Renowned for pushing the boundaries of lighting technology and design for over six decades, we always make a beeline for Italian lighting company FLOS’ exciting presentations during our annual pilgrimage to Milan Design Week as they never fail to impress. This year, the company unveils new collections by Barber Osgerby and Formafantasma and anniversary editions of Michael Anastassiades’ IC Lights in past-meets-present installation at the 18th century Palazzo Visconti. The opulent Baroque interiors makes for a phantasmagorical backdrop for the contemporary glass creations, with the imaginative use of reflections adding to the setup’s immersive qualities, but the venue’s significance goes beyond its architectural heritage. It was at Palazzo Visconti where 36 years ago Flos presented the first lamp created by an international designer, namely Philippe Starck. In fact, the installation itself was inspired by an archival photograph shot during that historical presentation in 1988.

Taken by Maria Mulas, the black and white photograph captures Starck standing amongst distinguished architects, designers, art critics, and journalists such as Achille Castiglioni, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, and Fabio Lombardo, all enthusiastic and smiling. The image’s jovial spirit evocatively serves as a historical reminder of the collective energy that has fuelled the company’s mission to reinvent artificial lighting through its ability to both nurture and harness the creativity of talented designers.

The new products that Flos has been presenting during Milan Design Week may have changed both aesthetically and technologically since the photograph was taken back in the 1980s, but what hasn’t changed is the company’s penchant for bringing together talented international designers – in this case, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby of London-based studio Barber Osgerby, Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Milan and Rotterdam-studio Formafantasma, and Cyprus-born, London-based designer Michael Anastassiades.

As a proponent of avant-garde design, Flos may draw inspiration from its past without however making any attempt to rehash it. Whereas 36 years ago, in 1988, Achille Castiglioni chose to block out the opulent décor of the Palazzo’s Baroque rooms by introducing a series of white-painted boxy volumes in which to showcase items such as his own Taraxacum 88 lamp, the present set-up highlights the palazzo’s ornate cornices, murals, trompe l'oeil niches and gilded details through the artful use of reflections.

Most impressively, the main hall features a series of mirrored partitions that divide the space into separate areas, each dedicated to one of the three new products, namely Michael Anastassiades’ IC 10 Anniversary, Barber Osgerby’s Bellhop Glass and Formafantasma's SuperWire. The mirrored surfaces both underscore the palazzo’s historical character and amplify the products’ glass volumes. This is especially true for Formafantasma’s new series whose masterful use of light and form imbues the lamps with an ethereal quality. Produced in floor, table, wall and pendant versions, all of the SuperWire pieces are composed of hexagonal modules of flat glass panels, an aluminium framework, and twelve slender LED strips, each shielded by a borosilicate tube the size of a spaghetti. A paradigm of sculptural beauty, the lights are also very user friendly as the glass panels can be easily mounted and unmounted to allow for the repair of the LED light sources (a rarity in this kind of light fittings).

Simpler in form yet imbued with a similar sense of wonder, Michael Anastassiades’ IC Lights have become a Flos classic since its launch a decade ago. Inspired by the curved trajectory of a ball thrown by a juggler, it features an opalescent glass sphere in delicate equilibrium at the end of a slanting baton. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, IC is presented in a gold finish and in new maxi versions.

The Bellhop Glass suspension and table top lamps, the latest additions to Barber Osgerby’s celebrated Bellhop series for Flos, round up the new product launches. As a continuation of the iconic Bellhop silhouette, these new iterations are defined by generously scaled, fully blown glass shades, extending the legacy of the archetypal Bellhop table top lamp, originally first conceived for the Design Museum in west London.

With Achille Castiglioni’s iconic Taraxacum 88 lamp also making a ‘guest appearance’ 36 years after the historic presentation at Palazzo Visconti, the Flos installation encapsulates how the company looks to the future by continuing to leverage its historical identity, as well as highlights the value of elective affinities in design. As Flos’ Chief Creative Officer Barbara Corti explains, Flos has always has been "a design playground, a terrain of exploration on which the genius of the designers, who are our family, can be expressed".