Arco Floor Lamp - Castiglioni (1962)
It is very true that four eyes see more than two, and that two plus two sometimes make five. Arco Floor Lamp is a good example of this, as it was born out of the collaboration of the brothers Castiglioni, Achille and Pier Giacomowho one day decided to give a new twist to the lamp design The company was founded in the early 1960s and from that time on marked its own style: radical, audacious and ingenious.
The idea came from an inspiration and a discontent. The inspiration: street lighting in Italy in the 1960s. The discontent: why do most living rooms have a light socket for a ceiling lamp right in the middle, when usually dining tables are hardly ever placed there? The Arco Floor Lamp came to the rescue to restore concord, and they made it adjustable to three heights (although they didn't foresee that it would become very popular as a floor lamp...).
The beauty of this lamp lies in its simplicity of form and materials. A Carrara marble base (Michelangelo's favourite and used in Italy since the Romans), a stainless steel arch, and a shiny aluminium reflector, that's all. The Castiglioni were convinced that a perfect object was one reduced to the essentials, and they were right.
A curiosity... The marble base weighs 65 kg, but if you look at it, it has a small hole in it. Why? So that you can easily move it with a broomstick, for example. Oh!
The Arco Floor Lamp is still produced in exactly the same way as in the 1960s because of the Flosin Italy, although you may have seen a lot of them...
