zieta

Since so much of lighting is still based on plain, old sheet metal, I always keep my eye open for innovative uses. Oskar Zieta is a Polish designer, in conjunction with the CAAD institute in Zurich, who is working on a alternate forms of the common hydroforming process. He has created a very cool method to quite literally inflate metal pieces into soft, pillow-like structures. He takes two sheets of laser cut sheet metal, welds the edges together, adds on a inlet, and using pressures simply inflates the pieces. Zieta was featured in an Audi video:

http://tv.audi.com/embed/28220