Last month in Paris, a brand new collection for IKEA was presented, designed by Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis, who in recent years has been distinguished for her special aesthetics in terms of colour and the materials she chooses. The limited collection is called Varmblixt (HOT FLASH) and the title reflects the common characteristic of the 20 objects, which is the use of warm light.

The functionalist designer has dealt a lot with the particularities of glass, a material that has defined her work. One of the most important pieces of furniture she created is the recent (2020) “No Fear of Glass” at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona. This work extends into the space in such a way that it seems both visible and invisible. The designer attaches two seemingly opposite materials and alters their dynamics. The heavy dense marble seems to barely support the fragile - imperceptible in the space - glass which, depending on the lighting, gently refracts the colours of the space, while the playful title invites the viewer to become a user by trusting the thin sheet of glass. She embraces this philosophy in her new work.

Why light and why glass? As she says, her relationship with objects is very personal. The objects in our home are of two kinds, the emotional ones, those that mean something to the owner, and the functional ones of which we are users, but neither of the two is more or less necessary for a home. So the idea behind the Varmblixt collection is Marcelis' need to find a balanced way to match these two "properties", these two “types” of -personal- objects in a collection of 20 pieces. The products of the collection - lamps, mise en place objects, coffee tables and carpets with geometric patterns - were created to embrace the domestic environment and bring cosiness and warmth to the home without rejecting the minimalist logic that IKEA generally adopts and promotes.

Warm light and transparency are her elementary “materials”. Thinking about how something can, through its industrial production, become an heirloom, i.e. stay in our home "forever", even if the space or the people in it change with time, she came up with the only “eternal” material she could use: light. By designing unique lamps that emulate the warm morning light, she essentially creates a “machine” that sculpts our spaces.

Accordingly, the glassware of the series is enriched with various textures and colours (warm orange and nephrite green), which are dispersed in space when light penetrates the objects. These choices and especially the atmosphere produced and reproduced through light create a moving experience that makes the objects function on an emotional level as well. The properties of glass, combined with the presence or absence of colours, make the objects of the collection, to a large extent, personal since their form depends both on time (e.g. sunset) and space (where they are placed). The designer invites the owners of these objects to open their windows widely during the day, to bring the house to life, while at night, she recommends the mysticism of warm yellow lighting as opposed to the cold and harsh white lighting that makes everything look flat. A minimal amount of material was used for the creation of the collection without wasting resources and without exaggerating the number of products.

With this collaboration, Sabine Marcelis completes a circle of personal work. In all the products of the series, there is a clear reference, an identity, to previous internationally renowned works of hers, like the emblematic “No Fear of Glass” mentioned in the beginning or the fountain installation at Design Miami 2018, while the circular structure, appearing throughout her recent career in the form of a “leitmotif”, is also present here! In Varmblixt, the “leitmotif” exists not only as a signature of the collection but as a formalist reminder of the concepts of the “eternal” and “recurring”. As for the concepts of “change” and “fluidity”, they are successfully represented by the presence of the luminous glass.

Images' Sources:

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