Achille Castiglioni's Arco Floor Lamp

lnspired by everyday products, the Arco floor lamp was developed as a freestanding interior version of a standard street lamp, to obviate the need for built-in lighting in a room.

The Arco floor lamp is made of an arched steel arm fixed to a white Carrara Marble rectangular base. The original telescopic arm of the Arco floor lamp allows the lamp to lighten at a distance of over 2 meters from the base allowing people to easily move and to position a table with chairs underneath

Simple adjustable mechanisms are a common feature of Castiglioni designs. The arm, made of satin-finished stainless steel, with a zapon varnished aluminium reflector, weighs over 45 kg (100 lb), but, helpfully, the designers incorporated a hole into the marble base to allow a broom handle to be inserted, enabling two people to lift it.

The design of the Arco floor lamp makes it pleasant and original at the same time, a typical element of the Castiglionis' design often inspired by common objects revisited with geniality and irony.

The lamp complies with Achille Castiglioni's basic design philosophy, which was that objects should develop from an analytical approach to materials and technologies. The Arco floor lamp is successful precisely because its physical adaptability is so clearly articulated.

Designed for the Flos lighting company in 1962, the Arco floor lamp is the result of the team work of the Castiglioni brothers during the golden age of the Italian Mid Century design. Achille Castiglioni during his career worked with few manufacturers only and Flos is probably the one with whom he had the most productive collaboration.

Flos, the producers of Arco, was one of their most respected collaborators. Together they redefined the nature and purpose of interior lighting, affording it a sculptural as well as a functional role. The Arco floor lamp has become one of the most admired design objects of the postwar period, and is a regular prop in films, television programmes and lifestyle magazines. Perhaps its most famous appearance was in the O07 film Diamonds are Forever.

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Achille Castiglioni's Arco Floor Lamp