New Window Display at DZINE

Published on dwell.com

June 01–September 09

Dzine, 128 Utah Street, San Francisco, California

If you find yourself in the San Francisco design district be sure to stop by DZINE, where a new display by Gensler featuring the FLOS Minikelvin lamp is brightening its storefront. The display is entitled "Light, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" and features cutouts of an elephant and donkey surrounded by a heart-shaped series of the Antonio Citterio–designed lamps in what Collin Burry, Principal at Gensler, describes as "a big bipartisan smooch." In addition to the Minikelvin, DZINE stocks the Piani, D’E-Light, and Miniteca by FLOS.

More info: dzinestore.com

You can find the original article here.

Gensler SF Curates FLOS Window Display at DZINE

officenewswire


5.30.12 | San Francisco, CA | DZINE, San Francisco’s leading retailer of high-end, modern furniture, is pleased to announce a new window display curated by Gensler SF in the FLOS section of the showroom. Collin Burry, Principal at Gensler SF, led the team and selected FLOS’s new Minikelvin LED lamp, designed by Antonio Citterio, for the display entitled “Light, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The design represents the political ideal of the Republican and Democratic parties working together to lead the country more efficiently.

“DZINE, FLOS and Gensler help put the symbols of the political parties, elephant and donkey, head to head in a big ol’ bipartisan smooch,” said Burry. “What better way to illuminate this lovely union than a heart of Minikelvins, a light source for all no matter your affiliation.”

The Minikelvin LED lamp is a pint-sized version of FLOS’s best-selling Kelvin LED lamp by Antonio Citterio. Featuring all of the technologically advanced aspects of its predecessor, the Kelvin LED, including an on/off switch with Soft Touch technology (touch sensor), light flow adjustment to 2 intensities (100%, 50% and 0%), an adjustable head and a fused aluminum alloy body in chrome, this mini version has an arm length of 11.81” and weighs just 1.76 lbs.

“We are thrilled to have Collin Burry and the Gensler SF team contribute this latest design to the FLOS window, incorporating FLOS’s Minikelvin LED lamp,” said Cardenio Petrucci, Co-owner of DZINE. “Gensler selected a very apropos theme for the display, which will be debuted prior to the anticipation of the presidential election.”

DZINE will unveil the new window display at a private event on Wednesday, May 30^th, 2012 from 5:30-6:30 pm at their showroom (128 Utah St., at Alameda St.). Burry and other Gensler SF team members will be on hand at the event to answer any questions about the display.

Gensler SF team in front of their window display entitled “Light, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”


FLOS opened its San Francisco store inside the DZINE showroom in November 2011 with FLOS classics such as Arco, Taraxacum and Toio by Castiglioni, as well as new favorites such as the elegant Wallpiercing, part of the Soft Architecture line, the simplistic Lightspring and La Linea, and the inventive Miniteca table lamp, all designed by Gilad; the Ktribe by Philippe Starck; Glo-Ball by Jasper Morrison; Skygarden and Zeppelin suspension lamps by Marcel Wanders and, of course, Antonio Citterio’s Kelvin LED and Minikelvin LED lamps. The initial FLOS window display featured the Piani lamp by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and was designed by renowned interior designer Nicole Hollis.

Read original article here.

Design Gossip 10th Issue - Guest Edited by Rob Forbes

Light and Magic
Text & Photos by Rob Forbes

"Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself revelation." - James Turrell

One of the best lighting "exhibitions" I ever witnessed was "staged" on a spring day in a small cafe in Mallorca, Spain. (It could have been anywhere). We were finishing a leisurely lunch and coffee, enjoying the seaside quiet, when a bus arrived and disgorged a swarm of large, loud tourists, thoroughly dismantling the mood both visually and acoustically. We sat waiting impatiently for the check, annoyed by the sudden change to the environment, eager to get away from the tourist invasion.

Suddenly the sun appeared from behind the clouds, blanketing the cafe and patrons in a pattern of vivid light dots that shone through the perforated awning. The atmosphere underwent a complete transformation. Bodies retreated into the background, like deer camouflaged in a forest, and we left the place calm and amused, not irritated. It reminded me that light and its patterns can have a profound effect on any environment. It can change our mood from irritation to tranquility in a second.

