Advances in LED’s have allowed lights to slim right down; lighting design is no longer dominated by the shape of a bulb and the bulky electrics. The softer light emitted has taken away the need for a shade. LED’s embedded in the piece allow for more fluid and sculptural forms.Yes there will still be a need for our old bulbs  (see an earlier post Lightbulb on beautiful alternatives) but within new homes and commercial projects lights will become subliminal, glowing in whatever colour to suit our mood and environment.

Japanese company Kaneka’s light installation “Pieces of Light “ demonstrates the next generation of LED the OLED (organic light emitting diode) One of the innovators; they invited artists and designers to use their new generation of LED to create a Japanese Saki Bar. The effect was soft dappled wave of light that gently changed from red to orange and white diodes like petals of cherry blossom.  The piece may have been an art installation and incredibly beautiful but it also demonstated the practical commercial application – if the development in manufacture can bring the price down.

OLED may be a little way off into the future but LEDs are now, with  Flos displaying some amazing examples at Euroluce this year.

Wall Rupture by Thierry Dreyfus for the Soft Architecture Collection is a dramatic demonstration of the versatility of the LED. A huge rock fissure breaks open the wall creating a visual trick, golden volcanic light pouring out.

Ron Gilad’s Wall Piercing Lamp  (seen above in the background) slowly changes colour going through the entire spectrum. His sculptural 2620 Chandelier has been added to his range for Flos this year.

Royal College of Art graduate Hanhsi Chen combines LED technology with the ancient use of shadows to tell the time. A poetic use of light and shadow this small wall lamp is easily integrated into interior decoration.

Artist Dan Flavin made the unloved fluorescent tube into beautiful works of art but with the work of these designers they haven’t left that much space for the artists to explore.
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The Light Tray by Daniel Rybakken The tray obscures the power source and gives the appearance of a self powered bulb. Sheathed in hand blown glass domes the intensity of the light can be altered by changing the configuration of the domes.

Candil by Alvaro Catalan de Ocon offers a tactile experience; a modern version of candlelight as it has no off switch. You lift the bulb from the copper bowl to break the connection that powers the light.

Trap Light a collaboration between Gionata Gato and Mike Thompson. Using a photo-luminescent pigment that was embedded into the hand blown glass body; the glass piece becomes both a shade and source of recycled light. The pigment traps and absorbs light from the conventional led bulb and emits 8 hours of ambient light from a single 30 minute charge. Its offers a wonderful way to save energy but with the slight snag that you can’t turn off the glow; so perhaps not one for the bedroom!

Ember Light by Junggi Sung. The light is set into a wooden chamber and can be increased by pushing out of the chamber.

Ron Gilad added to last years Wall Piercing Lamp for Flos (seen below in the background) with his stunning 2620 Chandelier

At Moroso’s Milan showroom  Tokujin Yoshioka created an installation entitled Twilight to display his Moon chair. A mist hung in the air with beams of light shot thorough like moon light.

Volcano by Klaus Haapaniemi & Mia Wallenius for Established & Son reminded everyone of the volcanic cloud that hung over last year festival; when that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano stranded visitors!

Formafantasma presented Botanica a range of vessels created from polymers derived from plants at Spazio Rossana Orlandi. Each had a tag with the name of plant the polymer came from.

Also at Spazio Rossana Orlandi was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago presenting Loaded; works created from iron and sugar. It was also a lesson in looking at not just what is on the table but what is underneath. The table legs created by the students were beautiful.

Andere Monjo at Salone Satellite Milano presented a poetic collection of handcrafted pieces that lie between the boundaries of art design and craft.

Going back to the industrial Studio Job created a cabinet for Lensvelt featuring  a giant brass key.

They also presented their Gothic chair and Firmship Carpet for Moooi

Casamania had a wonderfully woven chair called Loop by Sophie De Vocht -it reminded me of my Knit Loop post of last year.

Jamie Hayon collaborated with traditional Japanese pottery studio Choemon to create Hayon x Choemon Gama. A combination of traditional techniques and Jamie’s graphics.

