In Chinese culture, the paperweight has a long history dated back to Han Dynasty, which was more than 2200 years ago. It has been very popular to scholars and widely used to stabilize Chinese rice paper when scholars paint or exercise calligraphy. Traditionally, the paperweight was made of metal, such as bronze, or stone, such as jade, because they are heavy in nature and can be found in nature as well. The shape of a paperweight is usually either similar to a rectangular ruler or a mini sculpture of certain animal figure.
As a special calligraphy stationary over centuries, the paperweight though has not changed much in terms of shape and materiality.
In seeking for something completely unprecedented, while designing this new paperweight, we think out of box in all aspects.
Geometry:
Cube, the simplest and purest geometry is adopted as the shape of the paperweight. There is no front and back, no top and bottom. The 6 faces are equally major and important.
Size:
The dimension of 88 X 88 X 88 mm is defined, as such scale is easily to be grabbed by a single hand while ensuring enough heaviness required to weight papers.
Material:
A synthetic material, the acrylic-based resin is chosen as the material of the paperweight. It is certainly a new material that belongs to this new age. Unless metal and stone from the past, resin though equally heavy and solid, it gives more warmth. When the corners are carefully treated round, it almost makes zero harm to either artist’s hand or the art piece even by accident. Most importantly, because it is transparent, when it covers the art work, the artist can still see through and always get the whole picture.
Color:
Because of the availability of new material, paperweight no longer has to be ofcolor. It is colorless and purely transparent. In certain occasion we give very subtle fresh icy-blue tint to it to make it more playful.
Play with transparency and translucency:
To give the pure geometry more visual substance, a set of bubble pattern continuously covers all the surface of the cube. The translucent bubble pattern gives an additional layer to the cube in a way of articulating its spatial depth. Simple yet sophisticated, the paperweight gains its dual character.
The E-base, play with light and color:
With the help of a specially designed E-base which the cube can stands on, the daytime paperweight can turn into a lamp at night with up to 15 color modes. The shift from colorless to colorful, from static to dynamic occurs while the paperweight shifts to lamp. The base is purely square in shape with touchable switches for power and color mode options. On one base, cubes can be stacked up as high as needed. The lamp is portable and can be used either indoor or outdoor. The base can be recharged through a cell phone USB cable.
Credits
Beijing
China
Confidential
05/2015
0 mq
Min Wang
Cheng Guo, Ming Yan, Zhe Cui, Ying Zhao
Su Chen
Curriculum
Studio A+ was founded by Ms. Min Wang in 2007.
STUDIO A+(ARCHITECTURE + INTERIOR + LANDSCAPE + PRODUCT) is a young and vigorous design team aiming to provide innovative architectural, InteriorArchitectural, Landscape Architectural, Industrial and Product design solutions for clients. By its name the studio covers multi-disciplinary areas yet specializes high quality comprehensive design solutions. Studio A+ completes architecture and a better life by the means of design.