Despoke

Philips Lumiblade Creative Lab brings together professionals from a wide range of creative backgrounds, inviting them to experience – and experiment with – Lumiblade for themselves in a fully-equipped workshop. It is a journey of discovery, a meeting of creative and technical minds, to explore the wide-reaching potential of OLED lighting in design and construction.

The Creative Lab team offers advice and guidance as well as practical support, helping projects to progress beyond the design stage into a prototype or even entering production as a small series. The products contained on the following pages are prime examples of how Creative Lab has already succeeded in turning ideas into reality.

Below you can see some of the successful products that have been created with these partnerships.

Tom Dixon
‘Flat Lamp’, a unique collection of OLED light bulbs. A true first in the next generation of illumination, OLEDs provide ultra-thin, consistent, energy-efficient and sustainable lighting. The Flat Lamp is a typically direct and succinct interpretation of this new, exciting technology and the collection includes three different shapes: Square, Round and Strip.

Modular
Form follows technology – in this case, the design of the fixture required to take OLED technology to the next level. The form of the fixture is inspired by the organic shapes that are increasingly found in the world of design. The word ‘organic’ is particularly appropriate, both to the OLED technology by Philips Lumiblade and to the range of O’Leaf by Modular. The O’Leaf family contains different functional fixtures: O’Leaf wall, O’Leaf ceiling, O’Leaf table, and O’Leaf floor.

Jason Bruges Studio
Commissioned for Milan 2010, Mimosa is a captivating artwork featuring Philips Lumiblade OLEDs. The piece was inspired by the Mimosa family of plants, which change kinetically to suit their environmental conditions.

The studio has used the slim form of individual OLEDs to create delicate light petals, forming flowers which open and close in response to visitors.

Established & Sons
Edge is driven by a desire to exploit a technology that is in its infancy but is destined to change the way we see light. Dubbed ‘the new lighting technology of the 21st century’, Lumiblade OLEDs give no flickering of light, no glare and no excessive heat emission.

Instead, there is simply a subtle sheen of light. Levete wanted to
reveal the wafer-thin essence of OLEDs and create a light that is
completely reductive in its simplicity. A flat ribbon of steel is twisted
into a self-supporting form. A groove is then cut into the steel,
off centre, to allow the cable to be expressed and to exaggerate
the movement of the piece.

Random International
This experimental OLED installation, created by the rAndom International designer-artist collective for Philips Lumiblade, can also be seen as an interactive kinetic light sculpture: With its warm white light from 900 shiny bright Lumiblade OLEDs, it reflects its observers and translates their movements into light moments or – conversely – enables the observers to use their movement to switch off the luminous wall for a brief moment.

This allows the observer to experience the Lumiblades in a playful way and to witness at first hand the power of the latest technology and innovative, environmentally-friendly material.

To find out more about Lumiblade and OLED’s and even to buy Limited edition Products :www.lumiblade.com

OLEDs (Organic Light-Emitting Diodes) are the next step forward in the evolution of new light sources, generating light by semiconductors, rather than using a filament or gas. LED and OLED lighting provide illumination that is more energy-efficient, longer-lasting and more sustainable. It also opens exciting new doors to how we can use, integrate and ‘play’ with light in our homes, cars, shops and cities. In addition to Philips’ expertise in LED it is now developing its OLED expertise.

LEDs and OLEDs – the difference
LEDs and OLEDs both generate light by semiconductors – basically by stimulating electrons in their components with an electrical charge. They also share the ability to create color effects that go beyond the ability of incandescent lamps. They both share the potential to become extremely energy saving light sources. But there the resemblance ends. There are a number of differences between LEDs and OLEDs in their make-up, the type of light they produce and the way they can be used, complementing each other in terms of application used.

In contrast to its live-demo, let’s-put-on-a-show “Craft Punk” exhibition last year, Design Miami and Fendi’s 2010 collaboration, “Design Vertigo,” at Spazio Fendi, is a far more cerebral affair. Four site-specific installations aim to highlight the ways in which designers are venturing outside the bounds of traditional practice and joining forces with unlikely partners.
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Spanning three decades, the show traces the development of Arad’s designs from his early postpunk approach, assembling works from readymade parts to his technologically-advanced sculptural objects made of highly polished metals. Featuring a dramatic installation design by Ron Arad Associates using the latest LED display technology, the exhibition also includes architectural designs and instantly recognisable mass-produced objects.

Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Centre, said:
“Ron Arad first hit the headlines in 1981 with the opening of his now legendary studio and workshop
One Off in Covent Garden and he has been an unstoppable and uncategorisable force in world design ever since. I am delighted that Barbican Art Gallery is to present Ron Arad’s first major British exhibition, and to share with our audiences the many different facets of this extraordinarily creative artist. “

Bringing together over 120 works, Ron Arad: Restless features some of Arad’s most celebrated pieces. Rover Chair,1981, a car seat salvaged from a scrapyard mounted on a steel frame, that famously caught the eye of Jean Paul Gaultier, and catapulted Arad firmly into the design world’s Hall of Fame; Well-Tempered Chair,1986, a reinterpretation of the overstuffed club chair using four thin sheets of tempered steel bent and held together by wing nuts; and animated in the gallery space Reinventing the Wheel, 1996. Inspired by a children’s toy featuring a globe floating inside a sphere, this bookcase has a wheel-within-a-wheel construction and can easily be rolled around while the shelves remain level.

