In 1951 an American designer called Richard Schultz joined Knoll International Design Development Group. In 1966 he designed a collection of outdoor seating and tables at the request of Florence Knoll, who wanted well-designed outdoor furnishings that would withstand the corrosive salt air at her home in Florida.

The furniture popped up the original Thomas Crown affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in 1968; the film was uber cool and so is the furniture.

The 1966 Collection furniture is included in many museum collections including the Louvre Museum Design Collection in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, just to name a few.

Today the collection is distributed by B&B Italia. When a furniture collection is still on sale over 40 years after its debut, it has got to be worth a look.

Now I’m not going to argue with you about this furniture, I’m just telling you it is the most beautiful outdoor furniture ever produced. If you can’t see it I’m going to blame it on your lack of visual education.

This lack of visual education is the reason why people struggle to accept new design ideas. People like what their parents like. Give them an education in art history, design and architecture and our physical environment will be transformed.

The furniture is powder coated steel and the meshing is Teflon, this is furniture you’re going to have your children and grandchildren fighting over, and for once their taste in furniture is going to be enhanced by inherited taste.

To me this is truly timeless design, it’s uncomplicated, comes in black or white, and there are only a few elements available. A few new elements have been added in 2007, lower slung and reclining, but strictly adhering to the original design.

But visually is where this furniture stands apart. Simple lines, classically formal, the legs look like elongated Greek columns. The fine mesh brings an almost nautical aspect to the design, conjuring ideas of floating, wind and light.
For me white is the only way to go, black is for those who can’t handle the white.

There are a massive amount of lighting manufacturers. Some are specialized for example in outdoor lighting, a brand like Ares, others do only Murano glass fixtures, like Barovier & Tosso, others have a massive selection of home and architectural light, like Artemide.

If you are choosing lighting, the best place to get started is at www.architonic.com , select interior or exterior lighting and any further categories. Now spend a couple of days at work getting excited about lights and getting no work done. Here at Blonde Design we also have a lighting catalogue that we will email you if you request it at info@blonde-design.com.

Now lighting can be taken very seriously. You can do architectural style lighting in your own home. You could use a series of spot lights along a wall more as a decorative pattern than to actually light your interior.

You can chose a light as a sculpture, freestanding, ceiling mounted or wall mounted, interior or exterior.

Lighting can be analyzed very technically. A 3d model of your room can be generated and the lighting inserted, giving you a clear visualization of your lighting.

At Blonde we do this mainly for larger architectural projects, but it can be very interesting on domestic projects too, especially if you decide to take your lighting more seriously.

At Blonde we love lighting; it is truly the single most transformative element in design.

Till next time…

Lighting is not an afterthought. If anything it should, and it inevitably will be if done well, the single biggest chunk of your interior budget. Too many people try to “forget” lighting out of their budget.

All too often we notice the lighting because it is unpleasant; offices lit with row after row of aggressive neon, apartment building lobby areas lit like football stadiums, restaurants that make your food look grey etc.

Lighting is about comfort. If the lighting in a given space is installed properly it will improve the user’s comfort, simple as that. And that can be a relatively subtle thing.

Some lighting is purely functional and logical. You need a specific amount of light to comfortably read a document in front of you. You need a specific amount of light in an area where you will be using a knife.

At other times it’s decorative, whether it is a beautiful pendant lamp, or using the shape of a spotlight to “draw” light on a red wall in a plush club.

Lighting is changing; new technologies like LED and compact fluorescents are making the incandescent light bulb a thing of the past and offer new ways of illuminating a space.

I can’t tell you what to do but, if you are redoing your home or office or building from scratch or whatever, get a lighting consultant in, or check that your architect knows a thing or two about light, cause they don’t necessarily . . .