DMY Berlin 2012: Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska

Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska is essentially a plant pot with an integrated growing frame. Clearly intended for climbing plants, the beauty of the growing frame is that it is a lamp shade.

And below the lamp shade is, naturally enough, a bulb.

The plant grows, takes on the form of the growing frame and before you know it you have a lamp formed from a plant.

Now we are assuming that Zuzanna has checked and the plant can’t get burned by the bulb; or indeed catch fire. And if she has, then Green Lamp is for us one of the most exciting new objects we’ve seen lately.

Not just because because it offers an ingenious new way to integrate plants into rooms, nor because of the promise of a fascinating an ever changing illumination through the leaves, and not even because the object you receive is merely a conduit to the final object – and object which you can pretty much redefine as you want.

Let’s take the idea further. We know it’s cheeky to do such without first asking Zuzanna, but….

At the moment Green Lamp is a table lamp. But how about a standard lamp, with, for example, tomato plants trained upwards? OK it makes it a seasonal object; but in a modern kitchen or a balcony setting we can well imagine that working perfectly.

But much more important, not that far away from Green Lamp at DMY Berlin was Werner Aisslinger’s Chair Farm – a project looking at training plants to grow into chairs through the use of a steel corset.

Green Lamp is, in effect, the lighting element of that thinking.

With its simple metal frame Green Lamp is pretty much perfect for Open Design distribution and so we can well imagine a future where if you need a new lamp for your home, office etc you organise a growing frame cut to your specific requirements, select your preferred plant and Bob’s your uncle

A thought which genuinely excites us…..

Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska isn’t the first attempt to unify lighting and plants; however, for us the grace with which Zuzanna has achieved the combination puts it on a level above all previous projects.

Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska