Venice-based Lodes is tapping a seasoned lighting professional to help grow its retail and residential presence — and its one-year-old U.S. subsidiary.
Rick Leeds, who joined Lodes as vice president of sales for the U.S. and Canada, says he will use his 40 years of lighting industry experience to inform his work with the Italian lighting manufacturer. “The one thing that the design community has taught me is that lighting can be that one element that ties all design concepts together into a final product. It’s not just the science of lighting, or just the physical design of the light fixture, but how they work in concert to give meaning and energy to a designed space. Lighting creates the experience that enhances all other materials,” Leeds told Architectural SSL.
Key to Lodes’ design approach to architectural lighting is assisting designers in creating custom lighting solutions by combining lamps and canopies to meet functional and decorative lighting needs. “Light compositions evolve into bespoke solutions for any space: the flexibility provided by the combinations of lamps and canopies allows for an infinite array of applications and fully personalised solutions,” Massimiliano Tosetto, Lodes’ managing director, told Architectural SSL.
“Our further expansion into the NA market underscores the company’s commitment to offering contemporary design solutions that celebrate our Italian DNA and manufacturing know-how to our growing commercial and residential client base,” Tosetto added.
Fusing “contemporary design and innovative technology,” Tosetto pointed to Lodes’ collaborations with well-known designers and firms such as Snøhetta, Ron Arad and Patrick Norguet. “Our goal is to keep developing solutions that can be helpful technological design solutions with a high standard in terms of design.”
Enabling decorative and performance lighting
As little as five to 10 years ago, few installations used custom or bespoke lighting due to budgetary and time-frame constraints, Leeds noted. With approaches such as Lodes’ ‘Standard Bespoke’ collection, “New concept designs…allow for bespoke assemblies of standard components in a variety of sizes and finishes that allow a designer to create a one-of-a-kind lighting assembly out of standard, in-stock components.”
Given his lighting experience, Architectural SSL asked Leeds which commonly held opinions regarding architectural lighting might be due for a rethink in 2024. “I often hear that lighting is separated into performance (architectural) selected by engineers and lighting designers, and decorative selected by architects and interior designers, and I must disagree. All lighting in a space works together to create the environment. Of course, it all consumes energy, and although it may have different functionality, together it creates a cohesive space that we live, work, and play in. Decorative lighting is often the ah-ha moment that provides a user with their first experience of a space and we all want that to have a maximum impact.”
