Over the past few days I’ve been wondering how to design something visually stimulating for the kitchen even on these rainy Portland days.  I had thoughts of reflective surfaces hung from the ceiling almost like white raindrops with a reflective inner surface that would bounce light and create light movement due to vibrations from the MAX or air movement in the kitchen.  I would like my project to interact with the ceiling somehow..bringing a new sky into the kitchen.

In a quick exercise, I cut a basic shape to see how reflective the color would be onto another surface.  I based this shape on the idea “what if something were growing out of the shape of the window?”

The color was surprisingly reflective even though it was raining and cloudy outside.  I discovered that I had been missing the point – leaving too much open space where I had made the cuts.  I forgot the basic principle of light..it is a wave.  And these waves will try its hardest to get through even the tiniest of cracks.  I don’t need the back of the screen to be open to let light in.  As long as there is a closeby surface to reflect onto, it will reflect the color.  I made a few more pieces to test out a pattern of this design.  It is a very rudimentary test , but helps me understand the direction I need to go.

I don’t want a totally solid screen blocking out the view of the window, but it is helpful to see that even at an angle I can still seem to get bounced color.  this means this application might work suspended from the ceiling.  I want to try larger panels and maybe different reflectivities…maybe a more open framework..maybe I will revert to the raindrop idea.