![]() SUJATA BURMAN: Speaking of light, how did you get into designing it? JAY OSGERBY: Otherwise you’re in a situation where there is an amazing space with natural light, then it gets cloudy, there is no light, and nowhere to sit. A beautiful chair and table will completely transform that space. Humans in buildings are just rattling around, and it’s actually furniture scale objects that act to bridge the scales: Building to Human.ĮDWARD BARBER: If you take a blank white room, it doesn’t really say as much until you have an object in it. JAY OSGERBY: Furniture is the layer that goes between the body and the building. ![]() JAY OSGERBY: You rarely get it at all with architecture, at least not in the same way.ĮDWARD BARBER: You get a lot more control than with architecture, where there are so many unknowns… SUJATA BURMAN: There must be a connection to the material straight away that you don’t get with architecture. You don’t get successive opportunities to change, develop and iterate an idea, whereas in furniture and product design, you do. When you’re doing an architectural project, you only ever make a prototype. JAY OSGERBY: Partly because it’s a faster process. I think that was the moment when we changed our focus, when we realised that we were much more interested in designing furniture than architecture. So we got a leg-up right from the first piece we designed. At the time Cappellini was the most interesting furniture company working with both young designers and established designers, and said he wanted to produce it. That table was really a stepping stone into the furniture world because the table was seen by Giulio Cappellini in 1997. ![]() One of the pieces was a low table ,the Loop Table, which is in birch plywood. We were doing small architectural projects at the time and for one of them we designed some restaurant furniture. That was really great because we were close to the wood workshops, we learned a lot about furniture making there, and particularly about plywood.Ī lot of the early pieces that we designed were plywood because we were right there by the workshops. Then we moved to the Isokon workshops (in Chiswick). I lived there for about six years, we had the studio there for three. SUJATA BURMAN: Your studio has had multiple London locations over the years, how has this informed your practice to date?ĮDWARD BARBER: After our flat in Notting Hill we moved to Trellick Tower – it was on the 22nd floor, we had an incredible view. They tell tales of the Japanese bowl that inspired Bellhop, compare colour choice to naming children and explain turning up their design game for historic companies. Over Zoom, they shine a light on their story of three decades while sitting inside their east London studio, surrounded by their works. With an outlook focused on longevity, they have navigated the pandemic by having an adaptable, multi-floor studio space. Today we’re sharing an interview with Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby – designers of the Bellhop collection for Flos.īased in London, yet truly international, the Barber & Osgerby studio is home to many lighting projects from the Olympic Torch in 2012 to the 2016 Bellhop (and its 2020 Floor version) lamp for Flos. That's the place of Flos.For over 50 years, Italian lighting specialists Flos has continued to pioneer new styles, with the collection offering a range of modern lamps and chandeliers from some of the leading cutting-edge designers. On the fine line that divides and unites art and design, craftsmanship and industry, the limited edition and larger scale manufacturing, an individual's idea and the collective imagination. The lamps, of yesterday and today, never fail to be serious about their sense of play and irony. By conceiving new languages around light, the company charts new aesthetics and freedoms for living. ![]() Experimentation opens the way for it to use revolutionary materials - as in the past with Cocoon - and hi-tech solutions, today represented by OLEDs and eco-sustainable materials. These qualities always place the brand at the cutting edge. Commanding high technical and technological status. Trusting its intuition has always allowed it to create products that become icons, establishing new typologies and innovative archetypes. Its history has taught it to fan the flames of provocation with research into new poetic notions of functionality. The brand writes the future, reading its past and expressing the present, in a continuity of positive challenges and bold choices that have shaped its image and identity. For the company, light is the substance for expressing new ideas and illuminating unexplored emotions. Flos has been crafting objects of light and shedding brightness on generations of dreams for fifty years.
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