We cannot really credit the person who designed the perforated awning as the visionary behind this lighting "exhibition". Many unrelated things (none of which were designed with the intention of creating the dot matrix) coalesced to create the effect. It was an act of nature, a form of lighting design that we often take for granted. Design that it is not in a showroom, not trying to be celebrated as design, is so often overlooked. But it's all around us at every waking moment. Missing its magic is like forgetting to notice the beauty of nature.

Lighting is a design category unto itself. Like music, it is magical and mysterious and sets up a deep primal resonance in us that connects us to the natural world. It acts directly on our psyches, creating and changing moods and feelings. This may be why the experience of viewing the stars on a pitch-black night, or catching a glorious sunrise or sunset, or stirring flames in a fireplace can be such a powerful experience for us. Light runs deep and affects everything it touches.

"The finest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle." - Albert Einstein

Nature provides us with the most amazing light exhibitions everyday and the exhibition is always changing (thanks and kudos to the curator). Architects have been helping us to see the magic of light as far back as we know. I have included photos of some of my favorite "lighting solutions" taken over the years. The first is the Pantheon in Rome with an oculus that brings light to a silent dark mysterious chamber. Another comes from a courtyard in Cordoba Spain and another comes from an interior in Granada. Light and shade patterns from Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum, light strips at the Schindler house in West Hollywood, a Turnbull wooden chapel in St. Helena California, a doorway from the Luis Barragan's Convento de las Capuchinas Sacramentarias an Tlalpan, Mexico City, are other examples. Each of these reminds us to consider light and the absence of light, pattern, space, and the magic of our physical world more fully. Architects can be extraordinary lighting designer.

Modern lighting designers are primarily focused on problem solving tasks, i.e. how to make our environments more efficient, comfortable and functional. Fine, but one of the lighting's other tasks might be to rekindle our interest in the character, magic, and elusive nature of light itself. The better designers do this unwittingly I believe. The perforations in the dome of Castiglioni's Arco could have derived from seeing sunlight spots on people or on forms just as I witnessed in that cafe on Mallorca. You cannot really look at Ron Gilad's Wall Piercing without a nod to the ephemeral quality of natural lighting. There are many other examples.

I'm treated to a light exhibition every morning from my apartment in San Francisco. The more dramatic and colorful lightscapes is perhaps the more seductive, but I'm partial to the other one. I see the lights on the buildings and the headlights from the cars and the neon cafe signage and it makes me realize that lighting is all around us in its magical form, if we choose to see it. Light is truly mysterious - even Galileo admits to understanding it "but little".

"Vision, I say, is related to light itself. But of this sensation and the things pertaining to it I pretend to understand but little. Even a long time would not suffice to explain that trifle, or even to hint at an explanation, I pass over this in silence." - Galileo Galilei, The Assayer

About Rob Forbes:

Rob Forbes' career includes work in both the Arts and Business fields. Forbes is best known as the Founder of Design Within Reach and for the vision of a business that has grown into one of the leading retail destination for modern design in the US. In his role there he edited a weekly online newsletter, Design Notes, that covered design broadly around the globe. His interests in design, culture, and the urban environment and his personal passion for bicycles led him to his new venture PUBLIC. PUBLIC is a design based business based in San Francisco with a mission to help reduce our dependency on cars and think more intelligently and artfully about the way we get around and connect with our cities and communities. PUBLIC launched in May 2010 in San Francisco and had become the leading nationwide direct source (www.publicbikes.com) for elegant modern city bikes and gear in the US. (text courtesy of Rob Forbes)

FLOS Wins 2 Good Design Awards 2011

FLOS is proud to announce the recognition of the Kelvin LED and Light Spring in the 2011 GOOD DESIGN AWARDS in the lighting category.

Founded in Chicago in 1950 by architects Eero Saarinen, Charles ad Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufman Jr., Good Design bestows international recognition upon the world′s most prominent designers and manufacturers for advancing new, visionary, and innovative product concepts, invention and originality, and for pushing the envelope beyond what is considered ordinary products and consumer design.

Flos Lighting: Piero Gandini presents Wall Rupture at DZINE

Flos CEO and Chairman, Piero Gandini presents the Wall Rupture here at DZINE during the launch of our Flos shop-in-shop.


from DZINE store on Vimeo.

