How cool are these light sculptures?
Dodecado, the stackable, magnetic LED lights come in 15 colour combinations and unlimited possibilities. This is the first patent from Ledamp Industries, a group of five innovators and engineers who came together last May to create something different with a focus on art and design.
Eihab Baqui, who completed his bachelor of Engineering at Concordia University, explained that the Ledamp Industry gang had plenty of experience in commercial, residential and custom lighting projects, but wanted a challenge. What they came up with was something beautiful, functional and different. It’s also environmentally sound, as the light sculptures are made locally in Montreal, feature rechargeable batteries and are mercury- and lead-free. It’s second life packaging is even forward thinking.
“We have always thought about [the environmentally friendly element to our design],” explained Baqui. “When you work for someone else and it’s not your design you don’t have to be, but when we started this we knew everything we did had to be [aligned] with a green-orientation. That’s why, even with the packaging, we said to ourselves ‘why not give it more than one use?'”
Their Kickstarter, the crowd-sourced innovation website that they started to get some financial backing to get Dodecado’s first prototype into production, got the Montreal crew a fair bit of attention in the design and tech world, too.
Ledamp’s Dodecado has been accepted to show at a Norwegian light art festival next June, and were a part of the New York City Maker Fair this past year. In the near future, other versions of the Dodecado will begin to launch and will feature new functions.
“We’re going to move beyond the world of light,” explained Sarathkumar Kumaraiah, one of the brains behind Dodecado’s design. “We want to keep building the building blocks of functional, customizable and creative lighting.
“We all come from high-skill backgrounds in electronics and industry design, but we want to get into other things too,” he said, mentioning solar panels, changing colours and smart phone capabilities but not revealing TOO much of what we can expect to come.
The other thing that the Montreal-based light innovators love is how much they’re learning from their client base, who are always generating new ideas on where and how to use the lights in terms of their function and design.
“We have adults who are curious about the product and kids using them like Leggo building blocks,” explained Kumaraiah. “Every age group loves it and find different applications about where and how they use it.”
And at $24.99 for one block with a power deck, and additional blocks ranging from $18 to $22, it’s not difficult to keep on building. “I think, carrying it forward, we want to keep a quality high, the manufacturing local and the cost reasonable,” said Baqui. “But we’re only just getting started.”
Order Dodecado online at dodecado.biz
