Manchester-based designer Katie Askwith has slightly manipulated the making processes behind industrial filtration systems to develop the Wired lighting and furniture collection.
The product designer based the range on the automated processes used to create cages which house filtration systems in industry. The collection includes a table, a pendant, and a spotlight-like table lamp.
With the Wired collection, Askwith aims to highlight the beauty within industrial processes which often go unnoticed, and expose skills and materials that are easily under appreciated in their native sectors.
The Manchester School of Art graduate collaborated with Modern Air Systems – a leading manufacturer of filtration system cages – to develop the steel webs which form the foundation for the Wired products.
“I was inspired by the accuracy and scale of production and I wanted to see how a small change to their existing processes could produce a different range of products” Askwith said.
The powder-coated steel lattices protect bulbous, hand-blown glass lamps, which are then hung centrally to create the pendants, and stood upright on two of the slender steel ribs to create the spotlights.
A larger piece of steel latticework can be topped with circular sheets of wood or clear perspex to form a sculptural table.
With a keen interest in how things are made, Askwith realised the accuracy of the CAD processes used to design and manufacture the industrial elements, and adopted them to engineer her own products.