Bjerk
In this project, we were asked to design a pair of sunglasses capturing the identity of a randomly assigned brand. The brand I received was the Opera of Oslo.
The concept behind my sunglasses is that they used shadow to provide protection from the sun, instead of tinted lenses. The form was inspired by branches from the mountain birch, or Bjerk as it is called in Norwegian.
I was motivated to use nature as the central inspiration to produce something that could be exhibited as art because many of the details around the Opera are designed by various artists and also inspired by nature.
Project by: Jacob Pettersen
Project length: 4 weeks
AHO course: Product Design, Fall 2014
Moodboard
With this moodboard, I assembled pictures of different details and artworks from the Opera.
Shadow
Oslo’s Opera House is like a white mountain - visitors can walk up the exterior of the building to the top. On a real mountain, the natural source of sun protection is the shadow from trees. Specifically, I drew inspiration from the birch tree, which is the tree that lives at the highest elevation on Norwegian mountains.
Prototyping
To explore the shadow effects and silhouettes of different designs, I made fast paper prototypes.
Iterations
I soon found that one layer did not provide a lot of sun protection - so I started prototypes that were double-layered, where the inner layer was the branches and the outer layer was the leaves. I printed the glasses in nylon to test where it was possible to see through, and where they provided sun protection.
