Toshihito Okura’s intentions for his "Ravioli" lamp installation is to make the form easy to understand for people who are not well versed in design.
Japanese industrial designer Toshihito Okura has created a fun installation for this year's Tokyo Designers Week. His "Ravioli" lamp is a tribute to Luxo's classic L-1 task light, which was launched in 1937.
Toshihito Okura was born in Toyama in Japan in 1950, and was educated at Kuwasawa Academy of Design. Today he is one of Japan’s leading designers, head of his own design studio and a popular lecturer and teacher. “The classic Luxo lamp was the first European product I was exposed to, and it inspired me to become an industrial designer,” says Okura. “The Ravioli lamp is my tribute to a great product!”
Ravioli is a two-dimensional piece which has been laser cut to look like a task light and printed with the graphic of one – including a light bulb. It even has a Luxo logo. Okura’s intentions for this simplified task light is to make the form easy to understand for people who are not well versed in design. For Okura, the Ravioli lamp is a fusion of nostalgia and technology. It expresses that the more technology progresses, it is apparent that the form of design dissolves.
“We don’t normally allow the Luxo logo on items that we haven’t made ourselves,” says Mikkel Sandvik, Luxo’s Managing Director. “However, this installation was so obviously well-intentioned that we had no objections. It made us all smile!”
