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Foscarini
Lumiere
Orbital
Havana
Mite
About shedding light
Orbital is Ferruccio Laviani’s début lamp,
marking the aperture on the part of
Foscarini to other production materials
since it was the fi rst product with which the
brand abandoned Murano blown glass to
experiment with slab glass. Its singular
appeal as a sculpture-lamp immediately
contributes to conveying the image of a
lighting device that does not depend on
technical performance needs and is instead
linked to the evocative and emotional
nature of the product. This image was
quickly disseminated by the media and the
lamp ended up being included, as an
example of novel Italian design, among the
objects featured in a series of stamps
published by Poste Italiane in 2001.
Laviani devised a fl oor lamp made of
metal and glass, with brand new shapes and
colours: it had to be a luminous sculpture
different from anything that had gone
before. Named after the electronic music of
an English band – called Orbital in fact –
and also because the glass shapes appear
to be in orbit around the support pole.
The piece rocked the stereotypes of
lighting at the time, with its notable
presence in space; a composition,
a balance of shapes and colours
distinguished by the graphic trait that
inspired the design of the slabs, where the
colour of the lampshade components plays
a key role, defying time and fashion trends.
The designer in fact focused on the casing
of the fl oor lamp and its relationship with its
surroundings, designing an illuminated
object rather than a lighting device. Finding
the precise references that gave rise to
Orbital’s design is not a straightforward
task but Laviani quotes “Calder and Jean
Arp’s mobiles, the memory of Alchimia and
Memphis, the metal of Ron Arad’s fi rst One
Off and Nigel Coates, the revisited vintage
of Patrice Butler.” The basic idea is above
all “to do something pop with plenty of
colour”.1 The singularity of this project is
that it comes from a sketch which remained
unchanged until the lamp was produced
(“as far as I can recall, I think that’s the only
time this has happened to me”2).
The device consists of an austere and
industrial metal rod, coated with
aluminium-coloured epoxy powder paint,
supported by a mobile tripod made of
Orbital /1992 — design Ferruccio Laviani
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Ferruccio Laviani pictured by Gianluca
Vassallo on the occasion of the Notturno Laviani
exhibition in Spazio Monforte in 2022.
1 Orbital, e Foscarini cambiò traiettoria, (Orbital,
and Foscarini changed track) interview with
F. Laviani in La Repubblica, 12 October 2022, p. 15.
2 A. Bassi, Foscarini ’83 ’03, Twenty years of Light
Design, p. 73
Chap. 1 — A new design for light
Sketch of proposed shapes and colours
for Orbital.
Detail of the element designed to house the
light source: the visible light bulb is an integral
part of the lamp design, which comprises an
industrial metal rod, supported by a mobile
tripod, onto which the fi ve supports of the
glass slabs are welded.
