Lamp that rids the air of toxins is first to be activated by non-UV light, says its Hong Kong designer

Kevin Chu’s Foglia lamp uses a process called photocatalysis to kill pathogens, in a design that has picked up a Red Dot Concept Award

Chu, a pioneer in environment-cleansing furniture design, has extended his patented process to paint, and is looking where else it can be applied

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The Kevin Chu-designed environment-cleansing lamps use any source of light to kill pathogens.

Published: 2:02am, 27 Feb 2019Updated: 7:48pm, 28 Feb 2019

For Isaac Newton, it was an apple that fell out of a tree. Hong Kong’s Kevin Chu Yau-wing had his eureka moment during a backpacking trip in Thailand, when he saw the light, literally.

“One day, I was in a banana farm and lying under the trees,” he says. “I noticed how the light filtered through the banana leaves, which I thought were a really beautiful shape. It immediately made me think of a lamp and I wondered if I could design one in that shape.”

Fast forward 10 years and Chu has launched a floor lamp – with customisable acrylic sheets inspired by those banana leaves – which is far more than a striking source of light. The Foglia lamp – from the Italian for “leaf” – is also a noiseless air purifier that Chu describes as the world’s first such purifier to be activated by non-UV light.

A passionate environmentalist, Chu runs COC Design (Chu Original Creations) with his Italian wife Giulia Dibonaventura. Recycled materials and low-energy consumption are the focus of the architecture and interiors firm, which practises what it preaches in the couple’s own home, a flat in Hong Kong’s Discovery Bay that featured in Post Magazine in 2017.

The large and small Foglia lamps. Photo: Eleven2

“I think I’ve always been drawn to nature,” Chu says. “My mum showed me a sketch recently that I’d drawn when I was 15 … [of] a house with masses of trees and bushes hanging down from the ceiling. That was almost 30 years ago.”