Tenth edition: Evolution – transforming people, things and places. Formafantasma’s SuperWire blends past and future, Bellhop by E. Barber & J. Osgerby transforms into a glass marvel, Flos’ icons are forever, new chromatic life for Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s Snoopy, and the best of Flos Hosting across European design cities.
Formafantasma’s SuperWire is born from the designers’ experimentation with the illuminating filament of LED bulbs, which they manipulated in its flexibility and aesthetic presence to create a collection of modular lamps that merge an industrial attitude with timeless design codes. Captured across these pages by Robert Rieger at Giuseppe De Finetti’s Villa Crespi, the collection comprises a table, suspension and floor version. Each lamp is characterised by a hexagon footprint and made of planar glass panels connected with aluminium elements, illuminated by a thin, flat, soft and flexible LED strip, a unique innovation especially developed by Flos to measure up to one metre in length.
SuperWire fits within the studio’s wider scope, combining an environmental concern (the collection is a rare example of a lighting design where an LED light source can be removed by the user to be replaced) with a poetic aesthetic. Theatre and Opera Director Fabio Cherstich met Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, for a conversation that mapped the studio’s work through a cultural lens that explored their practice from the inside out.
Formafantasma’s SuperWire: a timeless lamp for the future
FABIO CHERSTICH The floor version of SuperWire reminds me of a rocket. I want to give our conversation the arc that Georges Perec traces in his book "Species of Spaces", exploring spaces from the blank page, to the bed, to the desk, to the house, to the city, to the State, up to the earth seen from the constellations. I imagine myself riding your missile-lamp, projected towards the ocean of your work, like Astolfo flying towards the moon...
ANDREA TRIMARCHI SuperWire is definitely a bit of a rocket so it seems like a fitting image to me!
FABIO CHERSTICH "Species of spaces" has as its opening image a map of the ocean taken from "The Hunting of the Snark" by Lewis Carroll: a simple square containing the white space of the page inside it. I wanted to take this image and understand what it means for Formafantasma to outline the ocean of the various languages you inhabit, to understand what this white space is for you – if it exists at all.
SIMONE FARRESIN It is very difficult to draw the boundaries of our practice. We always talk about the limits of the design discipline because we want to be rooted within them, but we are interested in pushing the limits of that discipline, even if not in a programmatic way. We do it by following the attitude we have built in this time. In our case the page exists only on a metaphorical level, because ours is a twoway dialogue, we are never faced with the dilemma of the blank page. If there is a dialogue there is always a beginning.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI There is never silence.
SIMONE FARRESIN So even though our practice is very intimate and expressive, it’s as if it were at the centre. It is a source of continuous mediation, so we like to think that it is objective.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI All the themes we cover with our work come from our interests. To return to the discussion of borders, ‘design’ can mean many things, and this places us in a limbo. We come from the world of product design, but the interests, problems and urgencies of twenty years ago are completely different from those of today: design has always been a promoter of contemporaneity. And if in the post-war period the idea was to create objects that could be useful, we think that today utility is probably not the only one.
SIMONE FARRESIN We must constantly
ask ourselves what’s the meaning of useful. Which is not only a function of the object, but can also be expressive, political. I believe it is also important to talk about the fact that design was born as an applied, commissioned discipline, so its nature is not only defined by our practice but also by the clichés, stereotypes and archetypes built over time. It is important to recognize that the author could be extremely important to interpret the result of the design, but other times it is not enough. There is a very nineteenth-century, romantic vision of the author. However, this isn’t always the case, and it doesn’t mean that we try to be as free as possible. Because it is important to understand the mechanisms and policies within which we work, what these limits and boundaries are.
FABIO CHERSTICH And in the case of SuperWire, what was the exchange of dialogue that the lamp originated from, and how did Flos accommodate this technological madness of yours with an art-deco flavour, which then translated into such a complex lamp?
