Currently viewing the tag: "Lighting"
[Photographs by Marcus Gaab for the New York Times.]
Imagine coming home every single evening and casting your gaze upon this sucker in your dining room? Well one lucky couple in Munich can, and does. Suspended 25 feet in the air is a 12 foot amoebic creation designed by legendary lighting designer, Ingo Maurer. He calls it a Biotope.
Incidentally, a Biotope is an actual thang: a contemporary combination of the Greek terms Bio, for life. and Topos, for Place. In short, it’s a fancy word for habitat, and quite frankly, we should all start thinking more about our own Biotopes. Seriously, bitches.
Maurer was commissioned to create and design this masterpiece to illuminate and act as a sound barrier in a dining room whose previous life was a 19th Century chapel. He describes it as a ‘hybrid lighting and acoustical devise.’
In order to satisfy the ‘sound deadening’ challenge, he came up with quite the ingenious usage of sponges; yes, sponges. Farmed of course, because that’s what responsible Biotope developers would do. Each sponge was then sprayed with a specially formulated green pigment. L.E.D lamps, along with an integrated sound system are hidden throughout the structure. If Bach composed a Katydid Concerto in D Minor, this chandelier would have it on repeat.
But it gets better: Maurer wanted “something artificial, something abstract” so his team of Creatives set forth to locate a Californian artist who makes insect replicas. Adding delicate butterflies, dragonflies & insects, this light fixture takes on a world of its own.
Breathtakingly brilliant. A Home Tree for the rest of us.
I call it as I see it: genius.
I have an addiction and it involves electricity. It runs neck and neck with a similar addiction I have that involves shoes. But I like to refer to that as my ‘Sculptural Collection of Footwear’ on prominent display in my closet. I open it to the public twice a year and I do charge an admission.
This electrical addiction I have consists of collecting sources of light. Lamps, chandeliers, hanging pendants, etc. I refer to that collection as my ‘Sculptural Collection of Illumination’ and it is on display though out my office, client projects etc. Eventually you have to come out of the closet.
Here is a look at what I would eventually like to curate for a show I would title: Dine-O-Mite: Lighting It Up, Like.
