Home to Poul Henningsen's manifold "Artichoke" lamp, Louis Poulsen has been a luminary in lighting manufacture for close to 150 years. Its OE Quasi Light materializes beauty out of mathematical geometry: with a icosahedron frame embracing a dodecahedron core, this pendant lamp passes for a glowing atom.
PH Artichoke
he PH Artichoke was designed in 1958 by Poul Henningsen for the Langelinie Pavillonen, a modernist Copenhagen restaurant where it continues to enchant visitors today. With its world-famous unique sculptural design, the PH Artichoke is viewed as an international design icon. The fixture has 72 leaves, positioned so as to provide totally glare-free light from any angle. To ensure a high level of quality, much of the production process is still carried out by hand. The renowned light fixture has kept its original copper finish, which to this date illuminates spaces with its warm and ambient lighting. With the brushed and polished steel as well as white painted metal models, further members have been added to the PH Artichoke family, highlighting its versatility and timeless silhouette.
Patera
The Patera pendant designed by Øivind Slaatto launched as a modern take on the classic chandelier, bringing a glowing focal point and soft, dynamic illumination to contemporary spaces. The Patera’s glare-free, 360-degree illumination is the result of an intricate design with differently positioned cells that bathe surrounding spaces, people, and objects in natural, even, and flattering light. The form is beautiful to behold from all angles, its Fibonacci sequence-based structure providing a different impression from every vantage point.
OE Quasi
In partnership with Louis Poulsen, world-renowned Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has created a new, large-scale pendant. With the complex shapes of the OE Quasi, Eliasson combines his long-time interest in geometry and light, reinforcing his and Louis Poulsen’s shared idea that quality of lighting is essential to our lives. The pendant is composed of two contrasting yet interlinked geometric shapes. The outer layer is a rigid aluminum frame in the shape of an icosahedron with 20 triangular faces. Seemingly floating within the frame, is the inner form, a white polycarbonate reflector in the geometry of a dodecahedron with 12 pentagonal faces. LED lights are embedded in the inner vertices of the aluminum frame connected to light guides along the inner edges. The light is directed towards the reflector in the center, creating a spherical illumination back into the surroundings. The OE Quasi has been created with sustainability in mind, a core value of Eliasson’s work. The aluminum used is 90% recycled, while the other materials are entirely recyclable. Aiming for longevity, the design of the product enables replacement and recycling of parts.
Above
The Above pendant by Danish designer Mads Odgård represents an overtly simplistic lighting design. The designer himself is a minimalist to the core and creates understandable products, where function is valued to the same degree as form and quality. “I have designed a lamp that embodies my mantra: how simple do you dare to design? I would rather remove than add and I always encourage myself to go as simple as possible,“ says Mads Odgård. The pendant’s silhouette features a graphic triangle, creating a pleasant downward light. The arch-shaped opening at the top, to which the name Above refers, is revealing the cord and resulting in a discreet upward light and subdued ambience.
AJ Royal
AJ Royal is among the Arne Jacobsen designs developed in 1957 for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen (Radisson Collection). The AJ Royal was originally produced in three colors: light grey, dark brown and black. Today, the AJ Royal is available in white in its two original sizes. A smaller variant is introduced in 2020 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the hotel, just as the series is reintroduced in black. The AJ Royal retains its classic, graphic look as sharply as ever – irrespective of whether it lights up a dining table, is used in an office, or a showroom, where it ensures an even and flawless downward light and generates ambience with its softened upward light.
Keglen
"The collaboration between Louis Poulsen and BIG Ideas started with the development of a pendant for the Tirpitz Museum in Blåvand, a building BIG had designed for the Varde Museums. The Tirpitz Museum opened in 2017, and the edgy, galvanized finish of the pendant encapsulates the at once fine and robust architecture of the museum that melts into the dune landscape of West Jutland. The artistic and technical lighting collaboration between Louis Poulsen and BIG Ideas continued and has now resulted in the further development of the Tirpitz Pendant which works beautifully in any kind of interior. In the design of Keglen, the aim was to create a systematic design language that would provide the opportunity for a wide range of lighting typologies. In other words, Bjarke Ingels, Jakob Lange and the design team from BIG Ideas wanted to create a family of lamps with the same qualities and design details in various sizes, but each with their own unique personality. “The geometric and metallic shades have a soft, organic glass insert that resembles a drop of water. In the table and floor versions, the glass insert meets the lamp stem and flows organically around it like liquid exhibiting surface tension,” emphasize Jakob Lange and Bjarke Ingels.
