Luminous Object

If you could capture light in a solid form, what would it look like? That was Defne Koz’s starting point in thinking about a new concept for the Italian lighting manufacturer Leucos. She had already developed a product line for the company: a collection featuring a crisp, geometric shade. But this time the Turkish-born designer took an entirely different tack, creating two luminous volumes of mouth-blown Murano glass set side by side on a shiny resin base. The effect is that of large white stones whose surfaces have been worn over the years to a supple sheen—hence the name Moai, after the magnificently imposing rock figures found on Easter Island. “The name came afterwards,” Koz says, “but the idea was more or less the same—these huge rocks, like an important presence.” As a kind of glowing sculpture, Moai commands attention much like a piece of furniture. Here Koz presents her otherworldly light, which made its debut at Euroluce.

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“The bubbles of glass are lit perfectly evenly so that you don’t see the incandescent lightbulb from the exterior. You feel that it is a mysteriously illuminated surface, which was my aim.”

“We pushed the glassblowing craft to its limits. The artisans took on the challenge, and I worked with them to make the little imperfections in the geometry acceptable. Actually, the organic shape of the large volume makes minor deviations from the original shape I designed. I like the idea of leaving some design freedom to the craftsmen.”

“The resin—which comes in black, mocha, or white—is poured using
a technique that, like the glass, was not devised for mass production.
In the beginning, my thought was that it could be made of glass or Corian, but resin ended up being the perfect choice of material because it could be shaped in the organic form I wanted.”

“Together with Leucos, I developed a spring mechanism—similar to how
a ski boot locks onto a ski—that takes advantage of gravity to hold the diffusers in place on their base.”