Si-Huis Vera
Lighting System
Photographic-grade
domestic and hospitality lighting
Every product has a story behind it. Our own product has a story with
parallels to a famous story in the world of modernist design; I am a
designer and builder, but I started first as a photographer; later,
a graphic designer; and later than that, an animator. I like to
photograph what I design and build, since
it will be many people’s only exposure to my work, which is
often the case for much of architecture and design. I have also made
short
educational films which have become popular worldwide. This
combination of usually separate disciplines of
architectural design, furniture,
photography, graphic design, animation, and educational short films, is
just one
of the elements that makes our story so similar to another; one set in
an
early stage in the career of design icons, Charles and Ray Eames,
described by the Industrial Designers Society of America as “the most
influential designer[s] of the 20th Century.” Their maxim was,
“Create the best, for the most, for the least.”
6070G floor
lamp. 6 foot legs, 7 foot boom, glossy diffuser
Charles and Ray Eames,
designed, built, photographed, and made short educational films
seemingly unconnected with architecture. While the scale is different,
there are further parallels, however frivolous: One of my films
in 2010 was 5th most favorited educational youtube video (of all time)
in Russia, where the Eames’ once exhibited their spectacle of American
life at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, on behalf
of the American government. I have another film
about the origin-of-life that was first exhibited at Google
NY and Chelsea Art Museum
in Manhattan (Ray Eames first exhibited her paintings at the Riverside
Museum in Manhattan in 1936). I too, like the Eames’, have made a film
that was
used to promote the culture of my home country (as the Eames did for
the American National Exhibition), in my case, by the British
Council,
(a government funded body that exists primarily to promote British culture internationally). I
too, like the Eames’, designed and built one special house which still
gets mentioned in the national and local press
several years after completion. I too, have lived and worked in Venice
Beach. I too, am not a licensed architect.
6070G
floor lamp. 6 foot legs, 7 foot boom, glossy diffuser
In 2011, I met Burton
Landhuis, who produced a business plan along with funding for me to
design and build furniture. “What kind of furniture do you think I
should produce?” I asked him. He considered the question for a moment
and replied, “Your kind of furniture.” I didn’t think at the time that
I had a ‘kind’ of furniture, but when he said those words, it dawned on
me that I had made a lot of furniture, including for my own home. Even
so, making my own ‘kind’ of furniture up to that point, was a genuinely
new idea to me. “Your name is Simon and my name is Landhuis. We’ll call
the company Si-Huis.” Not yet aware of whether he already knew about
the precursor to modernism, the Bauhaus movement, or whether it was a
lucky or auspicious coincidence, I just said “Okay.” Up until this
point I had considered Burton, to be possibly the most critical person
I’d ever met; somebody who was exceptionally kind and polite, but also
somebody that could find fault in almost anything you might think of.
So when he told me in so many words that I could design furniture that
was genuinely new and worthwhile, I believed him.
6070R
floor lamp. 6 foot legs, 7 foot boom, parabolic
reflector
I
decided to design and build a floor lamp. A simple object, just like a
cigarette-lighter or a pair of spectacles, which provide so much
greater function than nature previously allowed. It’s consistently
dark, half the time here on planet Earth. Even so, most consumers are
prepared to buy lighting with little consideration of its lighting
quality, and more consideration for its appearance. The objective I set
out with, was to produce an affordable domestic lamp that would produce
the same quality lighting as a photographic studio, so that beautiful
lighting could be something we experience every day, and not just the
briefest of moments, in photographs. I’ve always noticed the disparity
between photographic and domestic lighting. Based on my experience as a
photographer, I knew that even an empty room could be made to feel
warm, inviting and secure, with light alone. Before we had buildings
and homes, we had a fire to gather around to keep us warm and safe. I
considered this to be one of the foundations of the human experience. I
decided that the ideal lamp would provide the most clarity, the most
comfort, and the most efficient use of light and energy possible.
