The Living Pixels Lighting Collection is a fanciful and quirky upcycled lighting collection that came out of a collaboration between ECOLS and the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The Design Team was composed of three young designers with experience in product design, packaging and eco-design. Living Pixels was created during a two week intensive design process where the designers picked through waste banner material and then went through a series of explorations to achieve a gem-like end result.

Living Pixels. Designed by SDWorks.

With a starting point of colorful recycled advertising banners; color, texture, and shape were tested to push the limits of the material. By using the blank white backside of the banners as the exterior of the shade, the lamps have a pale, minimal appearance when switched off, but when illuminated the lamps come to life. Almost like clusters of pomegranate seeds, the folded ribbons of banner have an organic geometry that is simultaneously methodical. Each shade is designed to play off a specific stand. The vintage stands were rescued from antique stores in Central Hong Kong and were kept in their original conditions. The final product is an elegant play on vintage and modern, upcycled and reclaimed.

“In consonance with the eco-friendly nature of the project, where the main material is up-cycled from a mere temporary image support to a product part, each lamp is fitted into a 2nd hand stand, making the whole product a mixture of new usage for old hardware while keeping an innovative look and feel without emphasizing the recycling factor in order to keep the focus on the result, not on the origin.”