Hanging acoustic pendant light designed with sound and light in mind.

During my internship at Focal Point Lights in Chicago, Illinois, we were tasked with iterating, designing, and building a pendant light. A pendant light hangs from one point on the ceiling. The design was open to a style of my choosing. One of my priorities was to use a felt material. Felt has become popular in acoustic fixtures and allows for modularity. The material was something that Focal Point had never used but was beginning to explore to incorporate into their fixtures. I designed the Skyscraper Pendant, named for its window-like rectangles of light.  It is an acoustic pendant designed to play with a mixture of light and shadows with edge-lighting features. The three biggest design decisions involved the shape of the light-guided panels, the LED boards to use, and incorporating the acoustic panels. Acrylic panels had to mounted precisely on the rows of LEDs and need a secure fastening method. A log-cabin inspired design was the initial design, but evolved to be held together by the felt itself. In the final concept only one 10 inch square LED board was used rather than five separate boards that the initial design called for. The acoustic felt has an adhesive backing and could be laser cut. 

Two key features of this light that were under consideration throughout the design process were the desire for a simple design that could be made entirely in-house and using acoustic felt combined with laser-etched acrylic. There are no cast or extruded parts needed, and a method of slicing and laser-cutting the felt was optimized for the company throughout the process.