Product: Highwire Designer: ANONY, Canada Team: Christian Lo and David Ryan
The ultimate testament to beautifully resolved design occurs when spectators simply gape and ask “How?” Highwire’s form consists of nothing more than individually weighted, double-sided discs strung on cables, which are in turn pulled taut. The result looks a little bit like a glowing yo-yo frozen mid-trick – a perfect laser-cut Plexiglas circle illuminated by dimmable LEDs and suspended in midair, with no visible means of securing itself to its cables or even of connecting to a power source. Up to five machined-aluminum housings can be strung together in sequence, making for strikingly graphic compositions that dazzle with their sublime simplicity.
Product: Kepler Designer: Cohda, U.K. Manufacturer: Innermost, U.K.
The gentle glow from Kepler’s floating translucent circles seems to come from nowhere. The suspension lamp’s wide, luminous discs, suspended like pivoting makeup mirrors inside a slim metal frame, are finished with two sheets of silk-like micro-weave fabric pulled as tight as the skin of a drum. Light from a hidden ring of LEDs bounces back and forth between these two surfaces and multiplies across them for an effect that mimics a tunnel of light extending through space. (Hence the fixture’s name, an homage to the German astronomer who described a supernova in 1604.) It may sound scientific, but the look is pure magic.
Product: Amisol Designer: Studio Daniel Rybakken, Sweden/Norway Manufacturer: Luceplan, Italy
Floating like a satellite, Daniel Rybakken’s Amisol is designed to fill the maximum amount of space with a minimum of hardware, making for a bold statement light that’s easy to handle. Held in place with thin aluminum rods, its ultra-high-powered light source beams directly onto a translucent white or mirrored membrane spanning a circular aluminum frame, which diffuses or reflects the light back into the room – a configuration that mimics the science-fiction concept of a solar sail. The wires from which the entire armature hangs can be adjusted in both length and connection points, letting Amisol rotate to direct light where it’s needed.