Using light as an architectural tool with Archilume

For architects and interior designers, lighting helps to demarcate areas of an interior, albeit subtly, through the intangible medium of light. A space-saving alternative to partitions and walls, lighting can informally subdivide open-plan spaces into zones devoted to different uses – a bar area in a hotel lobby, say, or the kitchen area of a living-room-cum-kitchen.

Modular lighting in particular appeals to designers seeking to delineate different zones, as it’s highly flexible. Since it can be enlarged by adding more components or made smaller by removing some, it allows rooms to be easily reconfigured to meet changing requirements.

Lighting also impacts on moods and wellbeing, with brighter lighting in a spacious hotel lobby enhancing its social vibe, while dimmable lights in a bar inevitably soothe those unwinding after work.

Lighting that brings all these benefits needn’t be flashy or imposing, as Vancouver-based lighting design studio and manufacturer Archilume is only too aware. Its twin aims are to produce elegantly pared-down designs and push the boundaries of cutting-edge LED technology. Its energy-efficient, decorative LED pendant lights, clean-lined chandeliers and wall sconces are modular and therefore, versatile. They allow interior designers to exercise their creativity while considering countless configurations. And the company’s in-house design team offers bespoke lighting solutions on request.

Archilume maintains the high quality of its lighting by working closely with local fabricators, which contributes to making their businesses sustainable and reduces the company’s carbon footprint.

Archilume’s pendant lights can be hung individually or grouped in myriad ways. They can be spaced evenly apart to create elegant, linear configurations or arranged in clusters forming dramatic chandeliers. Yet even when grouped, its lights look streamlined, never overwhelming. Archilume achieves this in large part by harnessing the latest LED technology and capitalising on its ability to cast light that’s indistinguishable from warm, inviting incandescent light bulbs. Concealing its light source and exploiting total internal reflection and diffusion, its products cast a glare-free glow that is optically comfortable.

Founded in 2013, the company has strong architectural roots as its name – a fusion of architecture and luminaire – suggests. Its owner and chief designer, Saleem Khattak, studied industrial design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. Archilume’s products, whose main markets are North America, Europe and the Middle East, are informed by his passion for 20th-century modernist design. ‘Our minimal lights are created by reducing forms to basic geometric elements to obtain the utmost purity of design,’ he says. ‘Our biggest influences are modernist greats, such as Mies van der Rohe, as well as Norman Foster’s high-tech architecture.’

Emphasising the playful, interactive character of Archilume’s lighting, Khattak compares it to ‘Lego with lights’. ‘I see our products as pre-engineered elements that are fun to play with, giving interior designers plenty of creative freedom.’

If Archilume’s modular designs can be seen as building blocks, a fundamental one is the dimmable P1M pendant light, designed by Khattak. This features a cylindrical acrylic body slotted into machined, anodised aluminium housing. Its powerful but invisible light source is concealed inside an unobtrusive, conical diffuser and casts glare-free light. P1M is suitable for bars and counters or can be multiplied to form chandeliers. And since its housing comes in several nuanced finishes – clear, black, champagne or gold – it blends well with all styles of interior, from the classical to the contemporary.

Archilume offers a range of canopies in different shapes that allow for more permutations of lights. These triangular, hexagonal and diamond-shaped canopies – part of its modular Configurate system – are aesthetically pleasing in their own right: if tessellated, they can create decorative patterns.

Archilume favours elemental forms, evident in its Alto pendant light with its simple, conical shade and comparatively organic Ovolo pendant light, inspired by smooth pebbles found on riverbeds. The Ovolo, with its organic LED (OLED) light source, received a Lit Design Award in 2021.

Another design, Trapeze, a delicate, ethereal pendant light, comprises a disc reminiscent of optical lenses, hung from two wires forming a V shape. The disc is bisected horizontally, its upper half made of opaque machined aluminium, its lower half of clear acrylic with a frosted edge that emits a glare-free light achieved by total internal reflection.

Archilume recognises the importance of science and technology when developing its forward-thinking, minimal designs, regarding them as a stealthy abettor of its restless quest to create lighting free of superfluous details, yet capable of providing powerful, glare-free accent lighting.

© Architonic