Beam Me Up

Lighting is crucial to an interior and it has to be planned out at the start of a project. Lighting can’t be an afterthought. You need to know what lighting is needed where and how much light it needs to generate. Also, ideally all lighting should be dimmable. And if it can marry precision engineering with beauty so much the better. Which is why great lighting is expensive. Two leading but very differents brands which demonstrate what is meant by good lighting are Germany’s Occhio and Italy’s Catellani & Smith. Occhio prides itself on ‘extraordinary design and exceptional quality’ which makes its products a joy to use. Architects love it because it has a certain mathematical precision to it and if you want to be sure a light is going to do its job properly, you won’t be disappointed. Founded in 1999 by Axel Meise, the company

Germany and Italy are home to great lighting brands. Occhio and Catellani & Smith offer very different products and looks but both inspire us to invest in enduring style and quality

This image: Occhio’s Sento lamp in desk and wall model. The lamp gives atmospheric pools of light when wall-mounted, while the desk lamp gives a highly focused beam for easy reading Below: Sento pendant lights hung over a dining table. Facing page, top left: Mito pendant light; top right, from left, designer Christoph Kügler and Occhio founder Axel Meise

Catellani & Smith’s splendid Macchina della Luce pendant is made from aluminium and finished in gold leaf. It gives off ‘the golden light of the sun’

Catellani & Smith’s Stchu-Moon large floor lamp. Aluminium with silver leaf finish

started out with what he calls ‘a simple yet revolutionary concept: to create a luminaire system universal in design and quality of light, offering the ideal solution for every spatial requirement’. Today Occhio is one of the most innovative and fast growing lighting companies and has evolved from a German design icon into an international lifestyle brand. Light has always fascinated Meise. No surprise then that he turned his passion into his profession at an early stage, saying he wanted to use the power of light to improve the quality of people’s lives and to open up for them entirely new possibilities in lighting design. His goal was to offer a universal system that would ensure consistent quality rather than piecemeal products he found on the market prior to starting Occhio. Against this backdrop, Meise developed the Occhio body-head luminaire system. He had worked on it in the mid-’90s and with design partner and physicist Christoph Kügler, and developed a comprehensive, modular system of luminaires with interchangeable reflector heads that could be combined in any number of ways to give users the ideal lighting solution for virtually any situation in both home and commercial settings. Both then and now, this was a radical approach to aesthetics and design coupled with sophisticated technology that centers around the needs of the user at all times. ‘Occhio’s recipe for success is our focus on the

Pictured above: Catellani & Smith’s Gold Moon chandelier comprises small wire moons lit with LEDs. Every fixture is handmade in the company’s workshops in Bergamo in northern Italy Facing page, bottom right: Catellani & Smith’s magical Fil de Fer floor lights are made from thin wire and given gold or silver finishes

Central to Occhio is its bodyhead luminaire system - one fitting for multiple casings

Left: Occhio’s Mito model as ceiling light strips. Above: Occhio customers can choose small hand-held control panels for their lighting systems.

essential,’ explains Meise. ‘So we distribute a few systems rather than many individual luminaires and this allows us to go deeper into every detail and focus on product quality. ‘For me, a good light must incorporate three components,’ says Meise. ‘The design must be right. It should enrich a space without being obtrusive, and blend harmoniously into every interior design. In addition, quality of light is a critical aspect, because good light means quality of life. ‘And finally, the question of how I can work with light is important, how the light interacts with the space, architecture and needs of the user. I have to be able to adjust and change the light to my individual preferences. ‘To achieve this, we use digital technology. With our Bluetooth-based app control, gesture control and many other features we can give the user unique added value.’

Catellani & Smith

Based in Bergamo, Enzo Catellani founded his company in 1980. Incidentally, there is no Mr or Mrs Smith working with him, rather the Smith in the partnership refers to Logan Smith, a horse Catellani owned in his youth. ‘We were happy for people to think Smith was an architect in the firm, we just didn’t put them right at the time!’ recalls Catellani, one of the most creative of lighting designers in the industry. Catellani & Smith lighting is more decorative and whimsical than Occhio’s, which is why it’s perfect for palazzos. But it’s also very precise, with models made to give differing amounts of light and aesthetic effects. The company uses predominantly metal - steel and alumium, with LEDs for the light source, which of course makes products economical to run. Every C&S light is made by hand and is a true labour of love. Catellani explains his process: ‘When I create a lamp, I always start with a prototype; my laboratory is a workshop where I continually accumulate materials, components and objects of all different kinds; and this is where everything is born... I assemble, weld, bend, shape...I need to feel the materials, to see how they play with light. In this initial stage there is no real design, the idea must take shape immediately, becoming an object. ‘Only at this point do I move on to the traditional design phase: feasibility, technical characteristics and much more; it’s an idea of light, and the desire to tell about it, which guides me through the construction. I believe this process can be felt in products by Catellani & Smith. ‘A large part of my production is made up by pieces that require a great amount of craftsmanship: it’s the hand of the craftsman that builds them, their manual work that creates the imperfection, making a truly unique object.’

Occhio.de catellanismith.com

Lighting should allow you to feel you’re at the theatre - it’s fabulous to have the ability to create pools of limelight in a dark room, or bring an ethereality to your stairwell