Client
Gantri
Category
Lighting, residential ambient
Year
2019 table light, 2021 wall and floor
Scope
Industrial design, form development, CMF
Channel
Retail & DTC
Constraint
Gantri had a 3D-printing platform and a credibility problem. Additive manufacturing had spent a decade looking like additive manufacturing: visible layer lines, forms that existed because a printer could make them, objects that read as demonstrations rather than as things you would buy. The platform needed a product that made the argument for it.
That put two requirements in tension. The light had to have a point of view distinctive enough that it wasn't mistaken for anything else on the market. It also had to be unremarkable enough to live in an ordinary room, because a lamp nobody wants in their house proves nothing about the platform that made it.
Decision
Two dozen concepts, and the sphere kept coming back. Everything about the process argued against it. Straight extruded geometry is what 3D printing wants, and a fully spherical shade is close to the hardest thing you can ask it for. But spherical lights have been in homes for decades. The architecture is soft, familiar and easy to place, which is precisely what the second half of the brief needed. The hardest option was the one that answered both requirements at once, so it was worth the trouble.
The rest was the pose. How far the globe overhangs its base was worked out degree by degree in physical mockups, looking for the point where the light reads as poised rather than as falling, and stops short of actually tipping.
The studio pursues simplicity with soul. A sphere is all simplicity, so the soul had to come from the overhang.
Finish
Translucent diffuser in Gantri's PlantPolymers, painted body, offered across Gantri's platform-wide 25-color palette. Printed on demand, which holds finish and proportion consistent across table, wall and floor without three sets of traditional tooling.
Recognition
MoMA Design Store selection
Designed At
Louis Filosa Studio
More work
