Celebrating Louis Poulsen’s philosophy of designing to shape light and inspired by the classic virtues of Danish design, Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi, who make up GamFratesi, the most stirring design duo of our time, have designed a lamp dubbed Yuh.
With an impressive knowledge of design history and inspired by Poul Henningsen’s philosophy about light, combined with Arne Jacobsen’s geometric shapes, GamFratesi pays homage to the legends and adds their own characteristic aesthetic playfulness to the new Yuh Lamp.
“We are very inspired by the AJ lamp design by Arne Jacobsen. There is something very striking about its geometry. It is angled and the shade is designed in such a way that one part of it is always aligned with the floor in one way or another. It is extremely sculptural, but also very geometric,” says Stine Gam.
“It is a piece of architecture,” adds Enrico Fratesi.
Asked about the collaboration, Rasmus Markholt, idea and design director at Louis Poulsen, says, “For me, collaborating with GamFratesi was an obvious choice. They are a good fit for our line of creative partnerships with their strong contemporary aesthetics and shared values rooted in the Danish design tradition.”
Personal light
One of the essential features of the lamp is that it is personal. The lamp is flexible and takes up very little space. It rotates and moves up and down, illuminating and creating ambience in the required area. A lamp created just around you.
“Our biggest challenge was to design the lamp so that it could be moved in several directions. We worked with three different types of movement on the axis: inclination, rotation and up and down. This made it very complex. It was a huge challenge, but there is a fantastic team of engineers at Louis Poulsen with whom we had a very good working relationship,” says Enrico Fratesi.
The lamp provides direct glare-free downward light. The angle of the shade can be adjusted to optimize light distribution. The slim opening at the top of the shade provides soft, ambient upward illumination.
“Our desire to incorporate a diffuser in the lamp stems from our respect for Poul Henningsen’s work as well as from our appreciation of indirect light. We like the fact that you do not see the light source and are not dazzled. With a diffuser, the light source is concealed, which we think makes the illumination very magical,” says Stine Gam.
Louis Poulsen debuted the new collaboration at this year’s Euroluce in Milan, with an out-of-the-ordinary stand design by GamFratesi. By creating an architectural structure inspired by Japanese paper art, GamFratesi sought to create an out-of-the-box space that makes visitors think about how cuts, lines and shapes affect light and create ambience.
Yuh will be available beginning in September 2017 and includes a table lamp, floor lamp and wall lamp, which are all available in white or black.
About GamFratesi
GamFratesi’s design take their creative drive from a fusion of tradition and innovation in an experimental approach to their chosen materials and techniques. Each with their own traditional background, Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi draw on classic Danish furniture and craftsmanship as well as a classic Italian intellectual and conceptual approach. Understanding a tradition and addressing it actively in the workshop makes it possible to expand on it. From this cross-cultural substrate, they create design that respectfully reflects tradition while also featuring unique embedded stories, symbols and associations, often expressed through minimalism. GamFratesi was founded in 2006 by Danish architect Stine Gam and Italian architect Enrico Fratesi. They met at the Department of Architecture at the University of Ferrara in Northern Italy in 2004 and have since studied together at the Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark. GamFratesi have a studio in Copenhagen.
About Louis Poulsen
Louis Poulsen is a Danish lighting manufacturer, founded in 1874. In close partnership with designers and architects like Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton, Vilhelm Lauritzen, Øivind Slaatto, nendo (Oki Sato), Shoichi Uchiyama, Louise Campbell and Mads Odgård, Louis Poulsen has established itself as one of the key suppliers of architectural lighting in the world market. The company offers a range of lighting aimed at both the commercial and domestic lighting markets. Every Louis Poulsen product has a story. These are products whose designers focus on light itself and the idea behind the product as well as on the refinement of an architect’s, light specialist’s or interior designer’s concepts and visions about light – all in harmony with Louis Poulsen’s own lighting philosophy: design to shape light.
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August, 2017