6070R
floor lamp. 6 foot legs, 7 foot boom, parabolic
reflector
Good light, delights, soothes, stimulates, inspires, or uplifts the
observer. It’s not just photographers and filmmakers that are aware of
the power of light as a tool; animals use it; bars use it; the
emergency services
use it; traffic lights use it. The electric lamp is arguably one of the
most
underrated and neglected objects both in society at large and in the
smaller world of design. Lamps, whether they are candles, oil lamps, or
lightbulbs, are machines that rival the wheel in importance. Artificial
light is the only indication of our civilization from space. Light, and
lamps, as icons and symbols, are used
heavily in religions and mythology to represent that which is
inherently good and right; the light of God; Buddhist enlightenment;
the Menorah candles of protection and safety; the Amnesty International
candles of hope and vigilance; the light side of the force; the genie
in the lamp; when characters have a great idea in a comic strip, they
are drawn with
an electric light bulb over their head. Captain Jean-Luc Picard had a personal
relaxation light. (Even far into the future, the lamp is an
essential and relevant object.)
 4050G
floor lamp. 4 foot legs, 5 foot boom, glossy diffuser
If the Eames’ were alive today, I would like to ask the them what they
thought about how their legacy has been treated; I’d like to ask them
what they thought about the current price of an Eames’ Lounge chair,
given that they believed in the concept of, “The best, for the most,
for the least.” I would ask them what they thought about the fact that
the pinnacle of today’s architecture and furniture in 2014, was
designed in the middle of the previous century. I wonder if they would
be proud of themselves, or a little disappointed in us. It is ironic,
that the case study homes were designed to be pre-fabricated in order
to be mass-producible (“for the most”) and yet after half a century,
they are still the types of homes owned only by the wealthy and
successful. Modernism, for the Eames’, was not yet the name of a
halcyon bygone era, but a concept, based on the dictionary definition
of the word. To honor the Eames’ legacy and philosophy, is to push
forward, which means learning from, but also sometimes letting go of,
the past. However, until somebody makes an improvement, the Eames’
unquestionably, still, have the finest chairs in the world.
4050M
floor lamp. 4 foot legs, 5 foot boom, matte diffuser
As told in the film,
“Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” Charles Eames once designed and
built a chair in partnership with Eero Saarinen intended for
mass-production, prior to the production of the now-famous Eames’
lounge chair. It was promoted as a mass-producible object, but was not
yet in fact mass-producible due to the reality of the manufacturing
process. The product was designed perfectly well, but the manufacturing
process was not as perfectly designed as the object itself. We, too,
produced an item, a floor lamp,
that in fact was very difficult to
reproduce, and manufacture. It took one person (me) one entire day to
make one lamp, with many drill holes, screws, bolts, connectors, steel
cables and anodized aluminum. It could survive a 30 mile-per-hour
collision and support hundreds of lb’s of weight; arguably more
strength than is required for a domestic floor lamp. I asked
fabricators, who have sent their parts to Saturn as part of the Cassini
probe, to reproduce the lamp, which resulted in the owner of the
company berating the workers for not being able to reproduce the work
of one man (me) in his workshop.
 4050M
floor lamp. 4 foot legs, 5 foot boom, matte diffuser
Along came my Ray. Only
my Ray was called Vera. She looked at the floor lamp I had created and
said to me, “I like it. But can you make one that students could
afford
to buy? One for a hundred bucks?” Within 60 seconds I had drawn a
picture based on the lessons that I had learned over the previous two
years of designing and building a few lamps. I knew that the fewer
details and strokes of the pencil I made, the less the product would
cost in money and time. I drew a lamp without screws, holes, bolts,
nuts, cables, glue, paint or finishing. There were as few pieces as
possible, and it would be held together by friction. The design
resembled other simple, ancient devices: the stand looked like a teepee
(an arguably quintessentially American architectural style), the
diffuser looked like an ancient Japanese fishing net, and the boom, a
tightrope walker’s balancing pole - a tool simpler even
than a wheel. Two years after drawing the picture, Vera and I had our
first child, Elena and lamps had become the family business.
4020M
floor lamp. 4 foot legs, 2 foot boom, matte diffuser
Since the Eames’ left
us, we’ve had postmodernism, the green movement, and a technological
revolution. There are some new ideas that cannot be ignored. For our
original floor lamp we used an theater-industry standard can lamp
(there are multiple manufacturers of the same product, with slight
variations) and for this lamp, we used an photography-industry standard
studio lamp head with umbrella connector (also with multiple companies
producing their own version). This would be in accord with the modern
concept of “upcycling” (the natural evolution of “recycling”) as well
as the “open source” movement (using an existing photographic standard
that is public domain). It is also in accord with the Charles Eames’
maxim, “Innovate [only] as a last resort.” There’s no point in
reinventing the lightbulb, or at least there’s no point in reinventing
its standards. Standardizing means that practically anybody, anywhere, can
get a lightbulb that fits their lamp, when it needs replacing. We are
also currently restricted to the nature of the power supply for the
same reason. Every plug fits every socket, on every electrical device
in America.
