Pieke Bergmans: Vapor II

Blowing plastic instead of glass, Pieke Bergmans created a series of six-meters-high, fragile and mystical lighting-objects, hanging down from the ceiling.

For her new project, presented at the Dutch Design Week, Amsterdam designer Pieke Bergmans blowed plastic instead of glass. As usual, she has been exploring new techniques and the result is, again, a stunning body of work: six meters high, fragile mystical lighting-objects, hanging down from the ceiling. A translucent and solid body that fades away to almost no substance. Illuminated with light.

Bergmans developed a technique similar to glass blowing to create these plastic lighting installations. Bergmans experimented with heating and rapidly inflating the PVC plastic so the final form is partly left open to chance. ”I don’t like to design as a designer and be very precise about how things should look,” Bergmans told. “I prefer that shapes grow into their natural environment, so the only thing I decide is to add more or less air or maybe a few colours, time or material.”

Pieke Bergmans, <i>Vapor II</i>, 2013. Photo Mirjam-Bleeker — Pieke Bergmans, *Vapor II*, 2013. Photo Mirjam Bleeker

One group of objects have been extruded into twisting, rippled pipes with a light bulb illuminating them from within. Another series is made by blowing air into the plastic until it stretches into a delicate, translucent tube at one end. Bergmans explained that the collection is called Vapor because “the lighting objects fade away into nothing, like a gas that seems to dissolve.” The collection follows Bergmans’ previous experiments with glass blowing, which included her hand-blown organically-shaped light bubls and a series of polished bronze objects with blown-glass lamps spilling out of them, designed in collaboration with Studio Job.

Vapor was presented in an old pump house in Eindhoven as part of Dutch Design Week, with the first series displayed nestled amongst the pipes and the billowing second series suspended in the central double-height space.