SUNLIGHT TABLE

We can’t get enough of sunlight transportation devices. As a recent study has shown (what intuitively most of us know) – sunlight is good for your health. Sadly, more and more of us have jobs that force us to sit in fluorescent caves all day, removing us from the healing benefits of natural light. Fortunately a bunch of different designers and lighting companies have started trying to bring sunlight into the indoors with fiber-optic sunlight transport devices. Following this path, two RCA students have come up with an amazingly brilliant Sunlight Table. Anab Jain and Stuart Wood’s innovative table brings sunlight from the outdoors using fiber-optic cables, and pumps it up through the wooden table: creating the is the first piece of furniture I have ever seen which integrates sunlight into its design.

Threaded with tiny fiber-optic cables that create a “sunlight display grid” on its surface, the Sunlight Table is designed to bring natural light into workspaces. The fiber-optic cables embedded in the wood table connect to an input grid placed over a window. Light and shade are transmitted from the panel through the fibers and into the table. Movement outside the window, such as passing birds or shifting clouds, brings a little bit of the outside world back to the user.

This Sunlight Table is fabulous, so it comes as no surprise that project has been winning accolades and attracting a lot of attention. The project has been on display at RCA’s summer show , and has won the college’s Design For Our Future Selves award.

I can’t wait until these go into production, so I can get my Vitamin D deprived hands on one!

Spotted at the RCA degree show by We-Make-Money-Not-Art

3 Responses to “SUNLIGHT TABLE”

Jared Says:

July 6th, 2005 at 2:27 pm

Interesting that the pictures show a computer being used. I wouldn’t have ever though of this were it not for the pictures. Wouldn’t optical mice have a conflict on a sun table? (Light shining against light)

Jaggae Says:

July 18th, 2005 at 1:56 am

Imagine sitting at your sunlight flooding work station for four hours, you’ll end up having a polka-dot tan! To Jared, there’s always the mouse pad. In Singapore, this won’t be a good idea unless for the workaholics who clock in 14 hours a day. We have plenty of sun here; in fact, a bit too much.

bryan Says:

January 13th, 2006 at 1:05 am

i admire the concept… is there any data on the photospectrometer graph as it compares to natural sunlight? would there be any loss of beneficial visible light through the translation process?

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