Platinum A' Design Award Winner 2025
Giuseppe Tortato's Embrasse Moi Lamp Sculpture Lamp participates in the rich contemporary tradition of luminaire design that transcends purely functional illumination to achieve the status of spatial sculpture, transforming architectural environments through carefully orchestrated interventions of light and form that engage viewers in contemplative dialogue with space, geometry, and materiality. This installation demonstrates exceptional compositional intelligence through its deployment of multiple circular elements that descend through a residential stairwell void, each ring precisely scaled and positioned to create both individual formal integrity and complex relational dynamics as the elements overlap, intersect, and spiral through vertical space, the designer orchestrating a visual choreography that activates the negative volume at the heart of the staircase while maintaining elegant restraint that respects the architectural envelope rather than overwhelming it. The technical achievement merits particular attention in the remarkably even illumination quality maintained across each tubular ring's full circumference, suggesting sophisticated LED integration and expert diffusion engineering that transforms structural elements into continuous linear light sources of unusual consistency, avoiding the common pitfalls of visible hotspots or dimming that plague less carefully executed luminous installations, this control of light distribution representing significant accomplishment in both product design and installation craft. The chromatic strategy displays notable sophistication through its restraint, limiting the palette to the warm golden amber of the illuminated rings at approximately 2700-3000 Kelvin and the cool neutral tones of limestone treads, iron balustrades, and cream walls, this thermal dialogue between warm artificial light and cool natural materials creating visual interest through temperature contrast rather than chromatic complexity, demonstrating the designer's understanding that in architectural contexts less often proves more effective than chromatic abundance. The formal language of interlocking circles carries profound symbolic resonance across cultural traditions, evoking associations with halos, orbital paths, wedding bands, cosmic cycles, and eternal return, while the helical spiral arrangement as forms descend through vertical space references growth patterns observed throughout nature from DNA helices to spiral galaxies, suggesting that geometric order at human scale participates in universal organizational principles that structure existence from molecular to cosmic dimensions. The work appears to explore themes of passage and transition, transforming the utilitarian function of vertical circulation into an opportunity for aesthetic contemplation, the luminous rings marking the descent through levels as both practical wayfinding and metaphorical journey through layered experience, while the warm enveloping glow creates atmospheric sanctuary within what might otherwise remain merely functional transit space. The installation demonstrates clear awareness of Scandinavian and Japanese design philosophies that prioritize material honesty, refined simplicity, and the integration of functional objects into harmonious environmental relationships, while the sculptural ambition and spatial scale suggest dialogue with contemporary art practices that position lighting as medium for experiential installation rather than mere utilitarian service. One might observe how the circular forms, depending on viewing angle, reveal themselves as either pure circles or elongated ellipses, this perspectival transformation inviting consideration of how geometric truth remains constant even as our perception shifts with position and viewpoint, perhaps suggesting broader reflections on the relationship between objective form and subjective experience, between essential nature and contingent appearance, themes that extend beyond formal design into philosophical territory where art meets contemplation of existence itself.
Halfway between art and design, Embrasse Moi is the majestic light sculpture whose name recalls the play on words between the English brass and the lamp's curved, enveloping shape. The suspension lamp has been handcrafted: a large sculpture in burnished brass that recalls the DNA strand, the weave of which unfolds like a fil rouge throughout the space, giving every project an artistic accent that makes it unique.