Andrea Anastasio’s Filo Lamp for Foscarini Balances Function and Beauty
Andrea Anastasio started out an academic, buried in books about philosophy and art. After graduating, a wise mentor pushed him out of the library and towards the studio. Today, Anastasio is better known as the industrial designer and artist behind Foscarini’s award-winning Filo lamp. The recipient of Interior Design’s 2017 Best of Year award for tabletop lighting, Filo is an ongoing thought experiment that celebrates the liminal space between utilitarian demands and ornamental expression.
“Filo embodies an artistic and philosophical idea that has been central to much of my work, which is to discover where the border between function and beauty within an object exists,” explains Anastasio. “On one hand, Filo is about stripping down the lamp to just its component parts. But I also was fascinated by how I could transform electrical wire into the main ornament of the lamp.”
Filo’s form is astoundingly simple. It consists of a base, a thin rod with a serpentine hook at the top, several layers of electrical wire hanging from the hook, and an LED bulb couched within a china diffuser. From there, Anastasio threaded the electrical wires through large glass beads, effectively transforming the strands into a necklace. The vibrant hues of the wires and the beads are inspired by precious and semi-precious gems, and the color combinations are meant to evoke famous pieces of jewelry that are kept in royal collections and museums.
“Foscarini understood that having such a wide array of color choices in these bright tones wasn’t just indulging ornamentation, but was really getting to the heart of what Filo explores,” Anastasio says. “I wanted to celebrate color and update the nature of contemporary lighting.”
That celebration paid off in a similar fashion for Anastasio at the Best of Year Awards in December. Filo also won the Salone del Mobile Milano award for best Euroluce product.
