byunggwon na’s ALIT lamp balances ceramic, wood and light in one quiet composition

CERAMIC MEETS WOOD UNDER SOFT LIGHT

Seoul-based designer Byunggwon Na explores the relationship between ceramic, wood, and illumination with ALIT, a lamp reduced to two contrasting materials and a deceptively simple geometry. Beginning with the translucent qualities of ceramic, Na studied how light could pass through, bounce against, and diffuse across its surface before introducing a square wooden column as the project’s only additional material.

The result sets the softly curved ceramic shade directly on top of the timber base, allowing light to fall across both surfaces at once. Rather than hiding the meeting point between structure and diffuser, ALIT makes it the focus: a small material conversation between something solid and rectilinear below and something thinner, lighter, and altogether less obedient above.

Byunggwon Na presents the ALIT lamp | images courtesy of Byunggwon Na

A CIRCLE FOLDS INTO FOUR CURVES

Produced through slip casting, the ceramic shade begins conceptually as a circular plane folded into four quadrants, generating four gently curved surfaces around its perimeter. Its shape sits somewhere between strict geometry and an organic form, with Na likening its silhouette to a maple seed or petal drifting down before eventually coming to rest on the wooden column.

The shade is not permanently attached to the base and can instead be lifted off, replaced, or exchanged with another version. This allows different ceramic pieces to alter the character of the lamp while giving the shade a life beyond illumination: removed from the column, it can work independently as an object or tray. The wooden lamp, meanwhile, continues functioning without it — no complicated assembly or dramatic intervention required.

the colored ceramic shade creates a different atmosphere, with light softly diffusing from beneath

COLOR CHANGES HOW THE CERAMIC GLOWS

Na also experiments with color by mixing pigments directly into the liquid slip before casting, producing ceramic shades whose tone runs consistently through the material rather than being applied later as a colored glaze. While the lighter ceramic versions allow illumination to travel through the shade, the pigmented pieces become opaque, fundamentally changing how the lamp distributes its light.

Instead of glowing from within, these colored shades direct a softer pool of light from underneath, where it interacts with the grain and surface of the wooden column. Across its different configurations, ALIT treats illumination less as something simply switched on and more as another material in the composition — one that shifts depending on what happens to be sitting on top.

ALIT lamp explores how ceramic, wood, and light interact

ceramic shades evoking a maple seed or petal drifting down and settling

viewed from above, light glows through all four sides of the ceramic shade

translucency, reflection, and diffusion of light across ceramic and wood

ALIT with a Blue Grey ceramic shade

form studies using a square wooden column and paper mock-ups

a shade form developed by folding a circle into four quadrants

the ceramic shade takes shape through the slip-casting process

the cast ceramic piece is removed and prepared before firing

paper mock-ups test the shade’s form and proportions

project info:

name: ALIT
designer: Byunggwon Na | @bangonaaa

location: Seoul, South Korea

The post byunggwon na’s ALIT lamp balances ceramic, wood and light in one quiet composition appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.