FLOS
My circuit
FLOS
My circuit
My Circuit is the outcome of Michael Anastassiades’ long-term relationship with Flos. He is a designer with an unusually wide range of interests, from handmade bamboo and poured pewter artefacts to industrially produced office furniture. It reflects an eclectic background. He trained as a civil engineer at Imperial College in London but got more out of the Royal College of Art where he worked with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby on a series of conceptual designs that treated the discipline more as a means of asking questions than of providing functional solutions. Flos is the company responsible for many of the most memorable lights of the last 60 years, from the Castiglioni brothers’ Arco floor lamp to Konstantin Grcic’s Mayday work lamp. Anastassiades’ work is always beautifully conceived, technically resolved and with a poetic aspect. He is fascinated by the way people use light in the domestic context to define the spaces in which they live. My Circuit is a striking departure from the insistent linear geometry and technocratic image of conventional track lighting – Anastassiades wanted to find a way to introduce a freer-flowing geometry while still allowing lighting schemes to be easily reconfigured.
My Circuit is the outcome of Michael Anastassiades’ long-term relationship with Flos. He is a designer with an unusually wide range of interests, from handmade bamboo and poured pewter artefacts to industrially produced office furniture. It reflects an eclectic background. He trained as a civil engineer at Imperial College in London but got more out of the Royal College of Art where he worked with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby on a series of conceptual designs that treated the discipline more as a means of asking questions than of providing functional solutions. Flos is the company responsible for many of the most memorable lights of the last 60 years, from the Castiglioni brothers’ Arco floor lamp to Konstantin Grcic’s Mayday work lamp. Anastassiades’ work is always beautifully conceived, technically resolved and with a poetic aspect. He is fascinated by the way people use light in the domestic context to define the spaces in which they live. My Circuit is a striking departure from the insistent linear geometry and technocratic image of conventional track lighting – Anastassiades wanted to find a way to introduce a freer-flowing geometry while still allowing lighting schemes to be easily reconfigured.
he first version of My Circuit was based on pre-formed rigid elements, some curved, others straight, that could be configured together to achieve a range of layouts. It was an idea that came from Anastassiades’ adolescent memories of building Scalextric racing car circuits from a kit of prefabricated plastic parts with inset metal channels carrying electricity. He based the current version on a fully flexible track that allows users to draw fluid lines on the ceiling, positioning light fittings at any point along them. Anastassiades was as interested in My Circuit’s practical offering to users as he was in its quality as an object.“We moved on to use a flexible tracking which is made out of a white rubber extrusion. The power comes from the wires on the side. Certain elements are installed on the ceiling as small sections and then the tracking clips between them. You can create a kind of drawing that eventually connects the different points where you would like lights to hang from.” Paradoxically the effect is to make the track both more visible than a conventional rectilinear system, but also less intrusive. My Circuit is like a memory of the florid plaster cornices of baroque ceilings. “Like all the ideas that I’ve done, it started with a very long process of trying to understand how light works within the domestic setting and how people improvise to arrive at a result that they’re really happy with.”
he first version of My Circuit was based on pre-formed rigid elements, some curved, others straight, that could be configured together to achieve a range of layouts. It was an idea that came from Anastassiades’ adolescent memories of building Scalextric racing car circuits from a kit of prefabricated plastic parts with inset metal channels carrying electricity. He based the current version on a fully flexible track that allows users to draw fluid lines on the ceiling, positioning light fittings at any point along them. Anastassiades was as interested in My Circuit’s practical offering to users as he was in its quality as an object.“We moved on to use a flexible tracking which is made out of a white rubber extrusion. The power comes from the wires on the side. Certain elements are installed on the ceiling as small sections and then the tracking clips between them. You can create a kind of drawing that eventually connects the different points where you would like lights to hang from.” Paradoxically the effect is to make the track both more visible than a conventional rectilinear system, but also less intrusive. My Circuit is like a memory of the florid plaster cornices of baroque ceilings. “Like all the ideas that I’ve done, it started with a very long process of trying to understand how light works within the domestic setting and how people improvise to arrive at a result that they’re really happy with.”
he first version of My Circuit was based on pre-formed rigid elements, some curved, others straight, that could be configured together to achieve a range of layouts. It was an idea that came from Anastassiades’ adolescent memories of building Scalextric racing car circuits from a kit of prefabricated plastic parts with inset metal channels carrying electricity. He based the current version on a fully flexible track that allows users to draw fluid lines on the ceiling, positioning light fittings at any point along them. Anastassiades was as interested in My Circuit’s practical offering to users as he was in its quality as an object.“We moved on to use a flexible tracking which is made out of a white rubber extrusion. The power comes from the wires on the side. Certain elements are installed on the ceiling as small sections and then the tracking clips between them. You can create a kind of drawing that eventually connects the different points where you would like lights to hang from.” Paradoxically the effect is to make the track both more visible than a conventional rectilinear system, but also less intrusive. My Circuit is like a memory of the florid plaster cornices of baroque ceilings. “Like all the ideas that I’ve done, it started with a very long process of trying to understand how light works within the domestic setting and how people improvise to arrive at a result that they’re really happy with.”
Directed by
Giulia Achenza
