Kao Wall, Ceiling or Pendant Lamp

red dot: best of the best
red dot award: product design 2009

Pure lines of nature
“Every law of nature that becomes apparent to the observer hints towards a higher law of nature that is still undiscovered.” This is how the humanist and natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt described the difficult-to-seize character of nature. Naturally grown structures possess their own, highly specific aesthetics. The branches of a tree, for instance, generate the most complex forms and, depending on the viewing angle, look entirely different. Such natural branching structures served as the source of inspiration for the Kao light fixtures series. Their language of form is an abstraction of a tree’s polymorphic structures, which it interprets in a highly fascinating approach: graphically clear and like branches on a wall, an arrangement of individual white aluminium modules which, with their ramifications, compose lighting structures in two or three dimensions. Similar to the diversity found in nature, the arrangement of the individual fixtures too knows no limits and can be freely arranged in almost any combination. The aluminium modules’ reduced section of 40 x 40 mm lends the Kao a filigree appearance – its fluorescent lamp emits a discreet, indirect light on the wall or ceiling. The Kao is particularly suited to the lighting of large entrance halls, reception areas or spacious corridors, and can be either suspended from the ceiling or mounted onto the wall. Depending on the size of the space available and the effect sought by the lighting designer, the fixtures can be arranged in an infinite number of ways, either individually or in clusters, to unfold their appeal to the full – like the pure lines of a symbiosis between nature and design.