The incandescent bulb is nearing the end of its life. Across the world governments having been passing legislation in favour of more energy conserving alternatives; and here in Europe a ban on selling 100watt bulb has been in place for a year.

We’ve mostly switched to the rather ugly compact tube fluorescent tube (CTF) and the ban on the frosted incandescent so infuriated lighting designer Ingo Maurer he had to come up with the Euro Condom pictured above (not sure if come up was quite the right phrase there!) The opaque condoms fit over clear incandescent bulbs – which are not affected by the guidelines – to give a similar effect to the banned bulbs. Its an amusing poke at European bureaucracy but when you look at the carbon emissions saved by getting rid of the old bulbs never mind the money saved on your electricity bills it makes sense to make the move.

So here are a few lights that have taken a little inspiration from the old bulb but been updated to comply with strict EU guidelines – its quite heartening to think bureaucracy can move design! America take note your Federal bureaucracy is years behind….

I don’t think you could have failed to notice Hulger’s Plumen lightbulb launched this year and billed as the worlds first designer energy saving light bulb. It uses 80% less energy than the traditional incandescent light bulb; and just like its ugly older brother (the compact tube fluorescent) it keeps down electricity bills and lasts around 8 times longer.  Hulger’s work came from the frustrations of the CTF; not only did it look ugly but the kind of light they give off is pretty poor.

“Make the bulb attractive and people will spend a bit more and enjoy a better quality of light and a design they appreciate every day. Glass tubes can be bent is many different shapes so why are there thousands of manufacturers but only three designs? We believe the answer is in the design.” The bulb is available in Europe with plans to launch in the USA early 2011.

Marcus Tremento is an artist who uses light as a  medium to express his work. His highly graphic and illustration based pieces draw inspiration from French Pop comics of the 1960’s his use of simple lines suggest three-dimensional form but in keeping with his source of inspiration he actually uses paper  – of a rather special kind. These lights employ Electroluminescent paper, which consists of an organic material that emit photons (light) when excited by an electric current, sandwiched between two thin layers of plastic. This method of producing light is distinct from standard incandescent lights in that there is no emission of heat. Electroluminescence was first developed in 1960 for use in automotive instrument panel backlighting.

Diamond Light by Eric Therner is a particularly beautiful alternative to the old light bulbs

“I’d like to see them as sculptures, with a function. Diamond Lights play with the concept of the light bulb. Stylewise, the common light bulbs look brilliant. I’m not sure though, if it is the shape, or it’s iconic value that makes it so beautiful.

The fact that it was “a” first, and what it meant to people when it first arrived, has surely played an important role during the years from product to icon. Diamond Lights is not a tribute or an attempt at making a better light bulb than the already existing one. I simply want to offer another choice.”

The result is an environmentally friendly, e-27 halogen lightbulb with a warm 15 watt glow and 2000- lifehours.

Pieke Bergmans Light Bulbs

Pictures at the top of this post the Light Bulbs are a series of crystal lamps, designed by Pieke  in a collaboration with Royal Crystal Leerdam. The lamps are all unique handcrafted crystal pieces, equipped with leds by Solid Lighting Design. They followed on from Pieke’s “Virus” series where she manipulates molten glass over various objects letting them gently ooze in a organic satisfying way.

Art Deco  by comparison to its younger sibling, has been unappreciated; I say sibling but really Art Deco is more of the grand dame of Modernism. I’ve been sitting on this Art Deco piece for months but with the re-opening of a true grand dame of the period the Savoy Hotel,  its seems timely to post this.

So here are a few products that have either been re-issued or have features  reminiscent of  the period.

Lee Broom One Light Only. Launched last month at the London Design Festival the work is inspired by Art Deco jewellery and also decadent 70’s photography. Stylists from the 70’s weren’t averse to referencing the Wiemar years (think of the film Cabaret) so you can see the connection. The use of facets and gold are certainly Art Deco 

Himmeli Chandelier by Paul Loebach  for the new American lighting manufacturer Roll & Hill

The inspiration for the piece actually came from a traditional Finnish craft of making Christmas ornaments but I certainly feel that the geometry, facets and particularly use of the glass lanterns gives a certain Deco-ness to the work even though the intention lay elsewhere. That said; Artek (mentioned below) is a Finnish company and the classic chair uses a traditional bent wood technique  -so there is a connection of sorts!