New Flos Shop-in-a-Shop

DWELL Magazine
written by Jamie Gross


Flos, the Italian lighting company that collaborates with many of the best designers working today, recently opened a San Francisco "store"—a shop within the cavernous DZINE design showroom. I was fortunate to visit the space on opening day, when Flos CEO and Chairman Piero Gandini and designer Ron Gilad were present, and I had the chance to sit down and talk with them about Flos's new retail approach and the company's latest designs.

As Gandini pointed out, this was the first time in America that the company was able to integrate their three lines—their decorative line, architectural products, and "soft architecture line"—into one space. I was particularly intrigued with the company's "soft architecture" concept, which they introduced in Milan in 2010. "Normally you put a sconce on a wall," Gandini pointed out. "Here, the two elements—architecture and light—diffuse into each other. It's a totally new dimension of architecture. Architecture is made to accept and give light."

A corner of DZINE was given over to Flos's shop-in-a-shop, which included this installation of Gilad's Wallpiercings.

Gilad, the Tel Aviv-born, New York City-based designer, showed me some of the products he's created for that line, including Wallpiercing: a semi-circular ring that appears to "pierce" the wall, and which you can arrange in a variety or forms, including a long chain, an interlocked ring, or as shown in DZINE, a series of four loops, repeated across a wall.

"All the engineering is inside the wall," Gilad pointed out. "You buy a piece of the wall" (the fixture embedded into a piece of drywall) and inset it into your existing wall, then plaster around it to cover up the seams.

Piero Gandini (left) and designer Ron Gilad.

An adjacent wall was dedicated to other examples of Soft Architecture, including a scattering of Round Lights and Sebastian Wrong's Spun Light. All the lights, including the Wallpiercing series, were on a computerized cycle of different colors, giving this corner of the showroom a kind of nightclub feel.

Two of Sebastian Wrong's Spun Lights hover over the floor, beneath three glowing Circle Lights. The lights cycled through a spectrum of colors.

Like 90% of all the new lights Flos has introduced in the past year, all of these pieces are LED-based. Though Gandini thinks LED technology still has a ways to go before it is able to provide the same light quality of incandescents, Flos is investing in the technology, trying to "push the technology to serve people."

A closer look at a Wallpiercing.


Another value of Flos is giving the designers they work with total creative freedom. "Flos is a total product-driven company," said Gandini. "We don't do market research, we develop pure products with the most creative minds around. We never worry 'will this be a success or not? Is this good or bad?' We just follow innovative ideas. We strongly believe in the talent we work with. In each piece you see the voice of the designer."

"Flos is so innovative, there are no limits," said Gilad. "Designers have the total freedom of dreaming. It's the closest a company can be to the joy of being back in the academy."

Another look at the Soft Architecture in action.


Gilad also showed me some of his designs from his Decorative line, including his clever Mini Teca Renaissance Cupola (a bit twee for me, but certainly charming) and the sleek Light Spring, a wall-mounted LED fixture whose head can be rotated 45 degrees on its vertical axis. As Gilad explains: "Power LEDs have become an excellent and functional source of lighting. The Lightspring collection has been created from 3D designs that reproduce classic candelabras and sconce lights."

Like many of Gilad's designs this light combines wit and aesthetic, with the abstract and the functional. The fabric shade seemingly floats in an acrylic box, and is lit by a halogen lamp creating diffused light.

Light Spring forms part of a series of wall lamps by Flos which feature a very simple and linear design and a die-cast, painted tubular aluminum body.

Window Shopping: Nicole Hollis at DZINE

CA Home & Design
by Erin Feher

The imaginative vignettes at San Francsico's Dzine always mix the latest in European design with owner Cardenio Petrucci's ingenious styling sense (think rotary phones and bundled newspapers). But to show off the latest offerings from Flos, he called in some professional help. Nicole Hollis created Dzine's premiere window display as part of what Petrucci hopes is a series of installations by the best Bay Area designers.


Hollis' muse was the Piani lamp by the Bouroullec Brothers, Erwan and Ronan, for Flos. Her playfully schizophrenic creation features shelves for six different personalities.

