Melbourne-based lighting designers Volker Haug Studio and multidisciplinary architectural designers Flack Studio have co-designed Me & You, a new collection of 13 decorative light fixtures, for Milan Design Week.

From iterations of Flack Studio’s original lighting for Ace Hotel Sydney, to ‘Troye’ – a re-envisioned sconce inspired by a custom lamp for actor and musician Troye Sivan’s Melbourne home – Me & You celebrates the duet between lighting and its environments.

The collection also speaks to a long history of collaboration between the two studios – specifically borne out of a moment of minor calamity, when Volker Haug came to the rescue of Flack.

During a Flack Studio installation, a glass fitting from a vintage wall sconce was irreparably broken. With the back plate already in place, Flack called on Volker Haug to urgently design a new, site-specific fitting. The incident was a potent reminder of the powerful possibilities for collaboration, and it quickly developed into a provocation for more expansive creation.

Inside the Flack Studio and Volker Haug Studio creative process

Inspired by the fixed, 20cm-wide backplate, the dimensions were set as an initial constraint for investigations of material and form. Flack Studio and Volker Haug began toying through different models, metals and attributes within these physical and artistic confines. 

Eventually, they loosened these ties to allow a “natural” design process to take over, according to a statement from Volker Haug. The error that instigated the collaboration ultimately begets a “playful” process, where the rapid-fire nature of ideating, prototyping and editing was an experience of “total cohesion”.

The Me & You collection

The resulting collection expresses a shared studio vernacular and the symbiosis of interior and industrial design disciplines. Flack’s design discernment came from envisioning each light’s presence in situ; whereas Volker Haug would see a light from all the same angles, only to push technical and material features even further.

According to Volker Haug Studio, Me & You will include diverse styles, proportions, materials and detailing. Foundational to the series is a set of interchangeable wall sconces – differentiated by their varying luminosities – that are intended to be installed as individual lights, sets of pairs or as a series.

Dualities of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ echo throughout. In contrast to mouth-blown glass elements and features like rotund metal cages, there was also an opportunity to apply material refinements to some of Flack Studio’s more angular earlier designs. ‘Troye’, for example, has an edgy metal exterior that hugs a hidden light source, with punchy perforations to reveal its glow.

Me & You represents Flack and Volker Haug’s shared belief in “the truth of materials, and their innate ability to speak for their own beauty and radiance”, according to the preview. With this ethos in mind, the lighting is designed in a limited range of brass, ceramic, glass and fibreglass.

Me & You will be on show at Milan Design Week from 16-21 April on Via San Maurilio, 18, Milan, Italy.

Photography by Annika Kafcaloudis.

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