Milan is a city that understands good lighting. For proof, just stroll past the Duomo post-sunset, when the marble cathedral’s crown of spires is illuminated by a series of strategically placed spotlights. Or head to Bar Basso after dark, when the beloved watering hole’s red neon signage glows as bright as a Negroni Sbagliato.

But nowhere is Milan’s role as a global lighting capital more evident than at the city’s Fiera Milano exhibition centre during Euroluce — a biennial showcase of all things illumination held as part of the larger Salone del Mobile furniture fair. This year, Euroluce returned for its first edition since 2019, bringing with it no shortage of exciting product launches and impressive booth displays.

Refreshingly, Euroluce 2023 moved away from boxy, fully enclosed stands to embrace more open displays that encouraged easier exploration. Sure enough, browsing the booths felt less like walking through a convention centre and more like walking down a city street. The result effectively brought the buzz of Milan indoors — generating a scene that, at least temporarily, stole some of the glow away from the Duomo or Bar Basso.

Here is our tour of the standouts from Euroluce 2023.

Feature Exhibitions

What Was the Scene? Looking to draw attention to the fact that a light is as much a work of art as it is a product, Euroluce’s organizers staged a series of special attractions that skewed more cultural than commercial.

What Stood Out? Curated by furniture stylist and set designer Martina Sanzarello, the exhibition “Fiat Bulb: The Edison Syndrome” collected past designs — from Foscarini‘s Melting Light to Ingo Maurer’s winged Lucellino lamp — that all riff on the look of a traditional lightbulb. Each one was displayed inside of (or in some cases, suspended above) a cardboard box resting on a conveyer belt.

Vibia

What Was the Scene? The theme at Vibia‘s stand was “Shaping Atmospheres.” Displays built from wood amplified the warm glows produced by new products that embraced soft, unexpected materials like lycra and thread.

What Stood Out?

• Array by Umut Yamac runs orange or white threads between two suspended discs to create transparent shades that look especially striking when layered in clusters.
• Knit by Meike Harde wraps a glowing sphere in a knitted lycra sleeve. It’s available as both a hanging and floor lamp.
• Circus by Antoni Arola is a track system with spotlights that can be pointed at accompanying ceiling-mounted reflector shades to introduce fun, atmospheric shadows.

Flos

What Was the Scene? Flos effectively opened its own modern art gallery, launching each of its products inside an all-white setting. A cluster of Emi lamps stood in a mirrored, infinity room-like installation, while a setup dedicated to Black Flag (an extendable wall light) featured dotted lines along the floor and ceiling to indicate the furthest distance that the light could be pulled out to.

What Stood Out?

• Bilboquet, a charming table lamp by Philippe Malouin modelled after the French cup-and-ball game, allows a cylinder to be placed on a magnetic chrome sphere at any angle — or even lifted off entirely.
• Black Flag by Konstantin Grcic is an extendable light that can be pulled out 3.5 metres from its wall frame. A Pro version allows each of the bar’s light sources to be dimmed separately and directed upwards or down.
• Céramique, a table lamp by Ronan Bouroullec, features a ceramic cap that can be tilted along its ceramic shade to provide lighting at various angles.
• Emi by Erwan Bouroullec integrates three light modules inside of a rounded aluminum prism. It’s launching as a ceiling, floor or table lamp, as well as a hanging pendant.

Artemide

What Was the Scene? Booth designer Mario Cucinella arranged Artemide‘s latest geometric offerings around rounded walls that helped to pace out all of the exciting overhead drama.

What Stood Out?

• Dreispitz by Herzog & de Meuron affixes a trio of glowing tubes to a prismatic core. It’s available as a vertical pendant, horizontal suspension light, ceiling or wall fixture, or floor lamp.
• Trilix, a family of indoor and outdoor lamps by Mario Cucinella, features a disc-shaped ring light planted atop a steel frame that can double as a freestanding trellis for growing ivy.
• Vine Light chandeliers expand BIG’s family of ring-shaped lighting to include new groupings of seven or 11 components.

Foscarini

What Was the Scene? After showcasing designer Andrea Anastasio’s early experiments with historic Italian ceramics at its showroom last year, Foscarini extended the concept into a commercial product: Fregio, which launched at its stand this year. Other introductions engaged with the past in their own ways. Chapeau, a new-school take on old-school table lamps, was displayed against a backdrop of Venetian blinds that nodded to retro domesticity.

• Chapeau by Rodolfo Dordoni mimics the shapes of traditional table lamps, but swaps out a fabric lampshade for diffusers in painted steel, blown glass or bone china. 
• Fregio by Andrea Anastasio sandwiches two floral-patterend ceramic bas reliefs around a metallic bar.
• Hoba by Ludovica and Roberto Palomba is a blown-glass ode to “anti-geometry” featuring oblong pendants with crater-like indents.

Tom Dixon

What Was the Scene? Never one to shy away from theatricality, Tom Dixon used a robotic arm to draw attention to a new system of plug-and-play bases that allow his various shades to be easily adapted into floor lamps. Playing off the booth’s overall theme — “Choice” — the mechanical fixture took turns lifting different shades onto a conical stand, with each one illuminating once it made contact. Plenty of “oohs” and “aahs” ensued from the crowd.

