Vintage Lamp O-Luce Domea Design Bruno Gecchelin 1970s-1980s

Designer: Bruno Gecchelin

Bruno Gecchelin was born in 1939 and over the years he became an Italian designer and architect. After graduating in architecture from the Milan Polytechnic, he decides to open his own studio. He starts various collaborations with companies and one of these is the "Fiat Panda", for which he produces accessories for cars. In those years he designed chairs for Poltrona Frau and office furniture for Ycami. His passion for technology and electronics led him to converge in the lighting sector, with a catalog of over a hundred lamps.

Production: OLuce

Founded in 1945 by Giuseppe Ostuni, master artisan, Oluce is, in the field of lighting, the oldest Italian design company still active. Before the world conflict, there was only Arteluce by Gino Sarfatti, which disappeared at the end of the '90s; in 1948 Azucena and Lamperti were born, in 1950 Arredoluce and Stilnovo. However, it was especially Arteluce, Azucena, and Oluce that focused, for many years, the Italian landscape, establishing themselves as meeting points for those designers who, strongly involved first by reconstruction and then by the rise of mass production, animated the Milanese debate: Vittoriano Viganò and the BBPR, Gigi Caccia Dominioni and Ignazio Gardella, Marco Zanuso, and finally Joe Colombo. Already in 1951 Oluce participated, successfully, in the IX Triennale. A great success was affirmed by Tito Agnoli with the mentions at the second edition of the Compasso d'Oro, in 1955, for two lamps (the floor model 363 and a special bookshelf model). In 1956, two more mentions followed in quick succession: for a remarkable slatted polyvinyl table lamp and for a suspension fixture (mod. 4461) with a double diffuser in perspex. It is crucial to remember, finally, in 1954, the 255/387 fixture (called “Agnoli”), a slender rod supporting a spotlight, marking the end of lampshades and the adoption of very simplified floor lamps even in domestic lighting. Meanwhile, in 1963, in production from 1965, Marco Zanuso designed for Oluce a forgotten masterpiece, the table lamp model 275 with a large white perspex diffuser adjustable by rotation on a lacquered metal base. In 1964/66, again from a material, the pressed glass called “Lente Fresnel,” the family of watertight outdoor lamps "Fresnel" with a painted metal base and diffuser held by steel clips was born with Joe Colombo. In 1967 Colombo was already ahead and, with the model "Coupé," preserved at MoMa in New York, proposed a large curved stem supporting a very elegant semicylindrical shade. The Coupé won, in 1968, the "International Design Award" from the American Institute of Interior Designers in Chicago. Finally, in 1970, entering production in 1972, a year after the premature death of Joe Colombo, the "Halogen lamp" was born, necessarily called "Colombo" from then on. In 2001 white Murano glass stones and transparent perspex rods populated the Oluce stand at Euroluce. Designed by Laudani&Romanelli and Ferdi Giardini, they propose a way of understanding design that goes beyond function to become poetry. Finally, Oki Sato, that is Nendo, the most refined among the new Japanese designers, entered the Oluce team with "Sorane" first and then with "Switch." But this is no longer the history of Oluce, rather Oluce's contribution to contemporary design.

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Material: Lacquered Metal