Shop in Covent Garden.
Producing light for pushing dark away shows human inventiveness. It started from the moment fires were made using natural and basic reactions like the spark produced when striking one stone with another.
In this first basic way of lighting a room, there was: The light produced by the flame, the fuel that allowed it to last, wood or charcoal and the oxygen that made that reaction possible.
Since then how we generate light has changed dramatically, one of the most important moments being when electricity was discovered and the second, probably the invention of LED.
We now take light for granted and because of that we have moved from the area of “necessity” to that of “indulgence”.
At the moment we move from one to the other we start to incorporate and consider how light can influence our emotions making us feel excited, romantic, relaxed, alert, dreamy, or seducing us with beauty and harmony.
Lantern. Hehku Showroom
I understood this relation very clearly during my years at university when I started visiting museums and galleries on a regular basis and it was then when I understood the triad: light, art and emotion as a desirable condition of beauty in interiors; thought that has not abandoned me since then.
I remember three special exhibitions of many wonderful ones: One from Goya: The disasters of war; one from Piranessi: “Carceri d’invenzione” at the Beaux Art Museum and one from the collection of the by then Contemporary art Museum, both Museums in Caracas, the latter with works from Miro, Chagall, Moore, Vasarely, Larry Rivers, Soto and Picasso.
I was fascinated not just by the works but how the natural light and artificial light, made everything more dramatic and beautiful creating atmospheres, stronger spots, defining spaces, suggesting the flow among the rooms.
Since then it was clear to me that light exposes beauty, makes it clearer and sometimes even reveals it.
Back lit Krion splash back. Hehku Showroom
This is why contemporary light is having such a huge impact in the world of interiors, because it has made democratic the creation of those “spots”, those atmospheric surroundings, as well as the transition between such spaces in a beautifully subtle and elegant way. Of course as with every tool we possess the outcome will be just as good as the skills of the person using it.
This makes me think that the light itself relates to our human condition, it touches those innate strings within us whereas the source of that light conforms more to the fashion or trends of the moment.
Flos Showroom, London.
So dear gentlemen if you are looking to give a new life to your homes you have to bring light to the equation:
1.- Deciding what sort of light you will have: warm or cold
2.- Deciding how the light will be directed: direct or indirect light.
3.- What that light will allow you to perform/feel. Task light… atmospheric light… decorative light?…etc.
4.- What is the design of that lamp or source of light? Contemporary and sleek, concealed, a feature, a sculpture that happens to give a light?… etc.
5.- And most importantly. How do the differences among them help you to define the flow and the rhythm between the different spaces of your home?
Chambers Large by Lee Broom
Being your home, a masculine one, does not mean severity and the absence of the possibility of creating “memorable moments within extraordinary atmospheres”. Lighting will allow you to do that; believe me. Light and art should in your flat be the “yin” that makes your “yang” interiors achieve balance and create an extreme beauty.
Lighting Installation at The V&A during London Design Festival 2015
