Daniel Treacy
Title:
Pylite
Concept Statement:
One of the most intriguing of all crystalline structures is the humble Pyrite. It seems to defy conventional expectations of a crystal – completely opaque, with a brassy metallic lustre, it was harshly nicknamed ‘fool’s gold’. It’s a slight indictment of human esteem that we machine rarer stones to force beauty out of them - while the spurned, commonplace Pyrite naturally forms interlocking cubic crystals of astonishing complexity. This sense of free-form geometric intrigue has provoked the proposed piece.
Indulging the designer’s love of a bad pun, ‘PYLITE (2015)’ is a modular luminaire element that behaves as an individual crystal prism, combining in cuboid or planar arrays that can become table, pendant, wall lights, or even walls ‘of’ light. Meeting at either 45 or 180 degrees, and featuring cunningly hidden cable routing, ‘Pylite’ can scale dramatically to become far greater than its discrete elements. Each carefully crafted conical shape is self-nestable for ultra compact shipping and uses triangulation to gain maximum strength from thin and light brass sheet. Meanwhile, it obscures the connectors and ultra-efficient LED lightsource from direct view. The result is a soft indirect halo of light that turns the surface a brilliant gold… foolish or not.
Project Specs:
Single Unit: 400x400x120mm
Cubeform (Table/Pendant): 400x400x400mm
Planar (Wall/Pendant) - Variable e.g. 1250x960x120mm for 3x4 array
Lightsource (each): Tridonic Stark LED strip ring (⌀200mm) // 8.3W // 1080lm // 3000K (Warm White) // 240+120V Converter can be integrated per unit or remote for whole array depending on application
Material: Stamped 1mm Brass Sheet (shape enables initial small runs to be produced by brake press folding and seam welding until sales justify stamp tooling)
Finish: Polished with Satin Clear Coat or optional pre-applied Dark Patina
Bio:
Dan Treacy is an industrial designer based in Melbourne, Australia. Fuelled by a healthy dose of curiosity and appetite for the peculiar, Dan has tackled designs for wristwatches, helical escalators, hybrid environmental toilets, autonomous cars, and even crocodile breeding tanks (don’t worry - he’s pretty sure he got the lid right).
These eclectic examples demonstrate a universal application of the design process, backed by Dan’s key philosophy – empathy. By understanding the personal interactive experience at every stage of a product’s life, he gets to optimise and share the joy of a product that exceeds expectations.
While studying at Monash university, Dan worked assembling custom luminaires for Australia’s Rakumba Lighting, leading to a passion for this complex and artistic field. Having displayed a committed attention to detail, he recently became senior industrial designer to the brand, developing its first family of stock products and rapidly gaining industry acclaim.
Country of Origin:
Melbourne, Australia