A Rubber Lamp? Take A Look At This Radical Design

For Julia Arvelo, Florence Barnabé, and Muriel Bentolila, design works best when it’s fluid—and a bit punk rock. The cofounders of Montréal’s Atelier Fomenta propose a more malleable world with their Rubber lamps, which debuted during Milan Design Week. The collective’s flirtation with the material began when a local leather store gave them some rubberized leather to play with, prompting a pivot away from their earlier metal-driven work. “We created lighting with a hollow tubular system to honor how rubber sheets are found in the industry: stacked in rolls,” the trio explains. Held together by aluminum rivets, the columns of natural rubber or synthetic neoprene (depending on the colorway) rise free of internal structural supports.