Cordless lighting: why its future may not be as bright as designers imagined – though Philippe Starck is still a believer
A lamp you can take anywhere, a cordless light hanging from a metal surface thanks to a powerful magnet – they sound attractive, until you recall how convenient wall sockets are and how bad for the environment batteries still are
Nothing adds ambience to an interior quite like the layered lighting effects of floor and table lamps. On the flip side, there’s nothing like tripping over cords to kill the mood.
In his lighting designs, Philippe Starck feels a yearning to disconnect from the cords that bind. “Mankind searches for freedom,” he muses. “The more we liberate ourselves from objects surrounding us, the freer we feel.”
Another aspiration of the French design luminary, he says, is dematerialisation: doing more with less. “One less electrical plug is already going in that direction,” he says.
While the future for cordless lamps remains bright, some designers now concede the concept has its limitations.
A partnership with Italian lighting company Flos unleashed Starck’s experimentation with cordless lighting, and brought the world Bon Jour Unplugged, an LED table lamp powered by a rechargeable battery. The lamp, introduced three years ago, has a charging port in its base and a battery life of six hours – a time span Starck believes is enough for domestic use.
