LIGHT + TECH 139
ACRILICA LUMINAIRE
EXHIBITION: DEAR JOE COLOMBO, YOU TAUGHT US THE FUTURE
The award-winning Acrilica was Joe Colombo’s first product for Oluce, founded in 1945, and one of the oldest Italian design companies in the lighting sector. It featured in an exhibition of his work, ‘Dear Joe Colombo, you taught us the future’, which opened at the GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna during Milan Design Week and runs until September.
Designed in 1962 with his brother Gianni (their only joint project), Acrilica exemplifies Colombo’s often prescient style, on the cusp of art and industry, which earned him the sobriquet of ‘prophet of design’.
facility, fabrication workshop and living-working space for architects, artists and designers. He is also the co-director of Material Architecture Lab, a ‘curious, playful and inquisitively collaborative’ design and research laboratory based at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His concept is a floor installation made from POLiROCK, a new material developed by Material Architecture Lab. A fired clay with characteristics somewhere between ceramic and rocks, it appears natural but is made from recycled manufacturing waste. Using its lightweight, porous qualities, the aim was to capture and explore the Welles silhouette by absorbing light instead of letting it through. The black ceramic shadows the shape of the original by literally making a shadow of it.
Alessandro Munge
Based in Toronto, award-winning Studio Munge specialises in luxury hospitality interiors. Munge set out to deconstruct
the original Welles and rebuild it using a new support system inspired by the imagery. The jewel-like connecting bracket has also been highlighted, ‘making it a hero on the front of the glass’. While the fixture’s structure is radically reconfigured, the modular principles remain with a facility to extend stems for extra tall ceilings and multiply the globes for larger spaces.
David Rockwell
The New York interdisciplinary architecture and design firm Rockwell Group celebrated the classic geometric form of the Welles, while creating a contemporary light fixture inspired by ‘clusters found in nature, such as crystals, chemical compounds and clouds’. The hollowed glass polygons act as metallic light points that come together at varying heights and dimensions to form a floating light cluster.
gabriel-scott.com
Oficially known as the 281 model, the table lamp is made from thermoformed methacrylate, which Colombo applied in a very particular way. The thickness and curve of the material allow the light from a fluorescent lamp (now LEDs) in the painted steel base to move through the transparent body, eventually lighting the head. The resultant illumination is indirect and diffused, as much a work of kinetic art as a lamp. To mark the 60th anniversary of the Salone, Oluce has produced an edition with a Portoro marble base.
In his short life, the characteristically bearded and pipe-smoking Colombo (1930–1971) worked with leading companies such as Kartell, Zanotta, Stilnovo, Alessi and Rosenthal, with most of his designs still being produced to the present day. Other luminaires designed for Oluce include Globe, Spider, Fresnel, Coupe and the eponymous Colombo.
oluce.com/en/designer/joe-colombo |
gam-milano.com/en/exhibitions-and-events/ dear-joe-colombo
COURTESY OF OLUCE SRL
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