LDF22: Meet Pedro Veneziano and the Arco K Floor Lamp
As The Conran Shop celebrates the 2022 edition of the London Design Festival in style, collaborating with cult art and design publication It’s Nice That for a new immersive installation Meet Me in the Metaverse, it enlists the artist Pedro Veneziano to recreate the new Arco K Floor Lamp in delicious virtual form.
Pedro Veneziano is a Brazilian designer and art director focused on using dimensionality and movement to create eye-catching imagery. With a particular interest in blurring the lines between real and surreal, natural and digital, he navigates the 3D space with a graphic eye, using form, colour and light to craft highly detailed and emotional visuals. Pedro currently works as an art director at Buck, and has lived and worked in São Paulo, Barcelona and New York.
Pedro has worked with the form of the world-renowned Arco K Floor Lamp inspired by the limited anniversary edition, manipulating and experimenting with its components. Designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1962 and crafted by Flos, the Arco is an iconic example of 20th-century design that has now garnered legendary status. Inspired by an urban streetlight, the Arco is a versatile, free-standing floor lamp specially designed to bring overhead illumination to a space without the need for mounted fixtures, or the having to walk around the light source.
With a contemporary structure, the lamp creates a sculptural display within its surroundings. Its influence has reached far and wide, featuring in such iconic films as ‘Diamonds Are Forever,’ while maintaining its practicality as an ambient and direct light source that illuminates an array of interiors perfectly. This most-special anniversary edition upgrades the original with a lead-free crystal base, satin-finished stainless steel telescopic stem, and an NFC traceability system that guarantees collectors the originality and uniqueness of each numbered piece. This high-profile silhouette is thus an iconic addition to the London Design Festival digital line-up.
Read Pedro's interview below, to learn more about his work and inspiration.
1. Welcome to The Conran Shop, Pedro! Please could you tell our readers all about you?
Sure! My name is Pedro Veneziano and I'm a Brazilian designer and art director, currently living in São Paulo. I specialise in creating highly crafted 3D imagery and motion and use my graphic design background to explore a more visual approach to image making, with particular attention to colour, texture and light. I am also more and more passionate about cycling, and a proud dog dad to my Tapioca.
2. How did your relationship with It’s Nice That begin?
This was my first time working with them, and needless to say, it's been a huge pleasure. I've always been a fan of the platform and looked at their articles and features as a great source of inspiration. I was thrilled when they got in touch with me!
3. Please take us through your journey in reimagining the Castiglionis' Arco K Floor Lamp for Meet Me in the Metaverse; what was your favourite part of the process?
Working with the Arco K was an interesting challenge! It's got such a beautiful contrast between the thinness of the stem, the heaviness of the base and the roundness of the reflector, so it made a lot of sense to approach them as individual parts. I start from the simplest forms and explore their contrast in shape and material through motion, eventually leading to the encounter of these extremes and evolving into the fully-formed piece.
Personally, my favourite part was reinterpreting the forms and looking at these elements individually, as opposed to the lamp as a whole—it allowed me to be more exploratory with the motion, and figuring out how these shapes and materials should behave was a fun process.
4. What does the Metaverse mean to you?
I find it very exciting as a new medium to work with, it certainly has opened new possibilities and allowed not only artists, but people overall to explore different levels of interaction with each other and their craft, so it's definitely a fertile and relevant space. On the other hand, though, saying it's the ultimate future, or the only way forward, doesn't sit right with me, and I think artists should be more careful and socially critical about it—technology is always consumed at different levels throughout society, and especially something so high-end as the Metaverse is reserved to a really small portion of it, so taking such a strong stand about it can be quite an elitist place to be.
5. As we celebrate the 20th London Design Festival, what is the importance of such events for artists and designers?
I think these events are really important to give our brains a boost of energy. We tend to look for inspiration in the same places and fall into patterns creative-wise, so going to these spaces, experiencing things up close, and getting bombarded by tons of inspiring work and artists, it's such a good break in our creative routine. Especially as a student I really enjoyed going to design events, and it certainly had an impact on my creative path.
6. Finally, what does the future hold for you?
Good question, as an anxious person I wish I knew! I recently moved back to Brazil and it's been great, it feels very important to me to have a connection with where I live, and I'm excited for what's to come around here—hopefully more travelling, sunshine and time with my loved ones.
