bahay

I created Bahay for my Design and Manufacturing final project; the constraints given by the class were that the product had to be personally significant, functional, and affordable (the cost of raw materials had be under 70 dollars).

In most New York City apartments, there are no ceiling lights, forcing many New York residents to purchase lamps. My 2 years living in New York compelled me to create a table lamp for my final project. Growing up in Tokyo and a Japanese-inspired house in Manila, I draw inspiration from Japanese curvilinear designs and wooden Filipino furniture. Having lived in the U.S. for 6 years, I wanted to create a lamp that reminds me of home. "Bahay" means home in Tagalog.

The initial stages of the design process involved sketching, rapid prototyping, and CAD prototyping. Through iteration, I was able to decide on the materials and processes I wanted to leverage as well as construct an operations sequence that had built-in alternative strategies in case I faced any manufacturing difficulties with the predetermined sequence.

The primary manufacturing processes I used were: wood turning, turning, milling, and tube bending. In terms of raw materials, I used brass, aluminium, wood, and paper. I purchased two parts: the lamp wiring and the lamp shade. However, I created the pleats on the lamp shade.
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With no manufacturing experience, I found this to be a daunting experience. I had to learn the basics of all these processes, develop familiarity with the processes by applying them on practice material, and perform the processes on the final materials. I wood turned and drill pressed the lamp base; I turned, milled, and tube bended the lamp stem; I turned and milled the lamp disk; I folded paper and glued it onto the lamp shade.

I created a cavity in the wooden lamp base for an aluminium lamp disk so that the lamp would not tip over. The brass lamp rod screws into the aluminium lamp disk and the wooden lamp base is placed on top of both the rod and the disk. I created channels in the wooden base and brass lamp rod for the lamp wiring. In terms of finishing, I sanded the brass lamp rod and stained the lamp base to give the wood a darker finish.