Zumtobel makes lighting in Dornbirn, Austria, for museums, offices and public buildings. Architects and lighting designers know the brand. A wider design audience mostly meets its work without noticing it.
The editorial series on Friends of Friends looked at how light inspires art, design and architecture. Portraits visited architects, curators and designers in Zurich, Vorarlberg and Vienna. Two essays covered light and health, and the future of the office. Zumtobel also contributed to the furnishing concept of the Friends Space in Berlin.
Zhang Xi is founding partner and CEO of EXH Design, an architecture and interior studio with offices in Shanghai and Zurich. Her approach draws on feng shui: maximise the good energy, divert the bad.
For the Zurich office of the Chinese bank ICBC, the historic facade could not carry a sign. Zumtobel built an illuminated logo instead and hung it above the boardroom table, visible from the street.
Verena Konrad directs the Vorarlberger Architektur Institut in Dornbirn, Zumtobel’s home town. The region’s tight network of craftspeople and architects has produced a building culture known far beyond Austria.
The portrait follows her through the valley and into the buildings she uses to explain it: timber, rammed earth, exposed concrete and the light that falls on them.
Two essays widened the series beyond portraits. The first looked at research on light and wellbeing, including Zumtobel’s office lighting study with the Fraunhofer Institute and the tunable systems that came out of it. The second asked four experts, among them Zumtobel lighting application manager Daniel Leiter, what the office of the next decade will need.
Harald Gründl co-founded the design studio EOOS in Vienna in 1995. EOOS and Zumtobel have worked together for close to fifteen years, most recently on the SUPERSYSTEM Integral collection and a new version of the VIVO spotlight system.
The portrait covers responsibility in design, working through a crisis, and why good products should last.
Light is never the last decision.
An editorial series for Zumtobel, produced by Friends of Friends from 2019 to 2021. Portraits and essays on light in art, design and architecture.
Photographed in Zurich, Vorarlberg and Vienna and published on Friends of Friends.