A careful mix of technology and emotions, industrial production and craftsmanship, enhanced by an artistic approach. The value of design is very well expressed in Formafantasma’s latest lamp for Flos, WireLine, the second one designed by the studio run by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin after the success of WireRing in 2017.

Previewed in 2019 at the Salone del Mobile and at miart (the international fair of modern and contemporary art in Milan), where it lit up the Vip Lounge, WireLine is now available for the global market.

Nothing defines authenticity more than an object that is exactly what it appears to be. Like WireLine by Formafantasma: a ceiling lamp designed using a light source, a power cable, and nothing else.

“With WireLine, our second lamp for Flos, we revisited the principle that led to the design of our first one, WireRing, and took it one step further. Both lamps were born from the desire to use the electric cable as the star element in the design. For WireLine, we flattened rubber to make it look like a belt and acquire a key role: supporting the extruded ribbed glass rod that houses the LED light source. We chose these materials in order to create a playful contrast between the industrial feel of rubber and the sophisticated sensuality of glass. The lamp can be installed as a single piece or in a string of modules to obtain elaborate visual compositions. Packaging has minimal dimensions”

Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin 

As a piece of industrial design enhanced by an artistic outlook, WireLine is a perfect representation of Formafantasma’s design approach. The project was born as an evolution of the concept that led to WireRing in 2017 which consisted, as the designers explain, in “turning the power cable into a key element to generate the form, an aesthetic, iconic and performative aspect of the piece in a space”.

WireLine is a long and thin body with the power cable used as an essential aesthetic feature. Flattened to look like a strap, made of rubber and hung from the ceiling, it delicately supports a sophisticated extrusion of grooved glass, which contains and diffuses the LED light source.

WireLine thus fulfills the ambition of reducing a lamp to its essential components, of creating a shape and presence that stem solely from the light source and the power conductor.

"Every author has an obsession. Ours is light”, explain Trimarchi and Farresin. “We explored it with independent projects and then with Flos: with WireRing first, and now with WireLine. What we love of light that it is intangible, but also technical and emotional. And it is one of the few fields of design that has been recently completely transformed by an important technological innovation: LEDs have changed the rules of the game in terms of design, use and human experience. This shift has turned light into a territory for pioneers, and the most exciting exploratory field for design".

For design-minded residential and contract project spaces

Available in pink and forest green, WireLine can be installed as a single piece or in a composition of several elements to obtain elaborate visual arrangements. It is always an extremely practical piece, requiring minimal storage space. Suitable for very high ceilings, hotel lobbies or similar contract situations, WireLine is also ideal for domestic environments, lofts and open spaces.

Flos
Formafantasma

Technical details
The cable is manufactured as a soft-touch rubber strap and contains two electrical conductors. Its length can be adjusted according to the height of the ceiling, from a minimum of about two meters to a maximum of eight.

WireLine gives off a compact and homogeneous light thanks to its diffuser, an extruded extra-clear borosilicate glass bar that contains the LED light source. Two metal connectors (an electrified and a mechanical one) fix the light bar to the belt. The lamp is completed by two ceiling roses, one of which is placed in correspondence with the light point and contains the power supply and the dimmer (Push, DALI, and 1-10V).

Materials: extruded borosilicate glass, rubber, steel

Finishes: pink, forest green

Light source: LED module 45W - 3100lm - 2700K - CRI90, dimmable