Trendy Lighting with a Twist – Fresh Designs with Organic Roots

Here is a selection of lighting products where designers have taken cues from their natural environment. Everyone has a slightly different idea – be it a realistic rendition or impressionist abstraction of nature’s bounties, it’s a collection that is sure to amuse and entertain! I also have a couple blogs on some lovely environmentally friendly and sustainable lighting fixtures for you to enjoy.

Pendant light fixture
Here’s a versatile suspension light fixture that looks great hung either direction!

Buff-Buff Design offers a pendant that sports a transparent plexiglass body and stainless steel springs. Depending on the fixture size, 104 or 175 blue LED light points can be inserted. Although resembling blue grass when used as an uplight, it is equally cool as a downlight.

Tulip shaped lamp shades created with zippers
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades!!

Quasar‘s biophilia inspired Tulip lamp is as pretty as it’s functional. Available as table and floor lamps, this novel design gives top billing to the lowly zipper. These zippers can be easily adjusted to shape the flower’s ‘petals’ to create different looks as inspiration strikes.

Lamp shade opens with zipper into tulip shape
The body is in stainless steel and nickel, and the striking shades come in white or red.

The operation of the zippers also cleverly control the light output, from mood lighting when closed, to the full blast of an unshielded bulb when totally unzipped.

This design by Arturo Alvarez garnered an award by The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design. It is a bold visual statement made from metallic mesh. The near translucent material gives the fixture an ethereal and weightless look. Despite its substantial (32” dia) size, the fixture appears to float in space. It’s available in white, red, and green with transparent cables to fit every décor!
This pendant light resembles a dandelion – or a tutu – twirling in mid air!

Fluo by Arturo Alvarez garnered an award from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design. It is a bold visual statement made from metallic mesh. The near translucent material gives the fixture an ethereal and weightless look. Despite its substantial (32” dia) size, the fixture appears to float in space. It’s available in white, red, and green with transparent cables to fit every décor!

Lighting fixture with poppy-shaped glass shades
Nature inspired heat reactive light fixtures.

These are not your everyday lamp shades – the amazing poppy shades gradually open up with heat! The shades are mouth blown glass which comes in a wide variety of colors.

Lamp with purple poppy flower shaped glass shade
Will be fun to time the flower opening to one’s  bedtime reading!

Each lamp is mounted on a flexible fabric-covered stem so they can be individually adjusted to suit your needs. The product is available as chandeliers, sconces, or table lamps.

Quasar has an LED fixture of black ostrich feathers, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea – but it does add a sensuous and glamorous look to the lighting not achievable by other means. It may double as a high end feather duster in a pinch!
A light fixture that can double as a high end feather duster in a pinch!

Quasar has an LED fixture of black ostrich feathers, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea – but it does add a sensuous and glamorous look to the lighting not achievable by other means.

Wall sconce with an elastic cover fitted over a plastic shade
Wall sconce that reminds me of the silhouette of a Western Screech Owl.

A whimsical design from Estiluz – the polycarbonate shade is a funky looking elastic cover in a lattice design. The light from the lamp bounces off the textured, warped shade and projects a distinctive pattern around the fixture.

Ceiling light fixture with embedded LEDs
A ballet of light and shadows from this organic skeleton of pendant fixture.

Ross Lovegrove’s Andromeda lamp for Yamagiwa is a minimalist fixture with clusters of LEDs embedded at the cross-points of a hard polyurethane foam form. Lighting can be modulated and optimized by adjusting the mirror reflectors that are attached with magnets inside the frame.

Pendant lght fixture frm rattan
A suspension light showcasing the poetic juxtaposition between the natural and the man-made, the high touch and the industrial.

The lamp shade of this pendant fixture from Thai lighting design firm Ango is fabricated from superfine extruded rattan, which is both reflective and translucent. Being handmade, the shape of each fixture is unique and takes a week to produce. On the other hand, to ensure durability, the canopy is made of stainless steel.

Comments

Please send me your thoughts



  • The brightness depends on the lamp (light bulb) used. Unfortunately I don’t have that spec but it looks more decorative than task oriented, so it will caste a wonderful pattern on the walls but not something you want to read with (also precisely because of that).

  • The round and curvy shapes of the shade of the fixture from Estiluzis is interesting. I’d like to see that warm color pattern cast around my bedroom 🙂
    How much light gets through the shade? Enough to read a book? or more for mood setting?