Washington lamp
1985
Lighting
Steel with high-gloss chrome finish. Halogen lighting
H. 15 3/8 × W. 14 15/16 × D. 18 7/8 in.
Lumen Center Italia
Edited
1985
In 1984 Jean-Michel Wilmotte won the competition to furnish the office of the French Ambassador to Washington, and designed a whole range of specific furniture for the occasion: sofa, armchair, coffee table, console, desk and lamp.
The overall effect is a controlled composition of great geometric rigour, uncluttered and dictated by lines and volumes. A veritable inventory of simple shapes – circular arc, cylinder, sphere and half-sphere – is deployed and combined, visible in every component of the furniture and lighting: the legs of the desk, the armrests of the armchairs and sofas, the cantilevered lampshade of the lamp.
As with the furnishings for the Elysée Palace in Paris, ARC designed the main furniture elements for the office, conceived as prototypes for production. To adapt to more domestic use, the various pieces of furniture in the collection were modified somewhat from the models made for the ambassador. The Washington lamp, for example, will be manufactured by the Italian company Lumen Center Italia, which is still producing it; its base will be made of lacquered steel, rather than solid crystal, as was the case for the lamp intended for the ambassador’s office.
Le dessin de la lampe Washington est né d’un geste, comme une évidence. Une coupelle en équilibre sur un piétement, le tout lié par une rotule. - The design of the Washington lamp was born of a gesture, as if it were obvious. A cup balanced on a base, the whole linked by a ball-and-socket joint.
Jean-Michel Wilmotte
