Philippe Malouin’s first collaboration with Italian brand Flos – for the creation of the Bilboquet table lamp – sparked a sequence of ‘idea tennis’ resulting in a lighting design that proves both playful and practical
Photography by Leonardo Scotti
Words by Alia Akkam
Philippe Malouin’s spare, sculptural approach to industrial design has led to product collaborations for the likes of SCP, Hem, The Breeder, Matter Made, and Ishinomaki Laboratory. Bilboquet, the London-based Canadian designer’s latest creation, his first for Italian lighting brand Flos, is just as poetic in its simplicity.
In 2017, Malouin, who worked for Tom Dixon prior to launching his own studio in 2008, was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara in California to imagine a series of turntables for the Alexandra Cunningham Cameron-curated exhibition Free Play. The ball-bearing furniture, crafted from nylon, featured circular grooves containing marbles that allowed the pieces to turn, and that mechanical aspect is what sparked Malouin’s vision for Bilboquet, a petite, adjustable table lamp.
Although the aesthetic appealed to the Flos team, initially Malouin was stumped by how ‘to translate it to lighting, until I looked at a magnetic ball joint’, he recalls. After much trial and error, he planted a magnetised iron sphere between two individual cylinders, which powers the upper one, reminiscent of a telescope, to rotate and direct the stream of light.
Photography by Pablo Di Prima
Such creativity is the result of a true partnership between Malouin and Flos, a process that Malouin likens to ‘idea tennis. There were so many exchanges, so many meetings, and you don’t always have that level of communication.’
Bilboquet, a game purportedly spawned in 16th-century France that later evolved into the English pastime of cup and ball under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, was a test of great dexterity. Players released their perforated wooden balls tied with string to sticks, then, in a swirl of frustration, tried to catch the ball yet again with the cup anchoring the end of the stick.
Malouin’s lamp design exemplifies the whimsy of bilboquet while responding to a specific directive from Flos. ‘It needed to be a product that would stand out on an online platform, one that you could recognise in a fully stocked room,’ he explains. It also needed to resonate with Malouin’s own generation, the restless, tech-confident millennial. ‘We don’t often have the capacity to buy houses or have entire apartments to ourselves. Most of the time it’s a room in a shared flat that we don’t spend much time in,’ he adds.
Photography by Leonardo Scotti
Compact, playful Bilboquet, then, is just the stylish and practical addition that renters covet. Sturdy and portable, it effortlessly moves from desk to kitchen shelf, bringing light wherever it is needed. For the palette – a neutral linen, a grounding sage and a zippy tomato red – Malouin turned to old Saabs and Volkswagens for inspiration. ‘It’s hard to match anything with chrome so I looked at vintage cars,’ he shares.
These joyful hues cloak not only the lamp’s cylinders, but the cable and plug – which can be conveniently concealed, tucked away in a compartment underneath the base – providing an artful consistency. Another hidden element, the magnet function dreamed up by Flos, is Malouin’s favourite aspect of the lamp. This scooped magnet button clipped onto the iron ball can also be pushed down to dislodge the LED light bulb when needed – and to Malouin: ‘It’s a beautiful, geeky detail.’
Sustainability is also at the heart of the product. Bilboquet’s external body is made with a polycarbonate derived from a by-product of paper production instead of petroleum, so it meets the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification requirements established by the European Community’s Renewable Energy Directive.
Photography by Pablo Di Prima
The iron component is also eco-friendly, salvaged from the heap of rejects that didn’t make the cut for wind turbine production and treated with an anti- corrosive physical vapour deposition. The entire lamp, devoid of glued parts, can easily be disassembled and repaired or recycled.
In some ways, Bilboquet is a way of extending Malouin’s love for the Flos Parentesi, conceived by Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù in 1971. Thanks to a friend’s discount, he snatched one up years ago and continues to be riveted, he points out, by the way ‘the light bounces’.
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