There’s a scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice walks into a garden and hears a voice. She turns and sees a rose that has come to life, its red petals expressively leaning toward her. Soon, all the flowers in the garden have animated, turning to face her and breaking out in song.
Well that’s almost becoming a reality with a new streetlight design by Dutch design firm Vouw. Bloomlight, as it’s called, isn’t animated and doesn’t sing—but it does bring the natural world to life by blooming in your presence.
Bloomlight, which is activated by nearby movement, works through a series of both low- and high-tech components. The light’s base—or stem—is made out of a very tall, bendable central tube. Six steel wires that run over the 14-foot-tall light are connected to stepper motors, which then pull the wires and cause the structure to bend.
Bruns says he and his team were inspired by the way that grass moves through wind, saying they wanted to “create something that moves more curiously and naturally than most technological objects.” Bloomlight certainly does, by using elegant design and responsive biomimicry to create a moment of surprise interaction as it lights up the everyday mundane.
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