What Stood Out?

• Puff revives the disco ball, using diamond-shaped metal panels to form a charmingly bloated polyhedral pendant.
• Portables scale Tom Dixon’s Melt, Ball and Stone shades down to miniature proportions to create a new range of rechargeable table lamps.

Ingo Maurer

What Was the Scene? One of the booths most likely to draw you in from afar, Ingo Maurer’s display was an explosion of light and colour. The manufacturer showcased its newest luminaires in a series of boxes that were stacked together like units in an apartment tower. Wire cables ran from side to side like power lines, decorated with colourful paper sheets that added to the booth’s dynamic sense of spectacle.

What Stood Out?

• Signature by Team Ingo Maurer leans into the chaos of cable management with a disorderly tangle of wires that calls to mind a carefree doodle. Each cable terminates in an understated black cone shade.
• Moodmoon Framed by Sebastian Hepting shines light through Japanese paper stretched onto an aluminum frame.
• Pic-a-stic is sold as a kit with 50 coloured wooden rods that can be configured as desired around a flexible black rubber ring. Based on a design by Andreas Walther, it’s inspired by the game Mikado.

Michael Anastassiades

What Was the Scene? Even when it was packed full of people, Michael Anastassiades’s stand somehow managed to feel like a meditative yoga retreat. Credit goes to the focused wood-framed displays, which formed quiet niches to give each light plenty of breathing room.

What Stood Out?

• Blue Skies angles a bamboo-framed Tosa-Shi paper shade to reflect the glow emanating from the table lamp’s cylindrical base.
• Peaks strings together a series of power-coated aluminum cones that can be arranged facing upwards or down for a range of different lighting effects.

Lasvit

What Was the Scene? The theme of Lasvit’s stand was “It All Comes from Above.” Appropriately, the display was anchored by a cloud-like glass sculpture by Lasvit art director Maxim Velčovský. Our social media feed was quickly filled with videos of people brushing aside its snaking LED strips.

What Stood Out?

• Miles by Yabu Pushelberg encases a frosted trumpet-like form inside a clear glass tube. Elements can be joined together to form table lamps, floor lamps or chandeliers.
• Symbiosa by Studio Llev features mushroom cap-like shades with a distinctive organic texture created by blowing glass into forms made of mycelium.

Davide Groppi

What Was the Scene? Structural steel framing formed a mix of open and enclosed areas, with intimate nooks helping to highlight the sparse simplicity of Davide Groppi‘s transparent new designs. There were also a few welcome moments of absurdity, like a light covered in tiny alligator figurines that’s part of a super-limited run.

What Stood Out?

• Utopia by Davide Groppi is a clear bar of light — pure and simple.
• Vis à Vis by Michele Groppi is a fully transparent portable lamp with a disc-like shade that resembles a pool of water suspended in mid-air.

Fontana Arte

What Was the Scene? Fontana Arte‘s house-like display celebrated both intimacy and grandiosity. The space’s rich, orangey-red hue echoed the inspiration behind the manufacturer’s new Thalea pendants, which borrow their palette from Italian Renaissance paintings.

What Stood Out?

• Aftereight by Francesco Librizzi and Arian Brajkovic is a series of tubular steel pendants with glass shades.
• Thalea by Paolo Rizzatto and Francesco Librizzi strings together aluminium and glass elements to create jewellery-like compositions.
• Cameo by Claesson Koivisto Rune is a portable glass-blown table lamp.

PLUS:

A-N-D

• Vector by Lukas Peet borrows from the rugged proportions of brutalism, slotting together sheets of weathered steel, black steel, or polished stainless steel to create a rough-meets-refined presence.

Luceplan

• Liuu by Vantot is a sculptural system of electrified metal cables, counter-weights and lightweight luminous heads that made for an ingenious showcase of industrial design.

Pablo

• Totem by Pablo Pardo and Pablo Studio features four blown glass shade options, and can be customized to direct light both up and down.

Contardi

• Baggy by Paola Navone recreates the look of a crumpled paper tube using satin polycarbonate, supported (or grouped, in the case of the floor lamp bundles) by a textile rope.

Santa & Cole

• Lámina floor, table and wall lamps by Antoni Arola build upon the manufacturer’s existing line of Lámina pendants. Like their predecessors, the new additions use thin, concave metal sheets to diffuse the light emanating from a thin metal stem.

Martinelli Luce

• Multidot by Brian Sironi is a system of cables equipped with LED light spheres that can be draped into sweeping compositions.

Axolight

• Paralela by Nahtrang Studio is a modular family that joins together borosilicate glass cylinders with elastic band-like metal connectors.

Ambientec

• Extrus by Kensaku Oshiro is a portable table lamp that radiates light outwards through an extruded aluminum shell.

Fermob

• Ulli by Fermob Studio is a minimalist take on a storm lantern that can be set on a table or hung from a perch. Made from aluminum and recycled ABS, it is offered in four bright colours.

Preciosa

• Crystal Grid is a system of hand-blown crystal tube lights with bubble-like textures that can be fastened together using metal connectors to create large lattice arrangements. The design was demonstrated in “Crystal Beat,” an installation that synchronized the system’s glow to music.