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4 | David Pompa, Minimal, Kundalini, 2017 5 | Ini Archibong, Hive, Kundalini, 2017 6 | Sebastian Herkner,
Giass, Kundalini, 2017
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Stefano Bordone The noble matter for light
During Euroluce 2017, we met Stefano Bordone at the Kundalini stand. We talked about the new directions of his company, the lighting market and its numbers. Would you tell us something about the latest products by Kundalini? The 2017 artistic journey of Kundalini begun a few years ago, and its main feature is the connection between the present and the past. We tried to bring the past into the present, following two distinct paths: the first is linked to the use of historical and noble materials under a contemporary light, while the latter uses signs and forms of the past and updates them. The result is the new collection, presented this year at Euroluce, which has all these features. This research started in 2010, and this year we managed to present it to its best, freeing us from the past perception of the company, which is far different from the present one. This change of direction has been firmly communicated and declared by our products and by our stand. I would like to emphasize that these new routes have been made possible also by the LED technology. In the decorative lighting world, rather than focusing on innovation in itself, LEDs have allowed to experience innovative shapes that were unthinkable with traditional technologies. The world of design decorative lighting has thus been able to follow new routes that were once impossible.
Can we consider the use of rich materials and reassuring forms as symptoms of a now bygone“ crisis”? I would not know if it is really a symptom of an end-of-crisis, but I agree with this: the undertaken direction towards precious materials and known forms allows us to feel more comfortable. We also have to consider that the crisis we have been experiencing for now ten years is not only an economical one, but also of Western values in general. This, in my opinion, has slowed down the experimentation on the“ futuristic”, and we have thus turned ourselves towards something more reassuring, something we are more familiar with and that we recognize. By using noble materials and familiar shapes, as we have chosen to do, we created objects that are bearer of psychological well-being and more.
Since the very beginning, Kundalini has devoted much energy to young designers. An investment on the future of lighting design? One of Kundalini’ s strategies has always been to focus on young talents, as well as on well-known designers: I believe that, in a product company, the winner is the product and not its author. Of course, a powerful name acts as a marketing lever, but if a lamp has a great success, one rarely wonders who the creator is. I always visit the Salone Satellite, one of the richest hotbed of young talents. I look closely at the proposals of young designers, trying to figure out if there might be the winning product among them. Time has often proved me right, and many products started as prototypes presented at the Salone Satellite and ended up as Kundalini bestseller. This year we have bet on two young designers that we discovered last year at the Salone Satellite: David Pompa, a young Mexican who designed the Minimal and Yuma suspension lamps, and the American Ini Archibong, the author of the Hive Table Lamp. Young people, internationalization, innovation and design: these are the Kundalini winning cards that are not just an investment for the future of light design, but also of the company itself.
INTERVIEWS / LUCE 320 23