Italian lighting brand Slamp worked with designer Nigel Coates to create a cardboard house for displaying the company's range of lights.

A team of ten young designers from Slamp took part in a workshop with the brand's art director Coates to create a neutral backdrop for capturing the lighting designs.

Designs by Coates, Zaha Hadid and various others were set among cardboard furniture arranged into rooms at Slamp's headquarters just outside Rome.

Book shelves, kitchen appliances and cutlery were all crafted from the brown material and set out to create different environments around the home.

Three hundred and fifty square metres of cardboard were milled and assembled using a hot glue gun over the ten-day workshop.

Other designs that utilise cardboard include a pavilion in Madrid by Shigeru Ban and an internet shopping collection store in San Sebastian.

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Here's some more information sent to us by Slamp:

In a workshop with Nigel Coates “Casa Slamp” was born

A special cardboard house by Slamp Creative Team.

The premise

Nigel Coates, Slamp art director since 2007, gathers ten young designers from the creative department. The boys, coming from the best design schools, are 24 years old on the average, some have been working in the company for few months, someone for few days, someone for a couple of years.

They discovered Slamp as a space where they can express their energy, with the certainty of being able to compare themselves to big international names.

Coates supports them with the three seniors of the group in order to give them more expertise: Luca Mazza (head of the creative department), Stefano Papi (responsible for the engineering) and Adriano Rachele (full-time designer - Red Dot in 2012).

The brief is clear

Designing a setting for the next photo shooting of Slamp’s lamps.

The need is to create a neutral architecture without deflecting attention away from the products but, on the contrary that is able to enhance their decorative and lighting effects.

The brainstorming

The location is Slamp’s headquarters, just outside Rome, in the 200-square-metre open space of the creative department, among being defined prototypes and history of design volumes, with a classic rock soundtrack played by iTunes Radio.

Around the six-metre table (also designed by the department few years before), lines on the sketch book are about to be traced, brains are about to be set and opinions of all kinds are about to be discussed.

The academic wisdom of Nigel Coates, and the technical know-how of seniors, immediately lead to identify the solution of cardboard.

Furniture, accessories, and even a mid-century radio are sketched. A healthy competition in the group, mixed with a game of tips and contamination among everyone is arising.

The realization

Numerical control milling machines are activated, more than 350-square-metres of cardboard are used, hot glue guns are switched on. With 2680 joints and almost 1000 creases, the set is ready in less than 10 days and does not betray any of the Slamp values: it is original, experimental, innovative and evocative.

The result is Casa Slamp

A real home where every room becomes a set to show how our lamps perfectly fit to different home environments.