Cardboard lights and lamps seem to embrace a form of defiance, contradicting the normal permanence and required fire-proof nature of lighting fixture designs. Where normal fixtures are often decorative, solid and stable, cardboard fixtures can be simple, permeable and flexible.
David Graas designs light-emitting objects that invert industrial design expectations and explore playful, interactive and do-it-yourself variations on traditional lighting designs. In some of his works there is a fair amount of assembly required, the object of such designs is as much process as product.
In other designs, Graas transforms traditional-looking shapes and shadows by cutting out a void from a solid and making light come through, rather than emit from, the physical gaps in a lamp. A two-dimensional piece of packaging becomes the object itself, ready to go with a bulb and a plug. Best of all, this entire strategy is not only creative but also eco-friendly: sustainable and recyclable cardboard boxes become the basis of the light rather than a permanent, heavy and hard-to-recycle mixed wood, metal and/or glass object.