Daniel Libeskind's Cosmic Chandelier Is Based On The 14-Billion-Year History Of Light

When you think of a chandelier, you probably think of some ornate crystal-type affair. We all do. What you don’t think of is something which incorporates algorithms created by an astrophysicist to give a representation of the history of light over 14 billion years.

Looking suitably space age, this is what Daniel Libeskind‘s eL Masterpiece chandelier does, which is part of Sawaya & Moroni’s 2012 collection. Weighing 350 pounds and standing nine feet tall, this galactic, decorative light has a microcontroller and 1,680 LEDs. The pattern of the LEDs is controlled by an algorithm, developed by Daneil Libeskind’s astrophysicist son Dr. Noam Libeskind, which tells the story of light since the Big Bang.

A heady subject for a light you might think, but why not? And if you’re wondering how a light can demonstrate the evolution of the universe, it works by each LED module representing a small volume of space. This way the light that the chandelier emits mimics the light that fills the cosmos.

From the Studio Daniel Libeskind site:

_The idea is based on the theory that the universe is around 14 billion years old and that its building blocks—galaxies like the Milky Way—grew larger as the universe aged. As they grew larger, the light their stars emitted changed, visible as the _eL_ emits different colours. State of the art simulations run on massive super-computers were used to compress a billion years into one second so that the eL’s time loop plays back the history of the cosmos in 14 seconds and, in doing so, tells the story of how light came into being._

So there you go.

images: © designboom

[via designboom]

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