Overview
This is a lamp in the shape of a rhombic dodecahedron, a three-dimensional shape with 12 rhombus-shaped faces. I was inspired to create this lamp because of a sketch by the famous artist MC Escher called "Waterfall," which features a parody of a rhombic dodecahedron on top of the left tower.
This is the second lamp in this style that I made. I used this project to practice iterating on the approach I had used to make the previous one and explore this interesting shape.
I hope you enjoy reading about my project, and maybe it will inspire you to try something new in your own work.
M.C. Escher’s Waterfall
Improvements in Approach
One of the challenges I faced when creating the lamp was making it sleek and visually appealing. In the first version, I used fasteners to hold the 3D-printed vertices and laser-cut acrylic faces together. However, this left the heads of the fasteners exposed and the power connector was also not concealed. Additionally, the hanging hook was visually quite jarring and detracted from the overall aesthetic of the lamp.
For the second version of the lamp, I decided to try a different approach to address these issues. I started by building a 3D-printed skeleton for the lamp and taped the acrylic faces on. The skeleton was made up of several smaller parts shown below.
The power and hook for this lamp are better executed than the first lamp. The hook is made of some black paracord and the barrel jack is embedded into a vertex. The bulb was still held via a piece of armature wire, but the mounting for the wire to the vertex was much more secure.
Exposed Bolts, Connector and Hook of First Lamp
Joiners Together
Vertices
Edges
Embedded Nut Slots
Vertex With Barrel Jack Slot
Determining Lightbulb Position
Interior View
View of Vertex with Barrel Jack Installed
Cool Shape
One of the unique properties of this shape is its perfect packing efficiency. Perfect packing efficiency is a measure of how well a shape can be packed together with other identical shapes to fill a given space. Shapes with perfect packing efficiency are often used in various applications, such as packing boxes or containers for maximum efficiency, or in mathematical and scientific research. This property makes the rhombic dodecahedron a fascinating shape to work with.
