuka lamp is enormous. It comes in two sizes: a full-size lamp that is 1.1 meters in diameter, and a slightly smaller lamp that is 800 mm in diameter. The structure of the globe-shaped lamp is made from CNC-cut bamboo and translucent polycarbonate. Inside, the lamp is fitted with several LED pin-spot lights, which project gorgeous shadows onto nearby walls and surfaces. “With the light shining at all different directions from within the fitting, the projected patterns seem to overlap one another,” Trubridge told ArchitectuAU last fall. “It looks like wallpaper.”
Trubridge will bring the Manuka lamp to Wanted Design 2013, which will be held from May 17 – 20 as part of New York Design Week.
+ David Trubridge
+ Wanted Design
