Tasked with creating an interesting interior installation on a blank stair wall at an Amelia Island Beach House, we started thinking about how to create interest and bring light into the space at the same time. With a fascination with translucsent 3D printing, our idea was to create a barnacle light sculpture.

Rhino 3D software was used to design a wide range of barnacle shapes that would be mounted on panels and lit with RGB LED lights. The hexagon PVC panels provided a flexible way to shape the installation configuration as it climbs up the stairs. The most challenging part of the project was working with the LED pucklight wiring, which had to be extended in long lengths and hidden in the panels to a centralized lighting module.

Digital Fabrication brings more freedom to the process of design and opens up possibilities for form-making and light.

We see digital fabrication and computational architecture as a new frontier in architectural design and one that we will continue to experiment with as a part of the Design Lab.

The barnacle project uses RGB LED lights that can be programmed for a wide range of color combinations and lighting effects.