Motoko Ishii, Sputnik lamp for Staff

MOTOKO ISHII (Japan, 1938) for Staff.
Sputnik lamp, 1970s.
Metal structure.
Electrified.
Exhibits wear consistent with age and use.

Ceiling lamp "Sputnik" of the sixties designed by Motoko Ishii, whose forms are inspired by the famous Soviet satellite, within the context of the Space Age. Its structure is entirely made of metal with a central tube as the main axis and a body formed by multiple narrower tubes, topped by transparent spherical lampshades. Space Age is the name given to the period in which the space race began in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. This fever to conquer space also reached design, and during the sixties and seventies a model of decoration was developed based on an idyllic vision of the future, and everything to do with spaceships, new technologies and innovative materials.

Motoko Ishii is a Japanese lighting designer. From 1965 to 1967 she worked in lighting design studios in Finland and Germany. Returning to Japan in 1968, she established the Ishii Motoko Design Office. One of her major projects was the lighting design for Expo '75 in Okinawa. Beginning in the 1980s, she did the designs for a number of major projects. Three major events for which he was responsible for lighting were Expo '85 in Tsukuba, the Yokohama Lighting Festival and Japan Flora 2000. He also designed lighting for the cities of Osaka, Hakodate, Himeji and Kurashiki, and for the gassh?-zukuri village of Shirakawa. His 1989 redesign of the Tokyo Tower lighting attracted international attention. He won the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America award for the Light Fantasy Electricity Pavilion at the International Garden and Vegetation Exposition (Osaka, 1990) and again for the Rainbow Bridge (1994). In 2009, he designed the lighting for the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest, Hungary.