Flos is an Italian brand specializing in the design and manufacture of designer lighting solutions. The company was founded in the 1960s in Merano on the initiative of entrepreneurs Dino Gavina and Cesare Cassina, both driven by the dream of revolutionizing the concept of lighting. These were the years of collaboration with Arturo Eisenkeil and experimentation with his cocoon packaging polymer, decontextualized and adapted to the lamp object by the genius of designers such as Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Afra and Tobia Scarpa. The creative team would follow the adventure of Flos, which means flower in Latin, even when management passed into the hands of Sergio Gandini, who in 1964 moved the company to Bovezzo, in the province of Brescia. Here, the Gandini, Castiglioni and Scarpa team not only dedicated itself to the creation of lamps that have made the history of Made in Italy design, but also to the study of coordinated image and communication. In 1969 they opened their first, now historic, store in Milan, but international consecration was undoubtedly due to the 1972 exhibition at MoMA in New York, "Italy, The New Domestic Landscape," which revealed to the world the extraordinary contribution of Italian designers. Over the years, the brand has consolidated its supremacy in the lighting industry, thanks in part to strategic financial transactions: in 2014, its entry into the Investindustrial group then led in 2018 to the founding of the Design Holding group, with B&B Italia and Louis Poulsen, with the aim of strengthening high-end design in the international market. The group, which brings together several design brands, underwent a recent rebranding with a change of logo and name to Flos B&B Italia group, as the founding brands of the company, consolidating Flos' position as a benchmark in the field of design lighting.
Flos lamps, the timeless icons of the Castiglioni brothers
The name Flos is inextricably linked to the genius of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, and not just because the latter suggested the brand's name. Numerous, iconic and timeless are the lamps designed by the Castiglioni brothers, starting with the Taraxacum hanging lamp and the Gatto table lamp, both from 1960, the result of experiments with the aforementioned cocoon polymer. Speaking of Flos, we cannot fail to mention the Arco floor lamp, designed in 1962 and still one of the most representative pieces of contemporary design furniture, thanks to its simple, rigorous lines and timeless style. A prolific year, 1962 saw the creation of several pieces, including the Taccia table lamp, characterized by a light source concealed in the base to avoid direct glare, the surrealistic Toio floor lamp, which combines a car headlamp with the bystanders of a fishing rod, once again confirming the ironic flair and decontextualization that characterize the formal language of the Castiglioni brothers. The Snoopy table lamp, class of 1967, is distinguished by the unusual combination of a noble material such as Carrara marble, which forms the base, and the metal of the reflector. Compasso d'oro in 1979, the Parentesi lamp was born from the creativity of Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù. Unmistakable is the profile to which the bare bulb clings, inserted on the ceiling-mounted steel cable and stretched by a weight hooked to the lower end.
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