Solight Design is an American company that manufactures portable solar lanterns intended to provide lighting in disaster areas and to people who otherwise have no access to electricity.
The SolarPuff lantern's material, that functions as a light diffuser, is very high quality sailcloth used for upscale ship sails.
As explained in Chun's 2016 TEDx talk,[4] in dealing with her son's asthma –about 10% of children in New York have asthma [5]–Chun realized that poor air quality caused by pollutants was a growing problem, motivating Chun to find ways to incorporate solar power into daily living.
Chun received a 2008 Brunner Grant from the Center for Architecture Foundation[6] to explore energy efficient building skins.
[7] After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Chun challenged students in her design studio class at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture to develop solutions for disaster relief that would help an individual, instead of city-sized or building-sized solutions that architecture students usually consider.
In 2011, Chun founded Material Intelligence Project, Inc. (MIP), renamed to Solight Design, Inc. with Stacy Kelly as co-founder,[14] to market her SolarPuff solar lanterns.
FAARM has distributed Solight Design's SolarPuff solar lanterns to Cameroon, Ecuador, Ghana, Haiti, Liberia, Nepal, Senegal, Greece, Turkey and Syria, bringing much-appreciated light to poor people and disaster victims.
[18] In 2015, Solight Design provided solar lanterns for Malala Yousafzai's talk at the opening day of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit.