Wireline: Industrial Design With an Artistic Outlook
Design studio Formafantasma designed the light Wireline for Flos, a design which was born as an evolution of the concept that led to WireRing in 2017.
Technology and emotions, industrial production and craftmanship, enhanced by an artistic approach. All elements which the design studio Formafantasma added to their latest lamp design for Flos, Wireline. This is the second design for the studio run by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin after the success of WireRing in 2017. Previewed in 2019 at the Salone del Mobile and at miart (the international fair of modern and contemporary art in Milan), where it lit up the Vip Lounge, WireLine is now ready for the global market.
As a piece of industrial design enhanced by an artistic outlook, WireLine is a perfect representation of Formafantasma’s design approach. The project was born as an evolution of the concept that led to WireRing in 2017 which consisted, as the designers explain, in “turning the power cable into a key element to generate the form, an aesthetic, iconic and performative aspect of the piece in a space”.
WireLine is a long and thin body with the power cable used as an essential aesthetic feature. Flattened to look like a strap, made of rubber and hung from the ceiling, it delicately supports a sophisticated extrusion of grooved glass, which contains and diffuses the LED light source. The design thus fulfills the ambition of reducing a lamp to its essential components, of creating a shape and presence that stem solely from the light source and the power conductor.
“Every author has an obsession. Ours is light”, explains Trimarchi and Farresin. “We explored it with independent projects and then with Flos: with WireRing first, and now with WireLine. What we love of light that it is intangible, but also technical and emotional. And it is one of the few fields of design that has been recently completely transformed by an important technological innovation: LEDs have changed the rules of the game in terms of design, use, and human experience. This shift has turned light into a territory for pioneers, and the most exciting exploratory field for design“.
Available in pink and forest green, WireLine can be installed as a single piece or in a composition of several elements to obtain elaborate visual arrangements. It is always an extremely practical piece, requiring minimal storage space. Suitable for very high ceilings, hotel lobbies, or similar contract situations, WireLine is also ideal for domestic environments, lofts, and open spaces.
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