Forget tapping away at smart-home apps or commanding your voice assistant just to change the mood of a room. London-based designer Billy Easter, founder of studio Public Parts, thinks setting the vibe should be a whole lot more squishy, hands-on, and downright fun!
Bringing tactile play back to interior lighting with the Gel Lamp, a soft, squishy silicone cube that changes colour when you manually slot translucent gel slabs into its side.
Created under her studio, Public Parts, the design trades boring app controls for a satisfying hands-on ritual to transform your room’s glow.
For Easter, bringing back physical touch was the main goal. “There’s a lovely little ritual to it,” she explained, noting how picking out a reusable colour slice and slotting it in by hand makes setting the mood deliberate and tactile, a welcome break from mashing buttons on disposable gadgets.
Enter the Gel Lamp: a cute, 11.5cm cubic table light made entirely of cast silicone. Inspired by the theatrical colour gels used in stage lighting and photography, Easter’s creation works like a miniature magic trick.
Inspired by the theatrical colour gels used on stage sets, this translucent silicone cube works without complex electronics or battery-heavy app controllers.
Change the colour of your room within a second
Just slide one of 13 colourful silicone slabs directly into a slot above the built-in, energy-efficient LED to cast a warm rainbow across your room.
Beyond being wildly satisfying to poke and swap, the lamp is built to last. The LED light source rests in an accessible void so it can easily be swapped out when needed, and the durable silicone body is tough enough to survive life’s accidental bumps and spills.
Unlike sealed electronic lamps destined for the landfill when a light dies, the LED rests in a recessed void for effortless access and component replacement.
“It’s important to me that the lamps have a presence as sculptural objects when they’re switched off,” Easter said.
It turns out green design doesn’t have to be boring; sometimes it’s squishy, colourful, and made to last a lifetime. Do you think it is more practical but entertaining than a squishy-squishy toy like Needoh?