PH 5 Pendants
Poul Henningsen developed the PH 5 in 1958 in response to the constant changes made to the shape and size of incandescent bulbs by bulb manufacturers, naming it after the size of the pendant’s main shade, which is 50 centimeters in diameter. When the lamp was introduced, he wrote, typically daringly, about how he had lost faith that the manufacturers of incandescent light bulbs would ever learn to consider common sense or have the consumer’s best interests at heart. “I have accepted fate, and with Louis Poulsen´s permission I have designed a PH fixture, which can be used with any kind of light source, Christmas lights, and 100 W metal filament bulbs. Although a fluorescent tube would be too much to ask in the existing form!” Henningsen wanted to improve the color reproduction characteristics of the light source in the PH 5. Therefore, small red and blue shades were inserted to supplement the color in the parts of the spectrum where the eye is least sensitive – the red and blue areas – thereby subduing the light in the middle yellow-green region where the eye is most sensitive. At the time, no one knew that the PH 5 would become synonymous with the PH light, which remains 100% glare-free, irrespective of how the light is installed or which light source is used. However, the red and blue rings are no longer necessary to achieve superior light quality because today’s light sources reproduce daylight far better than in Henningsen’s time. Nonetheless, PH 5 continues to elevate even the most modern interiors in a range of colors today. In 2020, the PH 5 Monochrome series is introduced to emphasize this striking design for a more contemporary look. The matte-painted metal shades come in black, white, and in ultra blue for the bolder decorator.
AJ Table Lamp
Designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1960 for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen (Radisson Blu). The light contributed to the total design concept of the hotel. Several of the hotels items have achieved iconic design status today, and among the lighting products the AJ lamps in particular have become world renowned. Five new color variants were introduced in connection with the 50th anniversary of the launch of the AJ family. The new colors have been carefully chosen in line with an updated Arne Jacobsen color scheme.
Panthella Table Lamp
Panthella Table and Panthella Floor were designed by Verner Panton in 1971 and remain one of his most popular fixture designs. The organic shapes are typical of a Verner Panton design, as were the many strong colors the fixture was originally available in. Verner Panton wanted to create a light fixture where both the foot and the shade served as a reflector. Today the lamp is only available in white.
Yuh Table Lamp
The Danish-Italian design duo GamFratesi designed Yuh for Louis Poulsen in 2017. Initially launched in black and white, the family was extended with editions featuring brass and marble. One of the essential features of the lamp is to be personal. The light is flexible and taking up little space. It can rotate, rise and lower, illuminating and creating ambience in the desired area. The form of the shade is determined geometrically from the movement that it performs on the stem. A minimalistic appearance created from a circular shape at the bottom to a linear opening at the top of the shade. The name Yuh is the phonetic form of ‘you’, the letters representing the sound made by the voice to say “you”.
PH 3½-2½ Glass Table Lamp
The PH 3½-2½ Glass Table lamp was designed in 1928 and is one of many advanced projects undertaken by Poul Henningsen in the development of his world-famous three-shade system from 1926. Poul Henningsen devoted most of his life to taming electric light. He based his three-shade design on a logarithmic spiral to make optimum use of the light source. He was constantly doing calculations and tests. The form of the shades was determined by the way they were required to shape and reflect the light, and the lamp was designed to be glare-free. The first PH Table lamp was completed in early 1927 and launched as an alternative to low-pitched hanging lamps. The white opal glass shades soften the overall look of the lamp and illuminate its surroundings with a perfect, harmonious and glare-free light that only the classic three-shade system is capable of emitting. The shades are mouth-blown three-layer opal glass, which is glossy on top and sandblasted matt underneath to provide soft and uniform light distribution.