Movement, play and an element of risk or surprise are key characteristics of Arad’s work: chairs rock or roll; shelves flex and sway, spiral-shaped vases bounce and lights coil in a snake-like motion.

For this exhibition, Arad’s team have devised special mechanisms for some of the works to demonstrate
their range of motion but also to bring them to life. The exhibition culminates in a large area
featuring Arad’s own ping pong table, made from stainless steel, surrounded by a wide selection of
manufactured chairs ranging from modular sofas and screw stools to sprung chaises and upholstered armchairs of exaggerated forms. Visitors are encouraged to experience the works, sit or recline or play a game of table tennis.

Arad continues to expand the boundaries of design by constantly experimenting with new technologies. For Swarovski, Arad designed Lolita, 2004, a chandelier made up of 1050 LED lights embedded within 2,100 crystals and the first to have its own mobile phone number. Text messages appear at the top of the chandelier and wind down the ribbon curves, creating the impression that it is slightly spinning. Lo-Rez-Dolores-Tabula-Rasa, 2007 is a table made of a thin sheet of Corian illuminated with images using 22,000 fibre-optic pixels. It is displayed in a dark room for full effect.

The exhibition also features a specially designed set of eight floor-to-ceiling LED screens.
Dramatically placed near the entrance of all the upper galleries, each screen transmits a changing
display of words and images relating to the surrounding works, including digital renderings of chairs
or quirky facts about the design process and materials used.

Architectural projects featured include the rotating mountain-top restaurant and gallery Les Diablarets, Gstaad, Swizerland; the recently opened Mediacite shopping complex, Liege, Belgium;
and the Design Museum in Holon, Israel. Due to open February 2010, this dramatic new building,
Arad’s most ambitious yet, is characterised by five bands of Corten Steel which undulate dynamically
around the museum’s internal spaces.

Highlighting the significance of process and the innovative use of materials in Arad’s work, the exhibition also offers an insight into the development of objects from initial idea to end product. Rarely seen prototypes, from different stages of the design process, are displayed together with finished works. Short films including early footage of Arad at work in the studio or pieces being manufactured are shown. The exhibition also includes two workshop settings which feature pieces part-way through the production process, offering visitors a real sense of how the works are crafted and made.

Over the past two decades, Arad has collaborated with leading manufacturers, including Alessi, Capellini, Moroso, Notify and Vitra, successfully adapting his designs to affordable materials and industrial techniques. Initially a one-off piece made of sprung steel, Bookworm (1993), a flexible yet sturdy curving shelf with built-in bookends, was later produced in plastics by Kartell in three different lengths that could be endlessly combined and arranged. Whilst Vitra produces the now classic, moulded plastic stacking chair,Tom Vac (1999), the chair was originally conceived for a sculpture entitled Domus Totem consisting of a stack of 100 chairs made for the 1997 Milan Furniture fair.

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1951, Arad attended the Jerusalem Academy of Art. He moved to London
in 1973 and studied with Peter Cook and Bernard Tschumi at the Architecture Association. He launched his career in the early 1980s with the opening of One Off, the Covent Garden studio he created with his business partner Caroline Thorman. In 1989 they established, Ron Arad Associates, an architecture and design practice, with One Off merging as part of the company by 1993.

In 1994 Arad first taught a class in furniture design at the Royal College of Art, London. Three years
later he was appointed Professor of Furniture and Industrial Design. He merged the two departments to create the Department of Design Products, a more open, interdisciplinary and experimental programme, which has had an enormous influence on a new generation of designers, including Paul Cocksedge, Peter Marigold and members of Troika and rAndom International.

In 1987 Arad participated in two important exhibitions and attracted the attention of the art world:
Nouvelles Tendances: Les avant-gardes de la fin du XXème siècle at the Centre Pompidou in Paris
and Documenta VIII in Kassel. Recent solo exhibitions include Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, 2008;
Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2009 and Ben Brown Fine Arts,
Hong Kong, 2009.
More on Restless: www.barbican.org.uk/
www.timeout.com/
www.dexigner.com

rAndom International was commissioned by Royal Philips Electronics’ Lumiblade division to create an interactive installation that unlocks the creative potential of their next generation OLED technology.

With the opportunity to work with thousands of OLEDs straight from their lab, we started this project by creating “You fade to light”, the worlds first OLED media wall. Fascinated by the beautiful mirror finish quality of the individual OLED modules we developed an installation that allows the viewer in front of it to engage with the light in a physical way. The wall is reflecting the person in front of it and then subtly fades their mirror image into light. Software by Chris O’Shea.