Canadian design and manufacturing brand Bocci will launch three new pendant lights and a surface mounted light design in spring. All four designs have been developed at Bocci’s in-house glass and prototyping studio in Vancouver where a series of experiments gave way to four distinct techniques that are the defining element behind each new series.
These latest additions to Bocci’s growing portfolio of sculptural lighting will debut at Euroluce in Milan this April. All four designs will be available to the trade in summer 2017.
84 Series
A white glass bubble is captured inside a fine copper mesh basket and then plunged into hot clear glass. Air is blown into the matrix to gently push the white glass through the mesh, creating a delicate pillowed form that is suspended inside the thick outer layer of clear glass. Sometimes the copper mesh basket folds and crinkles, adding specificity to each piece. Undulations in the exterior shape are a natural consequence of the fabrication process and accentuate the gentle white pillowing below. An LED light source is introduced into the piece, casting a warm coppery hue.
76 Series
A vacuum is introduced to a strata composed of hot white and clear glass with copper mesh between; the vacuum causes the white layer to pull away through the embedded mesh, leaving numerous tendrils of white glass suspended within an interstitial space as it goes.
87 Series
A matrix of hot glass is stretched and folded back onto itself numerous times as it cools. Air is trapped between the folds and stretched along the grain of the loop, creating microfilaments that give the piece a pearlescent optical quality. An LED light source is introduced at one end of the loop casting light through the microfilaments and registering a gentle gradient.
44 Series
Each 44 results from a free pour of molten aluminium into a large canister filled with rock-like modules of resin-impregnated sand, a waste product of conventional sand casting. Low voltage electricity is transmitted through the castings, allowing a light source to be suspended between them without using cables.
ABOUT BOCCI
Bocci is based in Vancouver and Berlin, operating as a co-operative community that strives for a healthy, flexible, and stable network united by the goal of creating and delivering extraordinary objects.
Bocci was founded in 2005 in a red barn surrounded by hay fields on the periphery of Vancouver. The company launched with one piece and has since grown an eclectic portfolio of work focused mostly on the medium of light as it interacts with various artifacts produced through invented fabrication methods. All Bocci pieces are developed, engineered, and fabricated in-house through an infrastructure that provides full control over concept, technique, quality, and scale.
ABOUT OMER ARBEL OFFICE
Creative director Omer Arbel cultivates a fluid studio culture, traveling between architecture, sculpture, invention, and design. Themes in his work include a focus on the intrinsic physical, chemical, and mechanical qualities of materials, the volumetric treatment of natural and artificial light, propagation of self-organizing patterns, studio glass and a romantic mystical approach to the specific contexts and contingencies of each particular project.
Omer Arbel Office is the creative hub of a constellation of companies, Bocci foremost among them, structured to realize ideas at different scales and across a spectrum of different environments.