Shine So Bright: The Classic Arco Corner Floor Lamp

1 of the easiest ways to introduce drama into a room is to do it with light. Whether it’s the tone, hue or brilliance of the light itself, or possibly the patterns produced by the illumination streaming from a meticulously crafted shade, or just the huge, bold shape of the lamp itself, a wonderful light can genuinely transform the space in which it lives.  The third characteristic we talked about above — the lamp’s physical size and shape — gets all the credit in the case of brothers Achille Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo’s Arco floor lamp, very first designed in 1962.  Taking a stark turn from the straight lines and sizable (or not) minimalism of the midcentury modern era, the grand curve of the Arco corner floor lamp is a broad and memorable departure from the rest of its contemporaries, but it still stands tall, each actually and figuratively, half a century later, along with its sideboards and smoking couches created well-known once more by the Mad Guys craze of recent years.  The marble, steel and aluminum lamp itself weighs 78 pounds — no little feat for a mover attempting to transport it in 1 piece, but the hole in the middle of the base eliminates the hassle an additional clever function the brothers integrated was an 8-foot swoop allowing for a table or workspace to stand underneath the light, which requires nary a nail hole to set up.  While necessity is the father of invention, a bit of wit and style is undoubtedly a close cousin in this case.  According to Design Within Attain, which carries the Arco, an original of the iconic light is on permanent show at the Museum of Modern day Art (MoMA).

Photo credit: DWR.

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