Two Art Deco classic were dusted down, re-issued and re-worked earlier this year. I doubt they’ve ever been out of production but the were both given the attention they deserve.

Artek re-issued the 1936 Armchair 400 by Alvar Aalto but in a new spectacular Missoni cover. The chair was shown a Spazio Rossana Orlandi amongst the eclectic mix of beautifully designed products that span all eras of design history.

Vanity Fair by Poltrona Frau is a reissued classic from 1930. An original that spawned a thousand copies it seemed appropriare that little minatures were dotted about the stand to emphasis its classic status.

Glas light from  Diesel  and  Foscarini is a work that has a more of an industrial Deco feel. Although personally I prefer the rather wonderful original examples you can find over at Skinflint Design

Finally still on the industrial tip heres Tom Dixon Pressed Glass Light Bead . The glass has been produced in a factory more used to manufacturing industrial glass. It was launched last year as part of the Industry Collection.

Idyll by Johan Lindsten His chairs shown in both Stockholm and at Designersblock in Milan “These stitches and dreams are for most people forgotten and thrown away to an eternal lost never to been appreciated. This furniture’s destiny is to elevate and promote these neglected pieces of art, bring back a long lost sentimental value and mix it with contemporary aesthetic”

Stitch by Pepe Heykoop is a range of items salvaged from skips or secondhand shops and given a new hand stitched fabric skin. The skin is then stuffed with soft fibres. I’m sure traditional upholsterers would dispair at the obvious lumps and bumps and the visible stitching; but that would be missing the point. They have been brought back to life and given a character by this treatment. The lamp is particularly animated and looks like he could jump about, reminding me of Pixar’s Luxo Jr 

  Under Construction #2 by Anila Rubiku for Plusdesign(pictured above & below)  is a beautifully stitched lamp constructed from paper with an LED light. Anila’s works offers a contemporary perspective to the traditional craft of embroidery with her chioce of subject matter and use of material. Using scenes from contemporary life, drawn and hand stitched onto the paper houses Anila’s work illuminates an everyday domesticity that we would all recognise.  

Urban Embroidery by Melissa French for Puff & Flock (detail picture below) This is another example of taking embroidery and applying the technique to an alternative material. Melissa has used an old bench and applied her own design (with the help of a drill) to plot the pattern across the surface.

Saved Handkerchief by Studio Makkink & Bey for Droog This limited edition range produced by Droog for Salone del Mobile 2010 was a response to the ongoing economic crisis. Droog purchased various items from companies that had gone into liquidation and invited designers to create something desirable from the unwanted. Studio Makkink & Bey were given 900 handkerchiefs to play with. They created an embroidery kit; with news reports from different newspapers printed over 30 days in March and screenprinted onto the handkerchief. They also provided a skein of embroidery thread and a needle. I have to say i,t requires a bit of skill from the purchasers (or should I say collector) but its an interesting challenge. I nabbed one, and you can spot a slightly confused looking me over on the Droog blog. You can also have a look at all the other products designers came up with in the range. 

Stool bySuperfolkThis Irish design studio produce products that are a tribute to Ireland’s traditional skills. The stools have been made using locally sourced Oak and Ash from sustainable forests. They can be linked together with  a series of cross stitches running through the holes drilling into the seat. If you don’t want to link them together the cord can be stored by doing a quick running stitch round the seat. 

One of the main stumbling blocks to buying any home product is the fear of getting it wrong.  After all, its so much easier to send back that hideous jumper that you thought looked fabulous, than it is to dispose of the sofa you special ordered 3 months ago. With this in mind Mydeco.com have looked into our buying habits and our fears of a interior faux pas. Their 3D planner allows you to build your room to the exact proportions and light sources and you can pretty much add in your existing furniture. From the huge database of  over 75,000 products you’re bound to find something that’s near as dammit to your current sofa or bed.  Its the kind of technology you’d expect to pay for but its completely free. The idea behind it is to encourage us to be a little more adventurous in our purchases, and to stop us making mistakes whether they be an aesthetic disaster or an issue with the proportions of your items.  You can then click through and purchase your items from a vast range of suppliers and (perhaps the area I like the most) a range of independent designer makers through their boutique