See full article here.

Interview with Ron Gilad at DZINE

In occasion of the launch of FLOS San Francisco at DZINE, Ron Gilad introduced his "Wall Piercing" in the following interview.


Flos Lighting: Interview with Ron Gilad from DZINE store on Vimeo.

Below are some of the showroom installation images.

1. For new construction space the Wall Piercings in the desired configuration allowing for enough space between the panels so the 'Piercing' rings will not hit each other.

2. Fix the drywall up against the back panels for the Wall Piercings.  Tape around the back panels with fiberglass tape and then mud in

3. Add two filler layers and one finisher layer to create a seamless transition from the back panels of the Wall Piercing and the drywall.

4. Finish by painting the wall and installing the 'Piercing' rings.



LIGHT & FOOD: PICCINO IN SAN FRANCISCO

by Jean Lin

from "Design Gossip".

We eat with all five of our senses.  This makes the design and lighting in a restaurant especially important, a concept we will explore in a new, regular column entitled Light & Food.  Piccino, a lovely restaurant in San Francisco, has recently moved to a new, larger location.  I spoke with Piccino owner and architect Loring Sagan about the convergence of food, design and lighting.

COULD YOU START WITH A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE RESTAURANT AND HOW YOU CAME TO THIS NEW SPACE?
My wife, Margherita is from Lucca, Italy, and had opened Piccino 6 years ago in a very small (600 sq. ft.) location at the other end of the sidewalk.  The neighborhood was changing and lacked any great food, coffee, wine, etc. so, the small place was an instant success.  With lease going up for renewal, and a very challenging landlord, Margherita and her partner Sher Rogat were receptive to a change.  And I had time to take on a smaller project as there was not a lot of design and development work 2 years ago.

One of their regular customers was a wonderful Italian woman whose family was from Lucca, and she and her cousin owned a beautiful old yellow building at the other end of the sidewalk - and there the story begins.. (and by the way, Margherita's brother is her new landlord's family doctor in Lucca!)

WHAT WERE YOUR GOALS IN THE DESIGN OF THE RESTAURANT?
To keep the personal warm comfortable neighborhood feeling from the former location, be respectful of what the building is, while at the same time creating a light, open, modern feeling.

HOW DID YOU ENSURE THAT THE BRAND OF PICCINO STAY INTACT WITHIN A NEW, UPDATED SPACE?
Using warm natural materials, such as recycled cypress for the tables and countertops, and black oak for the floors and soffits.  There was no pretense in the old cafe, and the same goes for the new one.  It is what it is, but with thought.

HOW DO YOU CARRY THROUGH THIS MESSAGE FROM FOOD TO DESIGN, TO FURNITURE AND LIGHTING?
The food is elemental and consistent with our design aesthetic - Margherita and Sher, and our chef Rachel Silcocks make food which is clean, clear, and do as little as possible to fresh ingredients.  The vegetable, fish, and meats are all vibrant.  My partner at my architectural firm, Sagan Piechota, Daniel Piechota and I took the same approach with the materials and space - do as little as possible and let the space shine.

HOW DOES THIS DESIGN RELATE TO THE MENU?
The menu is not huge and it changes weekly depending on what the farmers bring us.  It is intentionally kept uncluttered with a balance of a few special items in each category.  We also kept it simple in design, but strived to do simple well.  Knowing where to stop and draw the line is an art: Whether in architecture, interior design, or food.

WHAT ROLE DOES LIGHTING PLAY IN ALL THIS?
Because a restaurant is active at night, lighting is an integral aspect of the experience, both in terms of being able to see, and feel the environment!  The space itself is a three dimensional palette to be appreciated.  Being somewhat asymmetric, the FLOS Glo-Balls do this beautifully.  My partner Daniel chose them.

WHAT INFORMED YOUR CHOICE TO USE FLOS' GLO-BALLS IN THE END?
They are simple and beautiful!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEAT IN THE RESTAURANT?
I enjoy the far corners looking back at the entry, as well as the counters and communal tables.  All of them have their contribution to the experience.

THE FOOD ON THE WEBSITE LOOKS DELICIOUS, WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ITEM ON THE MENU?
Salads are extraordinary! Pastas too!