4020R
floor lamp. 4 foot legs, 2 foot boom, parabolic
reflector
Our lamp is comprised of a few quickly reproduceable and
assemble-able parts: eleven different 3D printed connectors per lamp;
die-cut and scored polyester diffusers and/or black powder-coated
aluminum
parabolic reflector; aerospace-grade fiberglass rods; long-life ozone
resistant rubber parts; black powder-coated stainless steel
counterweights;
and matte or glossy diffusers. The size of the lamps range from 2.5' to
8' height, with 6.5' clearance. The stand is not
much thicker than the power cable itself; it is black, like the
strings of a puppet. Studio lighting stands are generally black, to
avoid undesired reflections (based on the premise that a lamp is
supposed to illuminate the subject, and not itself). Both the stand and
the diffusers are tensegrity structures. A sandbag is provided for high traffic areas (turning an already stable
lamp into an impossible-to-knock-over lamp). To knock the lamp over
requires sustained force; otherwise, quick, sharp and even heavy
accidental-like impacts are totally absorbed and returned. In such an
event, it is so light, that it glides safely and gently to the floor.
The stand’s flexibility is what gives it stability. Like the wing of a
jumbo jet, it bounces instead of breaks, it bends rather than falling
over. The free-moving and self-balancing boom gives the lamp a dynamic
center of gravity, just like a tightrope walker’s pole; when the lamp
experiences force laterally, the boom remains balanced.
2020M
floor/table/desk lamp. 2 foot legs, 2 foot boom, matte diffuser
In tests, if the lamp
diffuser is crushed with hundreds of lb’s of
weight (far more than any lamp would normally endure) it’s interesting
to note that the first part to eventually fail is not the mylar, nor
the plastic diffuser shaft, it is the fiberglass rods, which are very
strong, and otherwise very difficult to break. There are no movable
joints (except for the stock lamp head). All the parts are
interchangeable, upgradeable and maintainable by the user, held
together not with screws, nuts and bolts (except for the lamp head) but
by friction, similar to that used in a seatbelt mechanism. The boom’s
fulcrum ball and
counterweight are user-adjustable, attached to the boom using four
separately designed and 3D printed parts in combination with stock
o-rings, which assemble in seconds. They are so firmly attached that
most adults would not have the strength to physically move them,
without disassembling the connectors in the correct order. The lamps
look great in ‘flocks’; several of them can be
joined together to make one large seamless super-light. They are
extremely stackable, and 20
lamps can be lifted with one finger. Because they are so light, they
encourage the user to treat the lamp as an object to be
used, moved and engaged with, allowing for increased
user-participation. The emitted light has no glare, and is captivating
to look
at, even when looking at the lamps directly. The quality of light
provides maximum comfort when turned on high, while retaining maximum
visibility and clarity when turned down low.
2020R
floor/table/desk
lamp. 2 foot legs, 2 foot boom, parabolic
reflector
Few lamp producers,
I’ll wager, are confident enough about their own lamps, to be able to
photograph their own lamps, exclusively by the light of their own lamps.
These lamps are efficient and functional machines, designed to produce
the best light possible, for as little cost in time, energy and
materials as possible. Any aesthetic qualities they may have are a
consequence of the mechanical configuration required for their
function, like a mechanical timepiece or a sports car engine, or
perhaps in
the case of these lamps, I like to think, more like the skeleton of an
animal, perhaps a bird. I cannot think of a single furniture item that
could change people’s lives for the better, more significantly, than
these lamps. I believe it would contribute to the beautification, of
dorm rooms, studio apartments, hospital rooms, waiting rooms, offices -
anywhere and everywhere that currently needs a little help with
lighting and atmosphere, all of which would contribute significantly to
our well-being as a society.
Michael Simon Toon
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