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8 Lighting Releases That Show the Best Design is Often Hidden in Plain View

Recent lighting products can take a minimal form, seemingly dissolving into the spatial ether, or manifest more arrestingly.

Lighting Products, Santa & Cole
Barcelona purveyors Santa & Cole recently updated the 1972 Tatu table lamp by André Ricard. Courtesy Santa & Cole

Just like light itself, a lot of design is hidden in plain view. Qualities like warmth, orientation, and brightness can make or break the experience of a space, even if visitors can’t easily articulate why. Recently released lighting fixtures demonstrate a similar paradox: They can take a minimal form, seemingly dissolving into the spatial ether, or manifest more arrestingly as, say, a serialized configuration presiding over a room. In all cases here, formal legibility and material simplicity serve as maxims. (This idea holds even in rereleases, like Santa & Cole’s, which harks back to space-age futurism—a movement with an eye on functionality and popular taste, to be sure.) What results are lights that toy with linearity, transparency, and modularity. But, beneath the organic proportions and neat angles, maybe a move past overdesigned, overchoreographed interiors is what’s really at play.

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