Flos News: Luce Sferica, Luce Cilindrica, and Seki-Han

21 October 2025

Flos‘s journey continues with projects marked by formal innovation that goes hand in hand with the revival of the most interesting archive icons. Among the former are the brand-new designs by Ronan Bouroullec: Luce Sferica and Luce Cilindrica, similar expressions of the same design principle. At the same time, Flos reissues Seki-Han, an iconic floor lamp designed by Tobia Scarpa in 1963 that remains relevant today.

Meanwhile, Formafantasma‘s Superwire collection has been included in the ADI Design Index 2025, the yearbook of the best Italian design projects, earning it a place in the running for the ADI Compasso d’Oro 2026. Three distinct collections share the same Flos style, a style that combines elegance and technology, function and magic.

Luce Sferica and Luce Cilindrica by Ronan Bouroullec

The fusion of technology and magic is a recurring theme in Flos lamps and is especially evident in Ronan Bouroullec’s latest two creations. Both are longitudinally suspended lamps. Luce Sferica is composed of an elongated central body in extruded aluminum supporting two dimmable LED strips, one oriented upward and the other downward. This central body constitutes the technological and structural part of the lamp and is covered with a series of lightweight, transparent glass spheres with a diameter of approximately 180 mm.

Luce Sferica comes in three versions, varying in number of spheres, from 8 to 10 or 12. “Luce Sferica,” Ronan Bouroullec describes, “is a lamp that seeks the delicacy and beauty of simple things, like raindrops clinging to a thread, or a soap bubble blown by a child. Mouth-blown glass spheres glide over an industrial extruded aluminum base, like bubbles floating on a thread. Softness, magic, and technical refinement prevail in this project. An object of great technical precision that expresses delicate beauty and poetry, rather than synthetic mechanics.”

Luce Cilindrica, originally designed for the atrium of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Foundation as part of Tadao Ando’s architectural project, is also by the same designer. Luce Cilindrica also develops around a central aluminum axis equipped with LEDs, around which, in place of spheres, are cylindrical bodies.

Seki-Han by Tobia Scarpa

Tobia Scarpa designed Seki-Han in 1963, and Flos put it into production starting in 1966. It is an unusual lamp, composed of two wooden elements enclosing the light source. For its design, Scarpa drew on naval engineering knowledge, allowing him to craft the wood in the right way.

The original version was made of Douglas fir, while the 2025 reissue opted for ash, processed in Italy and dried to prevent warping. The two wooden elements were fixed in the original version, while in the new version they can rotate around the light source to vary its aperture. A further modification was made to the base, now made of black iron.

All the changes to the initial design were made in collaboration with the designer, who commented: “The reissue of the Seki-han lamp gave us the opportunity to enhance the performance of the light source, increasing the height of the lamp, which further highlights the slender proportions of the thin wooden blades that shield the light. The ability to orient the wooden deflectors, compared to the original version, creates the possibility of controlling their degree of opening and the intensity of the light flux. The name of the lamp originates from an auspicious sign: in fact, in Japan, “seki han” (red rice) represents a traditional dish often prepared for special occasions, such as the celebration of a birth.”

Related articles