Another company to embrace the use of 3D technology is Established & Sons. Launched at the Salone Internazionale Del Mobile in Milan this year, they presented their new own label collection Estd through an interactive 3D screen created by Yoox.com. Four items were presented in an interactive way (Dip Soft Grid, Plan,Butt)that allowed the viewer to discover them, play, move turn and even throw them via a touch-screen. Although this technology isn’t available online yet, you can just imagine them tinkering away to create an Ipad App for it.

In a bid to get in touch with the consumer and take the work  directly to them Tom Dixon has come up with his Flash Factory . Appearing in many locations over the next year products will be assembled according to the customers need and demand. Its an interesting experiment on the inefficiency of our current means of production and delivery whereby products take months to be shipped across the world to the end user. The Flash Factory kicked off in Milan with members of Toms London team creating the Etch light for customers. The Factory then moved to New York for ICFF where willing volunteers created the products, there payment being other Tom Dixon products. In a quote from the man himself “Flash Factory demonstrates Future Industry and the new found power of the designer, able to service world markets with the latest products in greatly reduced time scales.”  Its an interesting concept and people visiting the Factory do enjoy engaging, and chatting and buying the work. Yes I did buy and Etch light – it was only 30 Euros for a bit of design history!

Friend and contemporary of Tom, Piet Hein Eek is also keen to engage the consumer in the process of production, although his factory is in no way portable! Its real and its huge. The concept is to rennovate an old Phillips factory to create a space where products will be made and sold. Its interactive but in the traditional sense, people can meet, talk, watch, create, shop and eat under one roof. Visitors can wander round without losing site of the workplace and offices; and workspaces will be rented to like minded creatives to create a community of production in a space that was once for mass production. Its a wonderfully idealistic response to an economic crisis and I can’t wait to visit it when it opens in October, in time for Dutch Design week.

Folding Plug by Min-Kyu Choi. I remember seeing this design at the Royal College of Art last year and immediately loving it. Its such a great move on from the bulky plugs we’re used to. Inspiration came from the anomaly of having a wafer thin laptop and an oversized plug, as he says here.  ”When people carry laptops with U.K plugs in a bag, it always causes problems such as tearing paper, scratching laptop surfaces and, sometimes, it breaks other stuff. The main problem is the UK standard 3-pin plug is not considered in the process of designing for mobility. My intention of the project was directed to make the plug as slim as possible and follow the British Standard regulation at the same time.”

I’m sure this design can be adapted for the varoious international  plugs and he has already developed a USB version. It will be interesting to see the product through into production and in its various guises across the world.  Its also astonishing that the design of the UK plug has hardly changed since 1946.  Little wonder that his radical redesign has won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year.

Desile Chair by Christian Desile for Vange  This is quite a beautiful graphic work, it looks wonderful folded down and hung on a wall. But the practicalities of the chair are also rather stunning. Its made from bamboo, a sustainable environmentally friendly material. And packed  down 100 chairs can be stored in a 2 metre stack. Its a chair that works in both in the home and for commercial use.

Robert Haslbeck’s Under-Koffer table Inspired by a rather more humble but functional trestle table table, Roberts version is less cumbersome. Easy to set up and pack down, once folded the table looks like a suitcase. The supporting frame slides up as the table is folded to create the handle. I rather like his choice of muted colours for the table top. 

Sanna Lindström and Sigrid Strömgren’s Grand Central Folding Coffee table. Inspiration for this came from the New York street map. Its an ingeniuos use of a traditional paper fold, and also a refreshing change to see a folding table that has a round top.

PEGA have created a range of vinyl decals or wall stickers that unfold to perform different functions. Influenced by origami; as its always useful to go back to the masters of folding when creating a folding piece, the work only reveals its function when opened. The light switches on and casts its shadow when the lampshade is pulled out.  The radio emits sound when the gramaphone trumpet is pulled out. The scent diffuser releases a puff of fragrance when the perfume bottle is pushed.  