SIMONE FARRESIN When we were developing the previous lamp, WireLine, there were various types of light tube technologies, including the filaments that are used to make LED bulbs. When we saw this 30 centimetre long flexible filament, we immediately said that we wanted to use it for a project, so we started from the technology.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI Usually these filaments were five, six centimetres long, then we found the 30 centimetre one, but the technology was not developed enough to be able to arrive at a very long filament, which was then developed with Flos R&D.
SIMONE FARRESIN It took us four years to make this lamp, it was a very long process, in which technology partly generated the shape. However, the lamp reflects on topics that we had already explored many years before with a project called Ore Streams, on the electronics industry and the lack of repairability. Since this topic is very important both for us and Flos, SuperWire has been designed to be completely disassembled, including the LED light source, customized by Flos R&D to be autonomously replaced by the user (which is usually very complicated).
ANDREA TRIMARCHI You can order the small filament inside the glass tube and replace it at home, without having to return the lamp.
SIMONE FARRESIN Then there is the aesthetic element; with Flos, we have built a very intuitive aesthetic for this lamp. It is an almost alienating object, you could date it as an Art Deco object, or extremely futuristic, it has an aesthetically complex appearance to read.
FABIO CHERSTICH After discussing the blank page, Perec talks about the desk: following his path, I ask you how your studio is organised, how are your desks organised?
ANDREA TRIMARCHI The problem is that they are not organised.
SIMONE FARRESIN We read an interview with Enzo Mari who talked about his office. He wanted a wooden table, a light bulb and nothing else, because he needed clarity. We want the guys in the office not to keep anything on the table, and we are totally despotic about this idea that the desks must be free.
FABIO CHERSTICH So what is allowed?
SIMONE FARRESIN Just them. Then during the day things get complicated but it is very important that at the end of the day the table is free again.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI We like clarity. When there is spatial confusion then there is also mental confusion. When I said that there is no organisation, it is because we never wanted to structure the studio in a pyramidal way. We don’t have studio managers, it’s all very horizontal, the work teams are flexible, we like the idea of flattening the hierarchy.
SIMONE FARRESIN In our studio there are no tasks but there are projects. And I believe it is essential that a person who works with creativity has the possibility of designing, and not carrying out tasks. This is the basis, and we are involved in all of the studio’s projects. The nice thing is that over time a conversation that began between two people is expanding to many other people, as what we do all day is talk. We don’t draw, we talk.
FABIO CHERSTICH Your projects are therefore born from words and constant dialogue between you and the team. This is truly unexpected for me... a studio work made of flows of words and dialogues rather than graphic signs...
SIMONE FARRESIN Yes, and editing. Over
time this name that we chose at the beginning of our journey, Formafantasma, is becoming more and more rooted in our process, and we are using its possibilities, but also its limits. We chase ideas and this means that sometimes we end up in territories that are not ours.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI We can enter into discussions with anyone, our projects speak to anthropologists or scientists. What changes is the way we operate, the position we take within a project. There were very few times in which we went beyond our role as designers, and those times we understood that we had to stay within our limits.
FABIO CHERSTICH I wanted to move now from the study to the bedroom: you had a home studio for quite a few years – it was like that in Amsterdam too – so you really went from the bed to the kitchen to the study... Having tidy desks at the end of the day was the equivalent of not having children’s toys scattered around the house in the evening...
SIMONE FARRESIN Exactly!
FABIO CHERSTICH I wanted to follow Perec and move outside, think about the city. You do a lot for Milan, the city you chose after Amsterdam. Have you done the same for Amsterdam, or is it Milan that has given you this possibility – I’m thinking of Flos, Prada Frames, or other activations that you have carried out in the city...
SIMONE FARRESIN Actually, whatever we do, we do it for us.
FABIO CHERSTICH Well done Simone, straight to the point!
