Cooper Hewitt says...
In 1959, three years before the formal founding of the Italian lighting firm Flos, designer Arturo Eisenkeil became aware of a plastic coating material called “cocoon” and began seeking ways of using it commercially, leading to the development of cocoon lighting, one of Flos’s signature lighting series. Eisenkeil teamed up with designer Stefano Casciani and together they created a steel frame around which the plastic coating could be stretched. The first cocoon lamps were introduced in 1960, and are still in production today. In 1963, Sergio Gandini began managing Flos and relocated the business to the industrial distict of Brescia. Gandini, alongside Dino Gavina, Cesare Cassina, Achille and Pier Castiglioni and Tobia and Afra Scarpa, planned Flos’s product line, image, and communications strategy. In 1972, Flos designs were featured in the seminal exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” at The Museum of Modern Art. In the 1970s and 1980s, production expanded and their market reached further abroad. In the mid-1980s, Flos produced Philippe Starck’s Arà lamp, selling 8,000 pieces in the first ten days of its production. More recently, Flos’s collaborations have grown to include Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, and Marc Newson. Today the company’s industrial and global expansion has included LED lighting, the creation of Flos Architectural Lighting – dedicated to professional lighting for large surface areas and public spaces – and the acquisition of the lighting firm, Antares.
