Flos

Arco: a ceiling light that stands on the floor

Flos began in 1962 with Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni among its first designers, and Arco is from that year. Flos says the brothers took the idea from street lighting: a polished aluminum reflector at the end of a long steel arc, balanced by a block of white Carrara marble. It puts light over a table or a sofa without a ceiling box. The marble even has a hole through it so the lamp can be carried on a pole.

Cocoons and a chandelier without the crystal

In 1960 the Castiglionis designed lamps by spraying steel frames with a soft resin Flos calls “cocoon”. Taraxacum, named after the dandelion, and Viscontea are still made that way, and the light comes through warm and even. Nearly thirty years later Achille Castiglioni designed Taraxacum 88 as a replacement for the multi-bulb chandelier: 60 bulbs set into a sphere of polished aluminum triangles.

Michael Anastassiades: balance and geometry

IC Lights sets an opal glass sphere at the end of a slim, slanted stem so it looks about to roll off, a juggler’s balancing act in Flos’s words. Coordinates turns a grid of anodized aluminum bars, each with a line of LED light inside, into pendants, floor lamps and wall lights. Captain Flint is a floor lamp that lights the room upward, then turns down to become a reading light.

Spheres, cables and clusters

Marcel Wanders’ Skygarden looks like a plain dome from across the room. Underneath, its cast-plaster diffuser carries the pattern of an ornate antique ceiling, which Wanders says he took from his old house. The Bouroullec brothers’ Aim puts everything on show instead: each small LED head hangs from a long cord that can be pulled to a point and angled, so a group draws loose lines across a room. Patricia Urquiola’s Almendra sets its diffusers in a straight line over a table or in a loose cluster for a stairwell.

Check the version before you order

We’ve supplied Flos to homes in the region, and the step that matters most comes before the order. Flos makes North American and European versions of the same lamp, and the bulb, wattage and dimming can differ between them. Some classics take a bulb that isn’t included, and Arco comes as a screw-in bulb version or as Arco LED. We check the specification sheet for your exact version before anything is ordered.

Around a statement piece, Flos also makes the quieter lights: Light Shadow Dots, a recessed downlight 30 mm across designed to cut glare, and Barber Osgerby’s Bellhop Wall Up, which washes light up a wall.