SIMONE FARRESIN We are terrified of being self-indulgent because design cannot be an exclusively self-expressive act, that’s not the point. But the things we do must be interesting to us, and if they are profoundly interesting to us, we always trust that they are interesting to others too.
FABIO CHERSTICH I too, in the theatre, create what I would like to see on stage, hoping that others also think like me.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI In Milan there are many outlets, including the design week, the fashion week, museums, galleries. Amsterdam is more of a place of transit, a tourist city. There are some excellent museums, which we still collaborate with, and we were head of a department at the Design Academy Eindhoven; we tried to connect to the context.
When we were there, there was this very nationalist idea, they always asked us if we considered ourselves Dutch or Italian designers, how we positioned ourselves.
FABIO CHERSTICH Yours is a much broader projection of the city, of the state, it is a truly international projection, because your work is all over the world.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI Not only that, for example in Eindhoven our department was called Geodesign because it looked at the discipline in a transnational context.
SIMONE FARRESIN At a time when design operates within a neoliberal economic system, there is no point to focus on Italian design.
ANDREA TRIMARCHI Any object we create exists in a very branched context, and therefore talking about nationality doesn’t make much sense. In reality I think that Milan offers more and therefore makes us more present.
FABIO CHERSTICH And it amplifies your work in a very interesting way. I think we talked too much. I have to ask you the last question: What does the Earth look like from the outside, from Formafantasma galloping on their SuperWire?
SIMONE FARRESIN We have a perception of the Earth as a complete and finite planet. As designers, we are aware of the global complexity of infrastructure, design and production, and this awareness gives us a strong sense of responsibility. The world is not only the planet we live on, but also how we transform and reassemble it. There is no single image of the planet; living as humans on Earth means constantly creating worlds. We can build these worlds in collaboration with other species or alone, but in solitude we risk creating deserted planets.
ISSUE TEN
The story of lighting design is a story of constant evolution. From candlelight to the most advanced LED, every step in its journey has been defined by a mix of technology and poetry. ‘The goal of intelligent lighting design is just replicating a candle in a space, going back to the fire and the original source,’ said Edward Barber, who with studio co-founder Jay Osgerby has updated the iconic Bellhop in a more ‘grown up’ version, now in glass. The lamp’s latest development demonstrates the ability of iconic design to be able to adapt to the changing needs of contemporaneity.
Design critic Deyan Sudjic expresses this perfectly in his text introducing Flos’ icons. The photographic portfolio of legendary designs ranging from 1960s Castiglioni to 1990s Jasper Morrison and even most recently Michael Anastassiades’ IC from 2014 proves the objects’ enduring quality. Sudjic writes, ‘Flos has found ways to equip designs from the 1960s with new light sources [...], the fact that they can be accommodated in the forms devised for other technologies reflects the continuing relevance of those designs.’
Another icon under the spotlight this month is Snoopy, a 1967 design by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni whose silhouette nods to the most popular comic strip dogs of all times. Its
exemplary design features a seamless combination of slanted marble base and an enamelled metal reflector available in black, green, orange and now in a new shade of blue favoured by the Castiglioni in their work.
Flos also takes us to the Giuseppe De Finettidesigned Villa Crespi, whose modernist, woodpanelled and brick-clad interiors form the backdrop to Formafantasma’s SuperWire. Another brilliant example of lighting design evolution, the lamp is based on a small light filament that captured the designers’ attention and inspired them to create a new kind of beauty, informed by their sense of innovation and responsibility.
We asked theatre director Fabio Cherstich to interview studio founders Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin: over an hour-long conversation, Cherstich explored Formafantasma’s universe from a micro-to-macro perspective, offering us a new point of view on the duo’s approach.
And finally, we celebrate Flos’ latest evolution. Over the past year, the Flos Hosting series has brought together design communities in key European cities, as the company proves its mission to take part in the wider discourse on design, and leaving its illustrious mark on contemporary design culture.
