University Coach: Stephan Wensveen
Philips coaches: Steven Luitjens, Koen van Os
Assessor: Lu Yuan
Master graduation thesis, spring 2011
Soft Interiors is Paula Kassenaar’s graduation project, performed in collaboration with Philips Research Photonic Textiles group. Soft Interiors is a lightweight semi-translucent piece of cloth with integrated glowing light that you can drape in your living room to create soft lighting accents. The cloth charges wirelessly and when fully charged gives about four hours of light.
Soft Interiors presents a new way of integrating LEDs in textile that ensures a pleasant direct-view-lighting experience and can be handled like the sheer textile it is made off.
Soft Interiors has been featured on Design.nl and Bright.nl.
Project vision
In this project she tried to see how well textiles and electronics could be bridge, but not at any cost. The textile had to stay textile, not just a softened cover layer, and the light could not look any less pleasing than any other lighting product you would have in the living room.
Through prototyping, the beauty that can be achieved in the interaction between materials could be seen and became its main focal point.
The meaning of lighting textiles in the context of this project is redefining, reshaping and creating new semantics for light and the way we use it in the living room using the inviting and gentle qualities of textiles.
Two prototypes were on display during the Dutch Design Week: one at the Made in Brainport – Six Degrees exhibition in Klokgebouw at Strijp-S and one at the ID’11 graduation exhibition at the University of Technology, Eindhoven.