September 2014

Bouquet light for Habitat

Tord designed the iconic Garland light that first appeared in Habitat in 2003. The design was an instant hit selling out within days, with Habitat Tottenham Court Road reporting a waiting list of 400 customers.

My aim for Bouquet was to create a successor to the Garland - a delicate, floral light arrangement that was affordable and had a contemporary romantic look. Whilst I was considering this I was visiting my mother’s home in Sweden admiring the flowers in the garden and flower arrangements in vases inside.

Then I thought it could be great to create a light that works in a similar way – a light which allowed you to arrange a variety of individual floral elements around a bulb instead of a vase.

I collected a variety of leaves and flowers from this garden that I took back to London pressed in a book which were then scanned and became the basis for the new design. The starting shapes were modified, scaled and added to in the drawing process, always keeping in mind the way in which the leaves needed to shade the light bulb and the transparency of the perforations.

The material we chose for this design is a matt white flexible sheet plastic. It was chosen because of its durability, beautiful translucency and heat resistant qualities. This also allowed us to use a computer controlled plotter cutter – a device with a small knife blade that cuts exactly the digital drawing out of the plastic sheet material. The freedom that this new form of digital production allows makes it possible to have so much fine detail and variation. You’ll find 20 separate leaves and flower elements in Bouquet - each has a small hook on the top, which you simply fix around the light cable so it’s also very easy to install, just like arranging flowers in a vase.

Launching during London Design Festival as part of Habitat’s Design Reunion, a collection to celebrate it’s 50th anniversary, Bouquet will be available from 13th September.

Visit the Design Reunion exhibition at Habitat’s Platform gallery in their King’s Road store.

Bouquet will also be available to see and buy from our Shoreditch shop.