Interiors
New Moves exhibition
Interiors
When George Carwardine designed the first Anglepoise light in 1932, he can’t have conceived that 70 years later his design would not only have become a staple in office and home design, but the subject of one of the RCA's greatest projects of late. In October 2006, 70 young designers were commissioned by Ernesto Gismondi, founder and owner of Artemide, to design reinterpretations of the iconic task light. The results were revealed in ‘New Moves’ an exhibition showing now at The Aram gallery in London and both the range of interpretation plus the exhibition design itself made for a truly enlightening experience.
Click here to see a selection of images form the exhibition.
The brief was simple: to design an Anglepoise lamp along whichever lines the designers wished. The project was spilt into four successive stages. The first involved all 70 designers working for just three weeks to develop a concept. From these a jury selected 22 for further development over the course of three months, by which time the prototypes were tested for feasibility and functionality. The final stage was for Artemide to survey the results and decide if they’d like to put any of them into production, from which they chose nine.
Deyan Sudjic, Director of the London Design Museum, explained the predicament facing the young designers: ‘The Anglepoise is a brilliant synthesis of structure and mechanism, it’s possible that it might have something to do with the sheer scope that an adjustable lamp offers, it’s mix of technology and artifice. There is the whole question of the mechanism, the way that the structure is articulated to make finger tip pressure movement possible, then there is the structure itself and the means that the light source is powered and controlled. Finally, as critical as all the other elements, is the quality of the light source and the way it is diffused, directed and shaded.’
The exhibition itself, designed by Oscar Narud, is something of a masterpiece. A selection of lights from the 70 original prototypes are arranged around a set of white cardboard, on which various office settings have been scrawled in black marker pen. The monochromatic, two-dimensional stage provides the perfect backdrop on which to give the lights a point of reference, not detracting too much but instead providing a perfect riposte to the designs themselves.
INFORMATION
The project was curated by Daniel Charney, Senior Tutor on the RCA’s MA Design products course, supported by Artemide. With thanks to Zeev Aram and The Aram gallery and the Royal College of Art.
Photography: Shira Klasmer
- Event dates
- 20 September 2007 to 3 November 2007
- Website
- http://www.thearamgallery.org
- Telephone
- 44.20 7557 7557
- Address
- The Aram gallery 110 Drury Lane Covent Garden London WC2B 5SG