Cover Story
Formafantasma’s SuperWire: a timeless lamp for the future ↓
Questionnaire
Philippe Malouin
28
The transformation of Bellhop ↑ Eduard Barber & Jay Osgerby
68
Flos Hosting in Milan, Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen
80
← Introducing Snoopy in Blue Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni
Interview by Rosa Bertoli
by Mattia Parodi
The transformation of Bellhop: an E. Barber & J. Osgerby classic returns in glass
One of E. Barber & J. Osgerby’s most iconic designs for Flos, Bellhop grew from a compact, colourful portable lamp to a full range of illumination possibilities that encompasses a floor lamp, a wall uplighter and outdoor bollard. In its latest iteration, Bellhop is a large-scale glass lamp, exploring the legendary design in a new material gesture and bringing it to new aesthetic
and technical possibilities. Defined by a triplex opaline glass diffuser developed in collaboration with the Flos R&D Department, the lamp is available as a table version with an aluminium base available in Bright Aluminium, Cioko and White, and in three sizes as a suspension lamp. Here, its creators Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby tell us about their design’s journey.
Photography
ROSA BERTOLI Through the pages of this issue, we’re looking at the theme of evolution, and Bellhop is a great example of a design that has gone through several iterations while maintaining its defined identity. How did you approach the evolution of the design, from small portable lamp to large-scale ceiling and table lamp?
EDWARD BARBER In 8 years, Bellhop has morphed into various different products, and it’s been a big success. Because it was actually designed for the Design Museum restaurant, it was conceived to bounce light from the surface. Bellhop Glass, that we call Bellhop grown up, is really an evolution. Not only because it has grown up in scale, but also in materials: glass and metal instead of plastic, which allows the whole product to glow as the lights does not reflect off the surface as in the previous models.
JAY OSGERBY Obviously the big difference is that the original Bellhop is portable. When it launched, it was that really brilliant thing that happens when the technology is right, and just at the right moment, to be able to change a way of using something, so it became the new candle. That meant you could walk around the house, or take it outside, and bring the atmosphere with you as you go. We were able to develop Bellhop into a collection because the archetype of it is familiar, people were already drawn to it. The thing about Bellhop is that it’s quite playful and its use of colour has made it very accessible. And now we’re doing something that has a very reduced colour range but in these more sophisticated materials. We changed the way that it works from something that’s personal, that creates space just around you, to something that creates an atmosphere, that is more architectural.
ROSA BERTOLI Somehow the Bellhop had already evolved in scope over the years, from a portable lamp to a fixed object, with floor, wall and outdoor iterations that you and Flos have developed over the years.
JAY OSGERBY The evolution of models over the years has not changed the function of creating areas of ambient light. With the exception of the Bellhop Wall Up, which has made the ceiling stand out and started to move the light output concept in a different direction
ROSA BERTOLI Where did the idea of glass come from, and how did the material inform what you did with the design?
EDWARD BARBER We definitely wanted to relate to the existing collection. So we used pretty much an identical form, which we tweaked only slightly. The credenza version for instance is the same thing, blown up. For the pendant, we added a hole at the bottom to get a nice ambient glow and light coverage onto a surface. We spent ages working out what size that hole should be, so that you get the maximum amount of light, but without seeing the bulb.
JAY OSGERBY The idea came from the uplighter, which has a glass diffuser on it too, as it’s just universally lovely when you have light diffuse through white glass; it’s fantastic. It is a really nice way of just changing the frequency of the light so it becomes more appealing to be around.
ROSA BERTOLI The quality of light is always the starting point for you, can you tell me more about how that is reflected in these two designs?
JAY OSGERBY Bellhop started as a local, small light, then as you move on to the ceiling lamp, it’s giving character to an architectural space, but also gives you usable light for a tabletop. And the credenza one is about creating an atmosphere in space. And that’s why we’re using the white glass to diffuse the light in the way that we are. When we were developing the designs, we tried to push the language of the elements, the dome and the cylinder, but ultimately decided to keep it more closely related with the rest of the family.
