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A new light in sustainable design from MVRDV

MVRDV

A new light in sustainable design from MVRDV
By Redazione The Plan -

On June 6, as a part of Milan Design Week, MVRDV and Delta Light launched the High Profile collection, a range of luminaires based on the shapes of offcuts from aluminum profiles. The design is the result of a critical examination of the manufacturing process, finding beauty and opportunity in scraps that would normally be discarded.

For this, its latest collection, Delta Light tasked MVRDV with the job of creating a high quality product with a design that’s in step with the company’s own style while also being experimental, colorful, and innovative – all hallmarks of MVRDV’s approach to architecture.

A precondition of the project was that manufacturing the new range had to be sustainable. Led by Jacob van Rijs, MVRDV’s team of architects and interior designers therefore worked with recycled materials wherever possible. From this came a decision to highlight the difference between the way light fittings are displayed in a showroom and the less glamorous reality of how they are made.

Jacob van Rijs, founding partner of MVRDV explains:

“The project started with the question of whether we could develop new possibilities with Delta Light’s leftover material, instead of inventing a completely new product”. “A visit to Delta Light's showroom and factory showed an interesting contrast between the lighting, which was presented amidst a great art collection in their showroom, and the factory where raw materials, components, cables, drivers, screws, caps, packaging – in fact, everything that goes into a luminaire – was visible. In particular, the stacks of aluminium profiles in various shades of white, silver, black, and gold proved to be a source of inspiration. The amazing details of these profiles are usually hidden inside the wall or ceiling; we wanted to make their beauty visible as the main feature of the new design.”

 

 

From scraps to High Profile

Profile lighting is a key part of architecture, but offcuts are often a residual product. These scraps were the starting point of the collection’s design. By varying the scale and dimensions of Delta Light’s large profile range, High Profile came into being. The collection includes a cube-shaped pendant, a rounded wall lamp, and a freestanding model with profiles arranged side by side. The industrial look of the material is tempered by the color range – including pink, ochre, light green, and light blue – adding MVRDV’s hallmark use of expressive colors to Delta Light’s typical palette of white, black, and gold.

The name High Profile reflects the way the designers have highlighted things that are normally kept behind the scenes. But the series is also a tribute to craftsmanship, with each luminaire painstakingly handmade from carefully engineered profiles.

Peter Ameloot, CEO of Delta Light, says:

“Made-to-measure profile lighting has been part of the Delta Light range from the very beginning, and has grown to become an extensive collection”. “We were very surprised and at the same time delighted to see that MVRDV not only appreciated the level of precision and expertise that goes into the design and production of these profiles, but even wanted to bring the raw materials to the forefront. To see a product that is usually completely integrated and anonymous in architecture evolve to become such an eye-catcher was a very inspiring exercise for us.”

 

 

Total sustainability

As well as using production scraps, every stage of the manufacturing process of the High Profile range places an emphasis on sustainability. By reusing offcuts, the aluminum profiles don’t need to be specially made or transported from a factory, this significantly reducing the overall environmental impact. The luminaires can also be broken down at the end of their useful life and much of their materials reused. The design therefore invites consumers to think carefully about the materials all around them, to see beauty in the everyday and opportunity in the things we often overlook.

 

 

The long term: Profile Remixer

In the interests of making the design approach functional in the long term, MVRDV NEXT, MVRDV’s technology task force, developed the Profile Remixer script, which can generate compositions using all 50 types of profiles and then assess them using real-time data. This tool makes it possible to continuously develop and update the High Profile design, adapt it to the changing availability of profile scraps, and respond to different needs in terms of size, shape, and composition.

 

For more information visit the website: https://new.deltalight.com/en/mvrdv-high-profile

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