Arco

Designed by Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, 1962

"We were thinking about a lamp that shines light onto a table. They already existed, but you had to walk round them. To leave enough space around the table, the base had to be at least two meters away. Which was how the idea for Arco came into being. We wanted to make it with commercially available parts and we found that curved steel angle iron worked perfectly well. Then there was the problem of the counterweight: a heavy weight was needed to support it all. Our first thought was concrete, but then we chose marble because the same weight took up less space, and also because we could obtain a better finish for a lower cost. In Arco nothing is decorative: even the beveled corners on the base have a function, which is not to hurt us; even the hole isn’t a flight of fantasy, but to make it easier to lift the base.” Achille Castiglioni (interview for Ottagono, 1970)