Louis et Marie Family
Ceiling luminaires
Ornament and crime - Marie and Louis not only share their names with their historical ancestors Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI but also the way their bodies have been "machined". In the 18th century this was a rather rudimentary process involving the guillotine and a scaffold but nowadays CNC milling machines allow a much finer "execution" that is more aesthetic than destructive in nature.
In 1896 Adolf Loos was fascinated by the words of Louis H. Sullivan: "It would be greatly for our aesthetic good if we should refrain entirely from the use of ornament for a period of years, in order that our thought might concentrate acutely upon the production of buildings well formed and comely in the nude." These words inspired Loos' 1908 polemic "Ornament and Crime", in which he argued that functionality and the absence of ornament were signs of a higher cultural development insofar as they saved human effort. However, this conclusion ignores the second, more important part of Sullivan's quote: "If we have then become well grounded in pure and simple forms we will reverse them ... We shall have learned, however, that ornament is mentally a luxury, not a necessary".
For many decades, ornament practically disappeared as design feature. And, for Nimbus too, it was not the longing for old times or baroque splendour that inspired the company in the design of Louis et Marie but rather the desire to play with the formal specifications of our minimalistic luminaires. Louis is square, has rounded corners, chamfered edges and straight lines milled into its surface. Marie, with its round forms and opulent floral ornament, interprets rounded decorative elements such as classical ceiling roses. Together Louis et Marie conjure up fascinating light effects on the ceiling and open up new design opportunities with light: ornaments (from the Latin word ornare "to embellish") have always been used in architecture for the purpose of accentuating, structuring or framing. The matt acrylic glass with its patented conical indentations for suppressing glare and directing light clearly identifies Louis et Marie as Nimbus luminaires.
Louis et Marie are each available in four sizes. Louis et Marie can be supplied in 2,700 K, 3,000 K or 4,000 K.
Leuchten
Louis 36
Louis 64
Marie 36
