Peckham Palais Lighting

Dom May 11, 2010 Design, Dom, Johnny

Our first “official” commission was for the re-opened Peckham Palais, previously an old R’n B night club. The interior is… eclectic, to say the least. Think the inside of a 70’s British holiday caravan abandoned by the road-side, mixed with the interior of an old slot machine/amusements hall and you have a pretty accurate picture of the style the Palais is “rockin” at the moment. Our brief was simple; replace the current light shades running up the stair well between the three floors. The current light shades in the Palais, are quite simply hideous. Imagine, a blind homeless bear has tried to draw from memory scenes of a tribal moon dance, with his claws and a blow torch, into aluminium trash cans.

We drew our inspiration for this project from tessellation folds used to pack and transport solar panels into space. In some ways we underestimated just how difficult achieving this tessellation fold in paper was, but after more then 35 hours of cutting, measuring, folding and cursing we eventually got there, and with a bit of clever packaging (think accordion sandwich) some courier-quick delivery and 4 hours of installation, it was done. I think what makes the lights work is not only their juxtaposition against the palais desperately random interior, but the combination of their curious and intricate shape and the warm ambient light they radiate. All in all a pretty successful first job… Well apart from the fact that 2 hours before the opening the management considered them a fire safety risk and asked us to take them down in favour of Edward scissor hands attempt to open cans of baked beans in the dark with severe munchies.

Even though we had tested them, and they were covering fluorescent tube lighting (which doesn’t heat up significantly) the MAN, he say NO.

This project was designed and completed by Dom and Jonny