BIG and Artemide's Gople lamp helps plants grow indoors
Bjarke Ingels Group has teamed up with Italian lighting brand Artemide to create a colour-changing lamp designed to help plants grow.
The pill-shaped blown glass lamp, called Gople, uses Artemide's patented RWB lighting system that was designed in 2010. The system allows light to be set at different temperatures – diffusing either red, white or blue tones to create a pleasant ambience, but also help plants perform photosynthesis.
A blue light with a wavelength of 425 to 450 nanometres is used to stimulate the plant's vegetative stage, while a red light with a wavelength of 575 to 625 nanometres promotes blossoming.
The project was conceived as a bespoke solution for one of BIG's latest projects, Area 2071, a new space in Dubai that brings together entrepreneurs, start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses, and government programs.
The Gople lamps were designed for the common areas where clusters of seating are interspersed with foliage. BIG identified the need for a versatile lamp that is able to support the growth of plants but also provide ambient and functional white lighting when needed.
"It has been not only a confluence of different knowledge and approaches, but also a very open and collaborative exchange that allowed us to achieve the desired result," architect, designer and vice president of Artemide, Carlotta de Bevilacqua, told Dezeen.
"BIG has been able to combine innovative technology and craftsmanship of blowing glass. The result was so interesting that it was natural for us to introduce it as a piece on the Artemide collection."
The lamps are hand made using an ancient Venetian glass blowing technique that gradually turns white glass into crystal glass. Gople is available in white crystal, transparent silver and transparent bronze finishes.
Artemide has previously worked with the Danish architecture firm headed by Bjarke Ingels on Alphabet of Light – a modular lighting system introduced in 2016 that could be rearranged to form different letters of a bespoke typeface.