Flos

FLOS is an Italian lighting products company founded in Merano in 1962, by Dino Gavina and Cesare Cassina.

The name Flos, from the Latin "flower" originates from the idea of ​​giving birth to lighting objects capable of changing the way of living of Italians and beyond.

At the beginning of the 1960s Dino Gavina and Cesare Cassina in collaboration with Arturo Eisenkeil, a manufacturer from Merano (importer of an innovative polymer material produced in the United States) decide that it is time to innovate also in the lighting sector and to create new types of lamps.

Born as a small laboratory, since the early years the company has made itself known in Italy and in the world by experimenting with new materials and new stylistic and functional research.

Gavina already has experience in the design of furniture production and has worked with some masters of Italian design such as Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Afra and Tobia Scarpa and others. Castiglioni and Scarpa use the cocoon technique, conceived in the USA and experimented by Eisenkeil to create new lamps such as the Taraxacum or the Fantasma. The company develops thanks to the collaboration with these great Italian designers.

These first lamps are followed by many others, beautiful and surprising: thus already from its prehistory Flos finds itself at the center of the innovation of new products, reinventing the very idea of artificial lighting.

Flos stands out in the quality furniture lighting sector not only for its stylistic innovations but also for the introduction of innovative materials never used before, such as the cocoon previously used only for packaging.

Flos, in 1964 he moved to Bovezzo, in the province of Brescia. The same year Sergio Gandini joined the company, first as a director and then as CEO until he became president in 1999.

The "Italy, The New Domestic Landscape" exhibition, organized at MoMa, the museum of modern art in New York in 1972, achieved great success and is a celebration of the culture of Italian creative art of design.

Flos is represented with various objects, especially of the Castiglioni: it is the international consecration and the beginning of the company's popularity and development as a cutting-edge company in the sector.

Between the 70s and 80s, production grew with new factories, the market, with the acquisition of some foreign companies and the product catalog, also thanks to the acquisition of Arteluce di Gino Sarfatti.

Another great personal exhibition by Achille Castiglioni, itinerant, which since 1984 has been held in eight European capitals, from Vienna to Madrid, to confirm the success of Flos and its continuous evolution.

The Flos company continues to grow by acquiring several brands from other manufacturers in the sector worldwide and opening up to new prestigious collaborations with designers such as the aforementioned Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Afra and Tobia Scarpa, others such as Antonio Citterio, Tim Derhaag, Rodolfo Dordoni , Joris Laarman, Laurene Leon Boym, Konstantin Grcic, Knud Holscher, Piero Lissoni, Jasper Morrison, Marc Newson, Philippe Starck, Patricia Urquiola, Marcello Ziliani, Marcel Wanders, Sebastian Wrong.

Among Flos' best known and most successful products:
Arco of Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Achille Castiglioni
Toio by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Achille Castiglioni
Taccia by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Achille Castiglioni
Taraxacum S by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Achille Castiglioni
Snoopy by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Achille Castiglioni
Splügen Bräu by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and Achille Castiglioni
Bulb by Achille Castiglioni
Taraxacum 88 by Achille Castiglioni
Gibigiana by Achille Castiglioni
Chiara by Mario Bellini, 1967
Biagio by Tobia Scarpa
Fantasma (Ghost) by Tobia Scarpa, 1968
Romeo Moon by Philippe Starck, 1988
Arà, Philippe Starck lamp, 1998

Among the multiple awards, Flos has received four Compasso d'Oro awards
(plus one for corporate career and one acquired for Luminator)

Compasso d'Oro in 1979 for Parentesi by Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù
Compasso d'Oro in 1994 for Drop by Marc Sadler
Compasso d'Oro in 1995 for the corporate career
Compasso d'Oro in 2001 for Konstantin Grcic's May Day
Compasso d'Oro in 2011 for his career at Piera Pezzolo Gandini
Compasso d'Oro in 1955 for Achille Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni's Luminator (which Flos produces after having acquired it from the manufacturer of the time Gilardi & Barzaghi in Milan).