Arco

We thought of a light which might project the light onto a table: there were already a few such lights, but conceived in such a way that it was necessary to walk around them. In order to leave enough space around the table, its base had to be at least 2 meters away from the table. So the idea for Arco was born: we wanted it to be made of components already available on the market, and we found that curved steel profiles were perfectly suited. Then we had to tackle the counter-weight problem: it was necessary to find a heavy mass able to support the whole light structure. At first, we thought of concrete, but later we chose marble because, their weights being equal, the marble base had smaller dimensions, hence we obtained better finish and lower costs. In Arco nothing is decorative: even the rounded edges of the base have a function, i.e. to avoid that we should bump into it; even the hole is no flight of fancy, but it was designed to help raise the base more easily. Ottagono, 1970