Lö Collection

The Lö collection is the fruit of a collaboration between Yann Kersalé and Sammode. It is inspired by the glacial landscapes the artist once traversed. Two trips particularly influenced the architect: one to Baffin Island, in 2001; the other to Greenland, in 2012. Both were beyond the Arctic Circle, in Inuit territory. There, he discovered ice in all its guises, and gleaned a myriad of photographs, which he immediately integrated into his bank of referential images. As Kersalé puts it, ice is “this solidified light”, and he appreciates its brilliance and transparency, the way it captures light and breaks it down.

In 2016, the first sketches for the Lö collection were created, directly reproducing the original shots on translucent film to be inserted into the famous Sammode tube. Research then turned to the prismatic reflection of light on ice, leading to the choice of reticulated film. This process marks the originality of the luminaire: thanks to the superimposition of two translucent films, one with a prismatic effect, the other with a mirror effect, it reveals a double reading. When lit, the first displays an infinite number of luminous prisms. When switched off, the second reflects the surrounding environment. Derived from the Inuit language, the names of the Nilak, Qanik and Qinu luminaires illustrate various states of ice. The collection’s name is a play on the semantics of the word “water”. For Sammode, water becomes Lö.

Nilak, Qinu & Qanik

Luminaires with frosted effect films ø70, 100 and 133

Download