Reworking traditional familiar shapes, or complex designs made possible by technology, the common thread in these designs are the little tricks they play with us. The optical illusions from their transparencey; and they appear to be so delicate but actually have immense strength. Most here use coated steel wire whereas the Nido stool above uses fibre glass. 

Nido by Eva Marguerre for Masson. Made from fibreglass and reinforced plastic this range of stools and side table look incredibly delicate, but they are much tougher than they look.  Over on the Nido website you can see Eva jumping on them, flinging them in the air letting them crash to the ground without damage. They’re also very light, she can be seen cycling around with an impressive number of the on the back of her bike.

Kilian Schindler Monoblock chair. The plastic Monoblock chair; an unloved design – I guess we’re imune to its charms, its just too familiar. Its also prone to collapse when you least expect it. Kilian has reworked the design in a more durable coated steel.  

 Tio by Chris Martin & Magnus Elebäck forMassproductions“The design for “Tio” was the end result of a few months of thinking, sketching and sculpting. My point of departure was to arrange a fan of wires into a comfortable seat and then connect them in a straightforward and logical frame, which minimized the amount of steel used. So really the appeal comes from pragmatic thinking, executed within the restraints of the materials characteristics and according to an industrial production process. Sounds clinical, but the result is something I find very pleasing. For those who find steel wires too hard, we have developed an upholstered cushion to give extra comfort during long dining sessions.” – says Chris Martin

Oooms Wire Frame Chair The Wire-frame collection came into existence because of a great fascination of the wire-frame structures in the 3D modelling phase of the design process. This chair is designed by computer using 3D software and after that its handmade in real steel wire.
 

Autoban’s Wire King. Turkish design duo, Seyhan Ozdemir and Sefer Caglar updated their own King lamp base in steel with either a  brass plate or painted  finish. The original wooden version was inspired by the Baroque curves of chess pieces - hence the “King” name.

Something from Nothing Wire Lamp. A simple functional lamp of 3 parts. The shade, frame and electrical cord.

I can’t help thinking that if you went a bit crazy with wire, your home may look a little like the set from Tron…but thats just me being a bit silly.

Float by Benjamin Hubert for Unique Copenhagen. The lamps are hand-turned out of Portuguese agglomerate cork blocks, the waste bits from the production of wine stoppers. Even the high volume of waste from creating the lamps can be converted back into blocks and turned again.  The cork emits a wonderfully warm glow when lit and the simplicity of the shape suits the agglomerated pattern of the material. http://www.benjaminhubert.co.uk

Cobu  Suspension Lamp by Giorgio Biscaro “I have always been fascinated by cork. It’s obtained from a plant whose life is not interrupted by this extraction, and this for me would be sufficient to declare it a great material. Moreover, cork has great qualities of insulation and mechanical resistance, so I thought it could be perfect for a lamp. The cork base in fact, sustain a glass screen, trough which the cables descend. The light is not direct, but is deflected by the ceiling and the colour of the cork warms this light in a special way. I played with different shapes and finishes, so you will find clear glass, smoked glass and varnished glass to choose from. I tried to endow this lamp with a strong sense of deja-vu, like recollection of bottle glasses, because I wanted it to be a warm, friendly, reassuring object.” http://www.seemantic.com/

 Plug by Tomas Kral is a range of products that transform the image of a simple cork bottle stopper. The principle of PLUG. The work is around the connection between glass as a hard and compact material and the cork, perfect porous material.The glass parts were done using free glass blowing. The cork parts were made out of the sheets of agglomerated cork which were milled using CNC. The corks parts used the marks from the CNC milling tool as a part of theirs construction. The idea is to build 3D objects by milling using 2D drawings. The objects function are simple. Side table, lamps, boxes, bowls. The idea was to put more attention on the connection between glass and the cork. 

Cork range by Hetta There’s nothing particularly radical about the range its just a  well done contemporary update . Simple graphic prints on tableware, its a no brain-er. Ahh the simplest of ideas ….one of those  why didn’t I do that… www..hetta.se 

Incidentally, to my shame I wrote this post accompanied by a screw top bottle of red….