While we don’t always love an edited script or the sequel to what was a great film, Dutch designer Mieke Meijer follows up her original Balance lamp design with what is now the clean, gorgeous Balance v2.0 lamp that uses LED lighting, a simple string, and balance as the integral elements in its re-creation.

Balance v2.0 table lamp. Designed by Mieke Meijer.

Once Balanced, the Balance v2.0’s LED Light Turns On

In the design of the prequel, Meijer’s Balance lamp became a hit throughout the Netherlands as a wooden LED whose light stick (as I’ll refer to it based on its aesthetic similarities to a twig with a built-in LED) literally balances in a groove at the top of the base. In both Balance and Balance v2.0, the lamp will only light up when the stick is perfectly balanced. As a result, Meijer refers to this lamp – that maintains its balances with a simple string – as one that requires “the will to use it” as it “must be stronger than the fear of disturbing the balance”.

Initially, the Balance lamp was designed for the exhibition ‘Untouchables’ by collective Dutch Invertuals. From there, Meijer presented her Balance v2.0 lamp at the Dutch Design Week 2011 in Eindhoven. Undergoing several edits to perfect its style and useful nature, the Balance v2.0 was released with a larger light source, various shades of wood, and a brand new base that features cast bronze. Additionally, the lamp comes in a table and floor model, with three different tactile material combinations.

As Meijer describes of the Balance v2.0, “by leaving out unnecessary details, the lamp has an archetypal, almost graphic appearance,” that is further enhanced by the LED lights hidden in its horizontal post, featuring a brass strip that conducts a low voltage current which turns it on upon touch.

via Contemporist.

About the Designer: Mieke Meijer is a designer born in 1982 from Wezep, Netherlands. Her work has been seen at Salone del Mobile in Milan as part of the ‘Untouchables Retouched’ collection shown by the collective, Dutch Invertuals. And just one week after her huge debut at the largest design show in the world, she was given the opportunity to show her work to the Queen of the Netherlands at the Oranienbaum Palace in Germany. Always creating functional object, her use of wood and string is evident through angular investigations into balance, transformation, and imaginary creations that change our perception of typical furnishings and fixtures.