ROSA BERTOLI They definitely have a sense of speaking the same language, but they are two completely different lights – they are essentially new lights with a familiar language.
EDWARD BARBER Exactly.
ROSA BERTOLI Can you tell me about the glass you used?
JAY OSGERBY It’s triplex opaline, meaning it’s three layers that are blown together at the same time. You’ve got clear glass on the outside, then a white layer and then a thin layer of clear glass again, and the thicknesses are different for each layer. It’s all mouth-blown and very labour intensive. Then that goes into a kiln, which starts at around 800 degrees, and then it cools it slowly over 24 hours.
ROSA BERTOLI How did you integrate aluminium into the design?
JAY OSGERBY When we launched Bellhop originally, we actually had aluminium bases and spun aluminium tops: it’s a collection that’s constantly changing, but the material palette is more or less the same. But I’d say that aluminium has been one of the most important materials that we’ve worked with as a studio over the years. We could have done this ceiling lamp in aluminium, but then it would have been a shade, not a lamp. And for us that’s very much the distinction: the whole thing is a lamp, not a shade.
ROSA BERTOLI How much were you able to test the design yourselves?
EDWARD BARBER The credenza one in particular, we have been developing it over the past five or six years. We tried many different models, and then in the end we just reduced it down to the most basic concept, because in the end it just made sense for this product.
JAY OSGERBY The other thing that’s interesting about this collection is that it feels more like a companion to life rather than a provocateur. It’s not avant garde. We have done that with other projects, but these products can have incredible performance and have a character which is both familiar and contemporary.
ROSA BERTOLI Having tried it, how does it behave in a space?
EDWARD BARBER We are very much imagining the credenza lamp in a hotel room, the pendant lamp could go everywhere, from offices to restaurants. But for us it’s a light that works much better in a home, it creates its own little world of light around it. Because the goal of intelligent lighting design is just replicating the light of a candle in a space, no matter how big or small, going back to the fire and the original source.
ICONS
Photography by Daniel Riera
LEFT Achille Castiglioni and Taraxacum 88, 1988. Photography by Cesare Colombo.
RIGHT Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni with architect Marcel Breuer, 1962. Photography by Franco Cotti.
ESSENTIALLY CONTEMPORARY
Words by Deyan Sudjic
Not many things that were first made in 1962 and are still in production today can be regarded as being ‘contemporary’. To be contemporary isn’t the same as being ‘modern’, which is now a category of design that has taken on the flavour of a particular historical moment closely associated with the foundation of New York’s Museum of ‘Modern’ Art in 1929. Nor is it about being ‘timeless’, a characteristic which achieves longevity through the adoption of an impersonal variety of neutrality.
Flos manufactures designs conceived a lifetime ago that still feel as relevant and as contemporary as the IC lamp designed by Michael Anastassiades that the company put into production as recently as 2014. What connects them is that they are not afraid to show a sense of personality. Flos looks for new voices from another generation to ensure that it remains closely associated with the idea of the contemporary, rather than turning the brand into a museum of the recent past. In the same year that Flos launched Arco, Taccia and Toio, three of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s most memorable lamps as the heart of its first lighting collection, Italy’s most ubiquitous car was the curvaceous Fiat Cinquecento. And Brionvega introduced the Doney Europe’s first all-transistor black and white portable tv. All of them are brilliantly inventive reflections of Italy’s creative industrial culture and have a lot to say about the history of design in general and of 1962 in particular. But of them all, only the three Castiglioni designed lights remain in production today.
The car was the work of the gifted engineer Dante Giacosa and an economical means of transport for the masses. But now seems very much a product of another time. The tv still looks modern, though its technology has been redundant for decades. The three lights possess another quality; they still seem contemporary and so remain relevant. The dizzying pace of technological and social change that has overtaken the industrial world has meant that not many objects now last longer than a few years and that makes those few that do survive all the more significant. Pier Giacomo Castiglioni died in 1968, but his brother Achille would go on to work with Flos for many years.
