CASA started as an exercise in urban upcycling, but has now broadened its purpose to become a leader in sustainable design.
In 2017, in the East Village of NYC, one of my favorite "Sunday activities" was urban antiquing. I enjoyed collecting rustic artifacts from agriculture, machinery, and antiquated technology, usually without a plan for how to fit these items in my 400 square-foot one-bedroom NYC apartment. This eventually stifled my living space, and so instead of sending those odds and ends to landfills, I decided to use some of my creative background to turn them into functional decorations. My first lamp was made of a bird house and colander, and my second and third out of wagon wheels. Several other lamps of various colors, shapes, and origins came to be, until eventually one day I encountered a beautiful 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask, one of the most iconic and fearsome types of laboratory ornaments ever known. It just so happens that that the size and shape of one of these vessels served as an ideal lamp vase, and could be used as a creative medium for a multitude of design concepts (see my current collections).
CASA Studio LLC officially began in 2019, with a goal being to design beautiful lamps using the most sustainable practices available to the industry, such as reusable packaging — an industry first. Readily-available raw materials like the Erlenmeyer flask are used so as to avoid custom materials, which can be wasteful and therefore less sustainable. Almost all of the components in each lamp are recyclable and/or bio-compatible, making them far less likely to be found in landfills any time in the near future. All materials are manufactured and prepared as close as possible to its Bushwick, NY headquarters, minimizing its “upstream” carbon footprint.
What CASA presents to you now is three collections which praise the divine structure of the Erlenmeyer flask. The unadorned model (CLEAR) allows the classic Erlenmeyer silhouette to express itself in minimalist form, with the inner plumbing of the lamp on full display. The CUSTOM collection allows you to choose your own "Erlen-venture”. With over 500 color combinations at your whim, CUSTOM is there for those who like to personalize their world. Finally, LABWORKS showcases CASA's full artistic expressions of joy, decay, and mystery. LABWORKS lamps are each one of a kind and have a back-story of their own. I hope you enjoy my work.
LOVE,
AJ
PS: "CASA" was chosen as our name for three reasons:
CASA is an acronym based on the first names of the four members of my family
My products are intended for your home, your "casa"
Until recently, all of the lamps you see on this website were designed and assembled in my "home studio" (casa studio)
cheers
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About the designer:
Since youth, AJ has always been drawn to engineering and design. His “career” in lighting design took off at around the age of 8, when he began to turn his parent’s garage and front yard into a haunted house every Halloween for neighbors to enjoy, producing dramatic lighting by combining household flood lights with colored lenses or strobes.
His academic education was heavily focused on science, specifically physics and engineering. He studied energy engineering in graduate school, leading him to look at his profession as a way to create a cleaner future, ultimately landing him at his present job at Amazon.com as a Sr. Program Manager responsible for carbon reduction across its warehouses. Most positions AJ has held over the last 10 years have shared a common goal of reducing an organization’s carbon footprint by reengineering the way it operates.
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