Bright Ideas: 8 Brilliant Pendant Lights Designed by Architects

Find the perfect pendant lighting for your next project through Architizer’s community marketplace for building-products. Click here to see if you qualify. It’s free for architects. 

In shaping our built environment, many architects delve deeper than just creating buildings, choosing to also design the everyday objects that furnish our spaces. From coffee tables to door knobs, nothing is too small or too ordinary for an architect to reinvent. But there is one object in particular that seems to capture their imagination better than any other: the pendant light.

Much like architecture, the design of a light fixture calls for a perfect harmony of aesthetics, construction and technical performance. However, it also frees architects to work at a level of detail that is often impossible in architecture, allowing them to decide on everything from the shape of the fixture to the location of each screw. The resulting designs are works of art in their own right, illuminated sculptures ready for mass production. So, as you search for the perfect fixture to light up your space, or contemplate designing your own, check out these eight pendant lights dreamt up by today’s brightest architects:

Aria Suspension by Zaha Hadid; images via Slamp.

Aria Suspension by Zaha Hadid

Manufactured by Slamp

Aria Suspension is an ethereal pendant light designed by the late Zaha Hadid, a Pritzker Prize winning architect famous for her sculptural buildings. This curvaceous and sophisticated light is a perfect embodiment Hadid’s design principles. Each fixture is composed of 50 uniquely-shaped polycarbonate fins which wrap around an LED core, providing 360 degrees of illumination. While originally released only in clear and translucent black finishes, a special edition Aria is also now available in metallized gold.

Plywood Chandelier by Steven Holl; images via HORM.IT.

Plywood Chandelier by Steven Holl

Manufactured by HORM.IT

Architect Steven Holl has long been fascinated by the idea of “porosity,” often carving voids into buildings and objects to create interesting patterns of light and shadow. His Plywood Chandelier, built from a composite material described as a “wood-fabric sandwich,” is no exception. Superficial laser engravings enabled the ultra-thin wood to be folded into a complex, origami-like form. Meanwhile, deeper perforations, also carved by lasers, allow light to escape in all directions, dappling interior surfaces like sunlight passing through a tree canopy.

Cordoba Suspension by Daniel Libeskind; images via Slamp.

Cordoba Suspension by Daniel Libeskind

Manufactured by Slamp

Cordoba Suspension is a pendant light designed by Daniel Libeskind, a deconstructionist architect known for bold, angular façades. His design, inspired by “the mysticism of light” in the Spanish city of Cordoba, is composed of fragmented planes of Cristalflex, a patented polycarbonate fabric, which diffuse and reflect LED light in multiple directions simultaneously. Although their complex geometries were generated by algorithms and modeled with computer software, each Cordoba Suspension light is crafted by hand.

Yakisugi by Kengo Kuma; images via Designboom.

Yakisugi by Kengo Kuma

Manufactured by Lasvit

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma loves wood, a natural and beautiful material with deep roots in Japanese architecture. His pendant light collection explores the materiality of wood in what Kuma describes as an attempt to capture the wooden soul within glass. Inspired by Yakisugi — the ancient technique of preserving timber by charring its surface — each glass fixture is shaped with wooden molds, while still molten, burning the wood and imprinting its organic texture onto the glass. Since the burnt molds cannot be reused, each piece of glass features a unique, crackled finish which is never duplicated.

Cloud by Frank Gehry; images via Belux.

Cloud by Frank Gehry

Manufactured by Belux

Frank Gehry’s whimsical buildings often start as abstract paper models and can go through hundreds of different renditions before he gets them right, so it is no surprise that Cloud, his tongue-in-cheek pendant light, resembles a ball of crumpled paper. But what appears to be a delicate, paper-like material is actually a custom-made polyester fabric that is both tear- and flame-resistant. This fabric, although durable, is designed to retain creases and crinkles easily, allowing owners to play with the shape of their Clouds and ensuring that no two lights are alike.

Dot by Foster + Partners; images via Lumina.

Dot by Foster + Partners

Manufactured by Lumina

Norman Foster, the head of Foster + Partners, is a master of deception; his sleek designs often belying complex feats of engineering. Take Dot, his minimalist pendant light, for example. Envisioned as a “disc of light,” the seemingly simple design features two parallel discs held apart by a slender metal stem. Concealed within the smaller disc is a ring of high-powered LEDs which shine onto the larger, reflective disc through a series of holographic filter lenses. These lenses both amplify and evenly disperse the light, preventing the stem from casting a shadow. The high heat generated by the lights is then absorbed by the fluid-filled stem and transferred quietly to a heat-sink hidden in the larger disc.

Cycladic Globe by Richard Meier; images via Richard Meier Light.

Cycladic Globe by Richard Meier

Manufactured by WonderGlass

Richard Meier, in collaboration with his daughter, furniture designer Ana Meier, and French lighting designer Hervé Descottes, has recently launched a new line of light fixtures which feature his signature stark white finishes and pure geometric forms. The Cycladic Globe, for example, is a restrained pendant light comprising a hand-blown orb of venetian glass, shaded by a powder-coated aluminum dome. In an unexpected twist, the underside of the dome has been lined with gold-leafing, which can be illuminated independently of the glass orb, giving the fixture two unique appearances.

Alphabet of Light by Bjarke Ingels Group; images via Artemide.

Alphabet of Light by Bjarke Ingels Group

Manufactured by Artemide

The Alphabet of Light is a hybrid typeface and light fixture series designed by the always innovative Bjarke Ingels Group. Available with both surface-mounting and pendant hardware, these fixtures allow designers to literally draw on walls and ceilings with light. The alphabet is composed of ten tubular modules — consisting of differently sized lines, curves and junctions — that can combine into an infinite number of configurations. The modules are illuminated internally by diffused LED lighting which can travel up to 16-feet through a series of connected elements. Each module ends in concealed electromagnetic joints which allow them to link together effortlessly while ensuring seamless and shadow-free connections.

---

Find the perfect pendant lighting through Architizer’s community marketplace for building-products. Click here to sign up now.

The post Bright Ideas: 8 Brilliant Pendant Lights Designed by Architects appeared first on Journal.

, Jon Cornachio, read more Journal http://ift.tt/2jPyZAf