DIY: fantastic sustainable light fixture

Malaysian architect creates light with folding milk carton

Luminaire made with folding milk carton

Juice and milk cartons popularly called "long life" are also known as carton packs. Their characteristics make them a super solution for food preservation and transport (logistics), being a preferred option among manufacturers of liquid food products. Its composition is made up of multiple layers of different materials, such as paper, plastic and aluminum.

Although recyclable, the recycling process for these packages is not simple due to the combination and disposal of components, requiring specific equipment and not necessarily available for processing the huge volume of waste of this nature generated in our society. On the other hand, such packaging can be reused in various ways, such as in the making of toys, accessories and decorative objects. But have you ever thought about reusing the packaging as origami (Japanese folding) and making sophisticated lighting fixtures?

Thinking about reducing the amount of garbage that goes to the landfill, the Malaysian architect Ed Chew created a lamp that reuses the milk carton with a folding technique called “kusudama origami”.

It basically consists of folding several pieces of paper in the form of pyramids and joining them together, giving a spherical configuration. Instead of paper, the architect used clean milk cartons, cut them into strips and folded each strip into six parts, obtaining the pyramid shape, as shown below:

Luminaire made with folding milk carton

So as not to use glue, the artist joined the pyramids with strips that are tied to each of the small triangles, forming a hexagon or pentagon.

Luminaire made with folding milk cartonLuminaire made with folding milk carton

To make the luminaire spherical, Chew needed 108 hexagons and 12 pentagons, which were also joined in the same way as the triangular structure (without using glue). It was necessary to leave a little more space to insert the lamp and socket.

Luminaire made with folding milk carton

The idea, which can be made at home and was named Tetrabox Lamp, won, in 2011, an important international design competition (Bright Ideas Lighting Design Competition), in the "crafts" and "sustainable design" categories, as it reuses carton packs and does not use adhesives or glue. See how cool it looks in the room:

Luminaire made with folding milk cartonLuminaire made with folding milk carton

Watch a video that helps you better understand how to make your own long-life packaging luminaire:



$config[zx-auto] not found$config[zx-overlay] not found