It was the minimalist Dan Flavin who began making art from standard fluorescent lighting tubes eight feet long in “any commercially available colour” as he put it, in the 1960s who drew a distinction between what he called ‘image’ and ‘object’. For Flavin the image of his work was the effect of the light when it was on. The object is the apparatus that produced it. The lights made by Flos come close to Flavin’s understanding of the possibilities of the form in a context outside the gallery and the museum.
Flos’s products reflect a wide range of design languages. There is the sophisticated, knowing wit of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni who used ready-made components, including a fishing rod, a hand-saw, a transformer and a car headlamp to create the Toio floor lamp in much the same spirit that Marcel Duchamp repurposed a urinal. But there is also the formal purity of Tobia Scarpa’s Biagio designed in 1968 and the laconic sensibility of Jasper Morrison’s Glo-Ball from the 1990s.
Flos was born in 1962, the outcome of a series of earlier experiments with Cocoon, a manufacturing technique which depended on spraying a plastic material over a substructure that had recently become available in Italy. The Cocoon technology made possible the Castiglioni brothers’ lamps named for obvious reasons as Taraxacum and Gatto; respectively the Italian words for ‘dandelion’ and ‘cat’, as well as Viscontea. Flos’s founders, Dino Gavina and Cesare Cassina, two of the key figures in post-war Italian design, did not limit the company to making light fittings from a material as synthetic as plastic. Taccia still relies on the traditional skills of Venetian craftsmen to blow the glass diffusor that sits on top of a fluted cast aluminium base designed to dissipate heat from the original incandescent light source. The swooping chromed structure of Arco is anchored in a block of polished white Carrara marble. In 1967, Flos launched Snoopy, the Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s tribute in marble and enamelled steel to Charles M. Schultz’s cartoon strip anthropomorphic beagle. Flos went on to take over the production of some of the Castiglioni brothers’ earlier work, notably the Luminator, designed in 1955. In 1972 Flos acquired Arteluce’s catalogue, a company established by Gino Sarfatti, a brilliant engineer and entrepreneur. Sarfatti himself designed more than 600 pieces for Arteluce. Most of them were never intended for large volume production, but some of his highly refined work is still available from Flos. Unlike the whimsical names that Castiglioni gave his work, Sarfatti had the rationalist discipline of an engineer. His lamps have numbers, not names. The 2097 now made by Flos belongs to the 2000 sequence, designated for chandeliers.
The 1000 series was reserved for floor lamps, and the 3000 for ceiling lights.
To be contemporary is to be ready to adapt to changing circumstances.
In the last decade, the pace of change in lighting technology has accelerated with the eclipse of traditional incandescent light sources mandated by European Union legislation.
Flos has found ways to equip designs from the 1960s with new light sources. Light Emitting Diodes are more efficient, and emit less heat, but the fact that they can be accommodated in the forms devised for other technologies reflects the continuing relevance of those designs.
In their essence, they remain contemporary. And even more important, Flos has gone on to find new designers who have their own version of the quality of the contemporary, to work with, to make lights that bring our worlds to life.
LEFT Tobia Scarpa and Biagio. Flos Archive.
RIGHT Arco,1962. Photography by Studio Casali, Courtesy Fondazione Achille Castiglioni.
Arco, design icon since 1962. Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.
Snoopy, design icon since 1967. Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.
Taraxacum 88, design icon since 1988. Achille Castiglioni.
Parentesi, design icon since 1971. Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù.
Luminator, design icon since 1954. Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.
IC, design icon since 2014. Michael Anastassiades.
Gatto, design icon since 1960. Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.
Glo-Ball, design icon since 1998. Jasper Morrison.
Taccia, design icon since 1962. Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.
