Corners Lamp
Mew Mungnatee
Bangkok, Thailand | Woods: soft maple and cherry
Kamonwan Mungnatee (Mew) established her Budd design studio in Bangkok, Thailand in 2019. The Thai designer graduated from the industrial design course at King’s Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang’s (KMITL) in 2019. Her projects range from small objects to decorative items and furniture design, inspired by the idea of user context and everyday objects. Her work is process-based and focused on creative thinking in terms of materials, technique and form.
'It seemed to me that the project was about our various individual experiences of dealing with the pandemic and putting that experience into our designs.'
The design process
Mungnatee was keen to create a product rooted in a sense of place and that users could connect with emotionally. The inspiration for her Corners lamp came from Thailand’s vernacular architecture. ‘I was attracted to the structure at the base of the pagodas that you find in our country, which is a technique of creating “indented corners” – the corners of a rectangular structure are broken up into multiple recessed corners,’ she explains.
The making of the final piece
For Corners lamp, Mungnatee elected to specify soft maple because of the manner in which light bounced off its surface. ‘The wood has an opalescent gleam,’ she explains. Meanwhile, she used American cherry because of its ability to take stain.
The end result
Corners lamp is comprised of a pair of intriguing lamps in different sizes, made from a combination of soft maple and cherry. The products are about transforming the ambiance of a space, as Mungnatee cheerfully admits: ‘It’s not really the best lamp for illuminating a room but it will help create a fantastic atmosphere.’ They’re designed to let light through the complex structure to cast a shadow on the floor below.