A lamp that doesn’t run on electricity

In case you didn’t already know, going green is the way to go and it never gets old. So whenever we hear about a new device or technology that actually helps with the environment, we’ll be glad to cover it. However, even if a device does help make the world a better place, it should be somewhat useful, and unfortunately, the Pure Sun is not one of them. Designed by a Danish company – Igland Design, the Pure Sun is a glass table with that resembles a pinball machine, but instead of having flippers and a game board within, it houses an adjustable mirror that can be angled and positioned using knobs at the side of the desk.

The Pure Sun is a “lamp” that works by reflecting external sunlight onto spots you want to light up, using the mirror inside. In an ideal world, where the sun is always bright, this table would be fantastic. (But then again, if the sun was high and bright in the sky, would you even need another light source?). When the sun is low in the sky or it’s a dark cloudy day, you’d be hard pressed to find a decent amount of light to reflect. And when it’s night time and you need light the most – the Pure Sun is turns into a table that doesn’t do anything (besides hold your drink or food).

It is essentially a lamp that works half the time – and that half the time, you don’t even want to use it. It works better as part of your house décor than being a functional light source. The only way I can see it being useful at night is when coupled with another lamp (gasp!), it can be used to reflect the lamp’s light rays to another part of the room, but even then it won’t be very effective unless the original lamp was very bright in the first place. The designers of the Pure Sun need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what the purpose of a lamp is before they attempt anymore designs. Thankfully the lamp isn’t on sale and even if it was, I doubt it would be flying off the shelves. Would you ever see yourself purchasing one of these “lamps”?

George Wong
Categories: Green
Tags: electricity, lamp, mirror, table