The designer and eyewear brand unveiled the Lens Light collection during this year’s London Design Festival
With a shared belief in ethical design, Yair Neuman and London-based eyewear brand Cubitts have remained true to their ethos with the launch of the Lens Light collection, a range of sculptural lights made from waste eyeglass lenses.
Unveiled at Coal Drops Yard during London Design Festival, the collaboration comprises six pieces handmade by Neuman at his London studio: hanging spheres, single and conjoined, flower lamps, pendants as well as fan-shaped base and vase lights.
The project began by ‘witnessing the enormous waste generated in the processes of selling eyewear’, says Neuman. ‘A small optician’s shop bins 200 new display lenses a week on average. By simply collecting these lenses, experimenting to make a new material, we now have, in effect, a new supply chain.’
Each light is unique and made using an innovative process. After developing a method to fuse prescription lenses – made from optical polycarbonate and normally destined for landfill – into a sheet material, Neuman created texture in the pressed sheets by working with the lens form and curve direction. This process was then followed by shaping the sheets using jigs – manual moulding and freehand – to make the pieces.
Embedded filters in the lenses, meanwhile, allow colours to change depending on the viewing angle, while the material itself beautifully captures and emits light no matter the time of day. ‘Most of all, the Lens Lights are designed to be aesthetically pleasing, thought-provoking and honest,’ says Neuman.
First image by Jonathan Minster. Second image by Mark Cocksedge