2097, design icon since 1958. Gino Sarfatti.
Flos Hosting in Milan, Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen
Illustrations by Stefan Marx
Over the past year, Flos has invited its community of architects and designers to gather at the company’s spaces in Milan, Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen, for a series of conversations aimed at sharing inspiring perspectives on design and creativity. A project started in 2022 on the occasion of Flos’ 60th-anniversary celebration at Fabbrica Orobia, Flos Hosting has become an ongoing format that expands the company’s scope to connect with its global creative network, to partake in the wider conversation around the practices of design and architecture. Across these pages, we hear highlights of a year of Flos Hosting from the designers and architects that every day help shape Flos’ multifaceted cultural identity through inspired collaborations that range from products to spaces and beyond.
“Architecture, despite having all the tools to face the challenges of our time, often seems to lose its consistency when it is called upon to intervene concretely in crisis contexts. Dealing with Space - understood as a physical and symbolic place, a system of known references and a territory of possibilities - means making room for a new generation of designers and giving space to a renewed idea of discipline. With Spaziale, the design processes of architects have been enriched by other disciplines: as art, performance and sciences from different fields became part of the projects, architects were given a wider range of tools to work with.”
“My way to see sustainability is for objects to last a very long time. My main way to address sustainability is to make products that will stand the test of time and make something that in 10 years will not be out of fashion.”
In Paris 2nd March 2024
Philippe Malouin
Anja Aronowsky
“As young consumers we tend to spend money on what we wear because it indicates how we want to be perceived; when we get older and domesticity becomes preferable to partying, it’s our homes that we impress our friends with. That’s when people start investing in design.”
“In reality the role of design is to help us be together, it’s a way of bringing welcomeness through objects.”
Erwan Bouroullec
In Paris
2nd March 2024
Michael Anastassiades
“You can never run away from anything you do in life. Growing up in a country you are exposed to a certain culture, as a creative person you are constantly a sponge. That exists with everybody, but somehow with us creatives we express it, as other people don’t have that opportunity. At the end we are all the same and come from the same world.”
Arquitectura G
Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdampilleta
“Being radical means pushing limits where you are not comfortable and try to work there. It means something coming from the roots that debranches from the original meaning of something. This uncomfortable zone is the best place to be in the design world.”
Konstantin Grcic
“In the beginning someone gave me the advice to never mix incandescent light with fluorescent light, and today we do exactly the opposite. We understand that the space needs different lighting according to the different tasks that take place in that same space but at different times, and therefore light needs to be so much more that just one offering.”
“While designing this space for Flos we were told to not just show the designs but how the light feels so we had to create different lighting conditions and that’s what we endeavoured to do.”
Sam
Chermayeff
Introducing Snoopy in Blue
Photography by Alecio Ferrari
Set design by Beatrice Bonetto and Jessica Zorzin
An enduring legend of lighting design, Snoopy was conceived by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1967, the perfect embodiment of a tendency to infuse functional design with a sense of humour. With a silhouette resembling its namesake comic strip dog, the lamp’s design has remained unchanged, its slanted marble base supporting an enamelled metal shade held in perfect equilibrium. Typical Castiglioni ingenuity underpins the bright idea behind the lamp, with technology embedded into the base in an innovative move for the time. The Snoopy original with the black shade grew into a collection featuring green and orange versions. The latest addition, with a navy-blue shade, was inspired by a hue used by Achille and Pier Giacomo on their Sciuko lamp for Flos in 1966.
Philippe Malouin
Philippe Malouin’s design talent lies in his ability to take an extremely experimental approach and distil it into functional, enduring products that have the next generation in mind. Take his Bilboquet for Flos, a multi-use table light whose head connects to the body via a sleek magnetic sphere, allowing it to be used in a plethora of different configurations and moods. Here, he shares colourful snippets of his everyday life. Portrait by Pablo Di Prima.
What makes you happy?
