One of the take home messages from the Vitra Design Museum's Lightopia exhibition is that lighting design is rarely about the form of the final object - that is often little more than an expression of the designers artistic sensibilities - and much more is about, for example, the utilisation of materials in the construction or the method by which the light is generated and the luminescence distributed.
This reality was wonderfully underscored by Austrian designer Sebastian Zachl's Passionswege 2013 project with and for the Viennese lampshade producer Donauer Lampenschirme.
Taking the principle that a lampshade is a context not an object, Sebastian Zachl created a family of wire lampshades based on the skeleton of more conventional lampshades, lampshades that rather than shading one from the light define a border between the light source and the space it serves and in doing so promote the light source to the central feature. A role normally reserved for the shade. The concept of the "naked" lampshade itself isn't that new - indeed one of the very first pictures in the Lightopia catalogue "Masterpieces. 100 Lamps" is of a 1911 chandelier from Alfred Loos that reduces the luxurious extravagance of the genre down to a brass ring and six hanging light bulbs - and so the important question is, has the designer achieved something new with his project?
Delightful as Sebastian Zachl's objects are/were, and as much as we enjoyed the interplay of light and shadow they generated, we'd have to say on the whole no, with one delicious exception: the model with the rechargeable battery that can be used as a stationary hanging lamp and then carried to another room, or outside, or placed on the floor, whatever. In effect an LED version of the candle the lamp is a simple yet inspired modern lighting solution that not only reduces the number of lamps you need but also allows one lamp to create a varied number of moods within the same space.
Which as a concept genuinely interested us and which we hope Sebastian Zachl has the chance to develop further in the future.
A few impressions.....
