ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

Early this month Milan flooded with the annual stream of designers, architects, and design lovers. Salone del Mobile is always thrilling—all my favorite brands presenting new work. Louis Poulsen, FLOS, Michael Anastassiades, Foscarini, Linea Light. Breathtaking fixtures. Plus some young brands like Lambert et Fils from Canada making splendid globe-like mobiles that play with balance and gravity.

But here's what struck me: theatrical light effects have taken over our homes.

Walk through the interior design stands and you'll see dramatic lighting effects alongside regular fixtures. Not at EuroLuce, of course—there, if the fixtures can't do the work themselves, the product fails. But elsewhere? Pure theater. "All the world's a stage," as Shakespeare wrote. And customers are eating it up, learning to see their homes as stages requiring dramatic lighting design.

Which brings me to the real problem: interior designers who refuse to understand light.

They keep designing lamps—objects, fixtures, sculptures—without any interest in what light actually does. The result? Pretty objects floating on threads or standing in corners that have nothing to do with light itself. Just shapes taking up space.

Compare that to Davide Groppi's pendule lamp: from top to bottom, it's about light, shadows, what it does to shapes and colors around it. That's the difference. One discipline designs objects. The other designs with light.

Interior designers and light designers can't stay away from each other, but they should. Or rather: interior designers should stop pretending they understand light when they clearly don't.

Lucky enough at Salone you can educate yourself on the difference. I just hope people watch closely enough.

Davide Groppi

Ingo Maurer’s light explosion (with exit strategy by me) ;)