Sometimes the simplest forms take the most time to perfect. Take woodworker and industrial designer Paul Loebach’s Halo program for Roll & Hill. At first glance, it looks modest: spokes of armature keeping aloft an illuminated circle. But its straightforward arrangement belies its versatile identity. In daylight, the fixture acts like sculpture. At night, the skeleton disappears to reveal a bright, forthright focal point.
It began with a prompt from Jason Miller just after he founded Roll & Hill in Brooklyn, which manifested in Loebach sketching a series of rings of decreasing circumferences. Three years of experimentation and fabrication later, the Halo line debuted as a steel chandelier with three or four acrylic rings of LEDs, which look as striking when wrapping a pillar as they do when suspended in space. Pendant versions offer practicality, encompassing the signature circular iteration and adding oval and rectangular options. Sconces are far from wallflowers, instead distilling Halo into room-defining bands of light.
Customizable in number of rings, sizes, finishes, and orientations, Halo takes care of business in public and commercial space—just look up their installation in Rockwell Group’s Amtrak Ticketed Waiting Hall at New York City’s Moynihan Train Hall. They work in smaller office spaces as well, as proven by their placement in the GOOP headquarters in Santa Monica. And designers from Deborah Berke Partners and David Howell Design to Nicole Hollis and Michael K. Chen have made homes for Halo in private residences across the country. They share Loebach’s belief that a perfect bright idea is worth the wait.
