Italian Lighting
When it comes to lighting—go Italian.
Italian lighting from the 1950s through ‘70s is truly alchemical. It has an enigmatic quality to it; inherently characterful, with the ability to both define a space and transform it.
I suspect this is due to its cultural context. In postwar Italy, a generation of designers trained as architects—Aulenti, Castiglioni, Magistretti, Colombo, and others—were thinking deeply about human behavior and the ways people actually inhabit a space. Working with companies like Flos, Artemide, and Oluce, they paired these ideas with emerging models of industrial production to imagine an entirely new language of lighting: technologically progressive yet informed by historical traditions of sculpture, theater, and craft.
Italian lighting shares the rationalism of Bauhaus, only softened. There are telescoping parts, modular systems, halogen technology, moldable plastics, but the result is never severe. It’s Italian! There’s a whimsical quality, a looseness, cleverness, an exploratory spirit. And always, a sculptural element.
It’s a vernacular that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The below designs are the ones you really can’t go wrong with.