Where did you go on your last trip?
What did you eat for breakfast?
Draw your favourite tool.
What do you collect?
Where do you most feel at home?
What do you do to relax?
What is the best time of the day for you?
Tell us something you’ve never done. The last book you read.
Theatre director Fabio Cherstich interviewed Formafantasma, starting from SuperWire and exploring their studio’s approach to design from the ground up (cover story). Cherstich’s home also served as the backdrop for E. Barber & J. Osgerby’s Bellhop Glass (p. 28).
Photographer Alecio Ferrari created a photographic series on Snoopy, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s legendary design to celebrate its new navy-blue shade (p. 80).
For our pages dedicated to Flos Hosting, Flos’ talks series across different European design cities, visual artist Stefan Marx created a series of tonguein-cheek illustrations that express the diversity of the company’s creative communities (p. 68).
Milanese photographer Mattia Parodi captured Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby’s Bellhop glass at Fabio Cherstich’s Milanese apartment (p. 28), with an intimate portfolio that displays the design’s presence in a space.
Based in Berlin, Robert Rieger travelled to Italy to photograph Formafantasma’s SuperWire at Giuseppe De Finetti’s Villa Crespi, creating a portfolio that vividly encapsulates the collection’s unique design between futuristic and nostalgic (cover story).
Daniel Riera’s photography elevates Flos’ icons (p. 39) through a series of evocative images where legendary designs by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Tobia Scarpa and more interact with mid-century architecture.
British design critic Deyan Sudjic charted the history of Flos’ Icons (p. 39), exploring the meaning of the concept through contemporary design history.
Acknowledgements
Edward Barber
Jess Berry
Ángel Cánovas Celdrán
Simone Farresin
Sora Leo
Piotr Niepsuj
Jay Osgerby
Amy Peet
Michela Pelizzari
P:S Creative Agency
Francesca Semprini Location
Andrea Trimarchi
Ceramiche Mutina
B&B Italia
Perna Evolution
Concept and Creative Direction
Apartamento Studios
Managing Editor
Rosa Bertoli
Graphic Design
Apartamento Studios
Flos Creative Director
Barbara Corti
Flos Team
Rosaria Bernardi
Elisa Bodei
Silvia Delaini
Donatella Matteoni
Francesco Funari
Diletta Dincao
Paola Arici
Translations
Team Agiliz@ tu gestion
Printing
LOGO S.p.A. Borgoricco (PD) August 2024
Bellhop Glass
E.Barber & J.Osgerby, 2024
Materials: glass, aluminum
Power S2: max 30W LED (max 75W HSGSA US version)
Power T: max 15W
Voltage: 220-240V (120V US version)
Light Source S2: LED 25W E27 2700K (US version pending)
Light Source T: LED 15W E27 2000lm 2700K/3000K CRI >80
Finishes: bright aluminum, cioko, white
Bellhop Glass T
Bellhop Glass S2
F1074064
F1074026
F1081084
F1081026
F1081009
F1074009
FU107464
FU107426
FU107409
FU108184
FU108126
FU108109
A. & P.G. Castiglioni, 2024
Materials: marble, metal
Power: MAX 150W (75W US version)
Voltage: 220-240V (100-120V US version)
Light Source: LED 8W E27 740lm 2700K/3000K CRI>80 (9W LED A19 2700K E26 US version)
New Finish: navy-blue
Also available in: black, green, orange
mm / 15,51''
mm / 14,52''
Finishes
F6380030
F6380039
F6380075
FU638030
FU638039
FU638075
F6380014
SuperWire
Formafantasma, 2024
Material: glass, aluminum
Power F: 56W
Power T: 18W
Voltage: 100-240/48
Light Source F: LED 56W 4130lm 2700K CRI>90
Light Source T: LED 18W 1200lm 2700K CRI>90
SuperWire F
SuperWire T
D301F01C3EAF2
D301T01C3EAF2
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