By now, in a normal year, the Milan fair and Light+Building would have taken place—the peak period for the introduction of new lights. Without such events, it is not so easy to keep up-to-date with what is available.
So this is the first of a small series of posts in which I’m going to highlight recently introduced luminaires that have caught my eye. And, of course, I’m going to start with the feature pieces, the wow factor, the Instagram bait!
Castro Rainforest
An enticing mix of horizontals and verticals, being metal leaves with glass drops raining down through them:
supplemented by some butterflies:
The lamps (G9s) are above the leaves. As standard, Rainforest is 150x50cm with a 50cm drop.
It hangs from a rectangular ceiling plate…
…that can be any RAL colour you like, as can the leaves. However, as standard, the leaves are in one of Castro Lighting’s metal finishes:
Click here for Rainforest’s web page.
Vibia Sticks
Arik Levy’s “lighting toolkit”, as Vibia wisely describe Sticks, is just that—a set of components that allows you to do amazing things.
Square section rods emit light out of one side. They come in three lengths (1.5m, 2m and 3m) that can be connected to each other, up to a maximum of 6.5m. They can be rotated.
A set of installation components…
…also allows them to be attached to the floor, the wall or the ceiling, or to be a pendant. So you can do ceiling-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, floor-to-wall, wall-to-ceiling…
The resulting arrangements can articulate and animate the largest spaces—for (given the scale) very little money!
So, by adding a few accessories, Sticks elevates the humble profile to the status of an artwork! Clever. You can never tell with Arik Levy, can you? Sometimes he just seems to phone it in, yet at others, particularly for Vibia, he comes up with masterful concepts like this. Click here for its web age.
Bomma Stellar Dust
Bomma has now joined the likes of Vibia and Fabbian by introducing a series of designs that can be used to create large scale effects like the one above. They have brought the series together under the umbrella name of Constellation. Click here for the Constellation catalogue.
I’m picking out Stellar Dust because—well, just look at it!
What is going on here? An engraved glass shape containing a lamp….
…is hanging at the end of a cable that also has more (unilluminated) glass shapes attached to it:
From a budget point of view, this approach of adding some more glass shapes without lights in them (pioneered by Vistosi in their Oto design) makes a lot of sense. It means that several shapes can be hung on a single strand, reducing the quantities of cables and light bodies required. This matters because such displays require a lot of pendants, so anything that keeps the cost down is welcome. The arrangement above (in Prague’s J&T Bank) required 727 pendants. By adding a further 2,476 crystals components, without breaking the budget, they create this layered effect—as if the main pendants are being reflected or echoed, as if the installation has infinite depth. Click here for the web page.
Album Lumieraled
Album is the most important lighting company that you’ve probably never heard of. They singlehandedly provide the widest range of ways to ensure that you can always put the light source as near as possible to the thing being lit, and therefore that you don't waste energy. They achieve this by having a unique range of suspension systems to hold a wonderful selection of Pepe Tanzi’s small luminaires. They’ve now introduced Lumieraled, a suspension system which is not unique at all—the circular ceiling plate:
It means tht you can now suspend up to thirty six pendants in a group:
There is a choice of twenty four designs for you to use! And within the twenty four are further variations. Thus, the installation at the Liberty Villa on Lake Como shown above uses the hugely versatile Venere in this form:
But there are also dichroic versions of Venere:
Here are some other designs:
Click here for the web page for Lumieraled from Album. Do explore; they offer you a huge range of practical, attractive, well-priced options!
Veronese Lido
Finally, as Murano glass specialists, we thought we’d seen everything, but Bruno Moinard has come up with Lido for Veronese!
Actually, though the form is novel, the components aren’t. They are the pieces made to clothe the arms of Murano chandeliers:
The remarkable thing about them is that, because the arms curve, each piece has to be slightly different, yet the maestri make them by eye! Click here and here for Lido web pages.
If you are interested in any of these (or you are wondering about any others that I did not include), do get in touch. Designing such installations is a lot more complex than just specifying a pendant, so the final solution is a collaboration between you, and us and the designers at the brand. Which is fun!
