This lamp is made out of 13 circles, and exists thanks to the pleasing geometric fact that a planar circle packing can be wrapped around a sphere. The design is based on a nested Steiner chain packing and exhibits no symmetry, despite its structured appearance. The circumferences of all the circles lie on the same sphere, which gives the lamp a distinct circular silhouette when viewed from certain angles.

The parts were laser cut from a blueprint generated in code, allowing control of a number of geometric parameters. I’ve described the process in more detail in this blog post.