Øivind Slaatto’s new lamp for Carl Hansen & Søn takes inspiration from the mathematical principles that characterise the growth of begonia flowers (image: Carl Hansen & Søn).

Designer Øivind Slaatto’s new lamp for Carl Hansen & Søn resembles a flower: its form is rounded like a marigold, while its petals open out in shapes that recall the mouths of foxgloves. While Slaatto’s design doesn’t imitate the shape of a particular flower, it draws on the principles that characterise the growth and balance of begonias. “It’s [called] Begonya, to play with the name and make it more synthetic,” Slaatto says, “because it’s a synthetic flower.”

Each petal of Slaatto’s lamp is made of non-woven polyethylene that is carefully cut and glued together. “It has the same texture as handmade paper, but it's really hard to tear apart,” Slaatto says. “It's an extremely strong material, but it still looks very delicate.” All of the designer’s prototypes were made from paper, a material that is well-suited to expressing complex mathematical principles. “Lots of geometrical things can be calculated using paper,” Slaatto says, referencing the work of Erik Demaine, an MIT professor who helped solve a centuries-old mathematical riddle in 1998, when he was only 17 years old. By proving that a sheet of paper can be folded so that a single straight cut with scissors can produce any straight-sided shape or pattern, Demaine paved the way for the field of computational origami. “I am very fond of origami,” Slaatto says, describing how the shapeshifting potential of paper has inspired him in his everyday life. “One of my favourite hobbies is peeling oranges – I’m very proud that I can make any animal out of an orange.”

The lampshade is made from non-woven polyethylene that is meticulously cut and glued by hand (image: Carl Hansen & Søn).

Begonya’s light shines downwards through the shaft of each petal, diffusing gently into the space. “All my lamps are designed from within,” Slaatto says. “So it starts from the light bulb, and from there it’s about how to distribute the light in such a way that it’s reflected downward so you don't get glare.” Slaatto cites Danish designer Poul Henningsen’s Three-Shade System as an inspiration for reducing glare and diffusing light. Designed in 1925, this family of lamps took inspiration from logarithmic spirals – the loose curve that appears throughout nature in seashells, galaxies and more – to conceal the lightbulb from view and ensure that its light is reflected off the shade before reaching the eye. “Glare is not something that comes from light by itself, but from the contrast between light and darkness,” Slaatto explains. “And the way you eliminate that is by blurring out the contrast or making the lighting area larger.” Begonya has a wide elliptical shape that disperses light, and its bulb is concealed in the heart of the lamp, softly warming each petal and revealing details in the fabric’s texture. “There’s a geometry behind it to make sure you never see the lightbulb,” he says.

Each lampshade is assembled by hand in a process involving 168 joining points, requiring up to seven hours to complete. “What I think is really cool about Carl Hansen is that they make quality, and it’s not fast consumption, they have all this craftsmanship,” Slaatto says. “And the tricky part of craftsmanship is that it becomes really expensive. But Carl Hansen has this willingness to invest in new technologies, and make a product more efficient to manufacture.” While Slaatto acknowledges that Begonya’s handmade construction will appeal to some customers, he also points to Carl Hansen & Søn’s long history of developing production techniques to make technically challenging designs more efficient and economical to manufacture, including the CH24 Wishbone Chair and CH20 Elbow Chair, both of which rely on highly specialised bending, shaping and joinery techniques. “It’s an extremely hard process to automise,” he says. “Maybe it won’t ever be automised, but if anyone can do it, it’s Carl Hansen.”

Begonya joins Slaatto’s roster of lamps inspired by natural patterns, such as Patera, a piece that uses the Fibonacci sequence to create spherical lamps that resemble the heads of alliums, and Swirl, an interpretation of the logarithmic spiral that resembles a soft-serve ice cream. “My other lamps are more sculptural and precise,” he says, with both Swirl and Patera constructed from hard PVC foil that produced more defined and static shapes. “Here, there is this unpredictability, which is due to the tension in the material, which gives it some poetry and a little bit of likeness to flowers and nature.” While Slaatto’s previous work gave form to the sequences that lie behind the natural world, Begonya takes this inspiration even further, embodying nature’s volatility through subtle curves and movements that emerge from each lamp’s individual gravity and geometry, making them impossible to predict or replicate. “I never try to copy nature, but to learn from it,” he says. “Begonya feels alive because its form encompasses both predictability and unpredictability, much like the patterns that bring us calm in water, forests or fire.”

Words Helen Gonzalez Brown

Engineering the Bloom

A Cartographical Statement