ARCO 60

“My father’s industrial-design philosophy was to be present in every home,” says Giovanna Castiglioni, head of the Milan-based Fondazione Castiglioni since 2002, when Achille Castiglioni passed away. Castiglioni Sr. was among Italy’s most prolific designers, and his most memorable and ubiquitous invention is the Arco light, a suspended spun aluminum pendant attached to an upright slab of Carrara marble via a large, arching arm made of stainless steel. Designed in 1962, together with Castiglioni’s brother Pier Giacomo, the Arco light continues to be produced by Flos for the past 60 years and has become one of the most recognizable design classics of the 20th century. Featured in over two-dozen movies — from 1971’s Diamonds are Forever to 2021’s House of Gucci —, it is a favorite in architectural renderings, not to mention countless offices and homes around the world.

“Sometimes, when I drive home in the early evening and it’s already dark outside, I look up into people’s homes from the street,” muses Giovanna Castiglioni. “I immediately recognize who has an Arco because of the dots of light on the ceiling from the perforations in the aluminum shade.” She prefers to see Arco over a desk or dining table, as her father and uncle intended, rather than above a sofa or coffee table. In her own home, she only has a “shadow” of the real thing, an Arco-shaped decal applied to her dining-room wall — an ironic nod to the lamp’s form, said to have been inspired by Parisian streetlights. “My father loved this kind of cheeky humor,” his daughter remembers, recalling his delight at the controversial 1988 Arco ad campaign by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, which featured a near naked muscle man doing pull ups on its steel arch.

For Arco’s 60th birthday, Flos has given its bestseller special treatment, replacing the usual marble of its base with lead-free crystal, in a limited edition of 2,022 pieces — 2022 is also Flos’s 60th anniversary. For her part, Castiglioni was not initially convinced by the Arco K special edition because of its price tag: 10,000 euros as opposed to the regular 2,500. “My father was a strong believer in affordable industrial design,” she explains, but she fell in love with the idea of a sustainably produced crystal base which, like the rest of the fixture, is entirely produced in Italy. “As a trained geologist, I’m used to looking at stones to learn about the past. I see the sustainably produced crystal as a sublimation of that idea. It’s like a crystal ball showing a bright future for industrial design.”