Kelsey Paul, host of the Studio Chats podcast interviewed Rainlight studio’s Creative Director, Yorgo Lykouria about his career insights, views on fostering mentorship and inspiration within the studio and trusting your creative instincts.
To listen to the full conversation visit the episode website.
Rainlight’s Creative Director, Yorgo Lykouria speaks with the London Society about “Why the Post-Pandemic world needs high-level thinking”.
‘Weather Report’ is a series of conversations between Rainlight’s Creative Director, Yorgo Lykouria and a variety of industry experts, futurists and creatives. During these discussions we’ll explore the perspectives of some of the most innovative and provocative leaders and thinkers touching on issues as varied as design for climate change, the future of cities, material innovation, inclusive design and how to approach design education.
We kick off on Earth Day with Dr Andrew Dent, Executive Vice President, Research at Material ConneXion, Chief Material Scientist at SANDOW. A leading expert on sustainable materials, he plays an important part in creating a new generation of more sustainable products.
AMBITUS by Rainlight for Zumtobel Group has been awarded a 2021 Red Dot Design Award “Best of the Best” for Lighting Design.
The Red Dot Design Award, first awarded in 1955, is one of the world’s most famous product design awards, with a jury of international design experts that recognises exceptional design achievements in a number of different fields.
This luminaire’s ring shape means it has light distribution of almost 360 degrees, supplying maximum efficiency and quality of light. The design development stage involved using pliable LEDs and a highly complex tooling process, while AMBITUS’s perforated pattern is achieved using sophisticated computational formulas, with the resulting abstract design reminiscent of being beneath a starlit sky. The result is a precise, elegant product that fuses design poetry with sharp functionality.
The Good Design Awards are recognized internationally as the oldest and most prestigious prize for product design excellence. The awards have been managed by the Chicago Athenaeum since their inception and use criteria such as concept, function and utility as they assess their winners. Rainlight’s Nagare design for Japanese manufacturer, Okamura has received a Good Design Award in the furniture category again this year, the second consecutive win for the collaborators as Rainlight’s Traverse table design for Okamura won in the same category last year. Nagare which means ‘flow’ in Japanese is a range of seating and tables that brings a gentle sense of movement and a sculptural statement to wherever work might take place. The collection will be accessioned into the Museum’s Permanent Design Collection in Chicago.
To learn more visit the awards’ website here.
As a gift to the planet, on behalf of the Rainlight community, we’re engaging with the World Land Trust to purchase acres of natural habitat in order to ensure they are protected and preserved. WLT works with its network of trusted conservation partners to create wildlife reserves around the world. Every acre that is saved becomes part of a larger reserve that is protected in perpetuity by a partner organization.
On November 5th the Italian Trade Agency hosted Design Day 2020, inviting Rainlight’s Yorgo Lykouria to participate in a discussion on the theme “Innovation, Style and Sustainability in Italian Design: Synergies and Opportunities in the U.S. Market”.
The SBID (Society of British & International Interior Designers) has awarded BoxLife by Rainlight for Scavolini a 2020 Product Design Award. The SBID awards recognize and celebrate innovation and quality within international design for both project and product contributions to the industry. Boxlife was awarded in the contract furniture category.
ThinkLab, a division of Sandow that focuses on research and consulting to the contract interiors world, invited Rainlight to join a panel of industry experts discussing the “Future of Materiality: Exploring new technologies, ideas and inspiration for the design ecosystem”. Led by ThinkLab’s President, Amanda Schneider, Rainlight’s Creative Director Yorgo Lykouria joined Suzanne Tick of Suzanne Tick, Dr. Andrew Dent of Material Connexion and Primo Orpilla of Studio O+A in outlining some of the key concepts at play while innovating for the post-COVID 19 world.
The 7th Annual HiP Awards was presented by Interior Design magazine’s Cindy Allen via a digital ceremony on June 12th. Rainlight’s design of Boost ottoman for Carnegie, was a winner in the Accessories category while Allsteel’s Rise was an honoree in the Workplace:modular seating category and Arcadia’s Allsorts & Smallsorts collection was an honoree in Workplace: Benches/stools category.
Metropolis Magazine editors have chosen two of Rainlight’s designs as winners of the 2020 #Metropolislikes awards. #Metropolislikes is a bi-annual product awards showcase. Carnegie’s Boost ottoman and Allsteel’s Rise were two of the 35 products selected. This year due to the effects of COVID-19, Neocon is being hosted virtually via Neoconnect, an online digital gallery of the conference’s exhibitors, panels and content.
Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival (VDF) is an online platform hosted April 15th- June 30th, 2020. The festival was announced by the online publication in response to the cancellation of many major international design symposia and exhibitions due to COVID-19.
In a video interview, Yorgo Lykouria describes the inspiration behind and features of Scavolini’s BoxLife.
The NYCxDesign awards are held annually in May as New York welcomes designers and manufacturers from around the world during it’s annual city-wide festival. This year’s awards ceremony was live-streamed via Facebook Live for the very first time and hosted by Cindy Allen of Interior Design Magazine.
Rainlight was honored to be awarded the winner of the Storage product category for their design of BoxLife for Scavolini.
Boxlife is a modular system that contains every necessity from a kitchen module to a fold-able bed, office workspace, laundry unit and more. Each function is concealed into a compact series of ‘boxes’ that can be utilized as their need arises.
Designcurial features a letter of hope and adoration written by Yorgo Lykouria to Italy, during this challenging time.
Rainlight’s Yorgo Lykouria presents “Design as a Living Experience” at 100% Design during London Design Festival 2019. Yorgo explains his vast experience working with global brands to demonstrate how objects provoke thought and stimulate emotions and why they are so essential.
Business of Furniture magazine – January 30, 2019 issue
“Rainlight, the international product design studio based in London and Los Angeles, has garnered an impressive number of collaborations and awards in its first year of business. The company has collaborated with leading names in the world of furniture manufacturers, including Scavolini, Allsteel, Okamura, USAI, Carnegie Fabrics, Clestra, Mannington Com-mercial, Tecno. It also launched 12 new products at Salone del Mobile/Milan, Clerkenwell Design Week/London, Neocon/Chicago, AIA National Conference/New York, SDA Show-case/New York and Orgatec in Cologne.”
Part laboratory, part workshop, part studio, Rainlight combines design innovation with business acumen. Accolades Rainlight has earned over the past year include:
Led by Susan Grossinger and Yorgo Lykouria, Rainlight enters 2019 in a strong position by making products that enhance the way people live and work. Further launches are planned throughout 2019 at many of the major global trade shows.
“Product design is about the individual and their interaction with an object — it is the most personal of the design disciplines,” said Grossinger, who is based in Los Angeles. “Whether it’s your eyeglasses, the chair you sit in or your steering wheel, we all have a visceral interac-tion with design that affects our day-to-day life. The opportunity to make that experience extraordinary is in itself an exceptional experience.”
Rainlight strives to create objects that are timeless and pioneering. “A trend is already yes-terday,” Lykouria said. “We begin our work open to all possibilities.”
Its process starts with a philosophical question, refraining from the immediate urge to design.
“The things we create embody thought,” said Creative Director Lykouria, who is based in London and has more than two decades of experience in industrial design and architecture. “Our work today is a message to the future,” he said.
Allsteel’s Townhall Collection Designed by Rainlight wins Interior Design 2018 HiP Award for Workplace: Lounge Seating.
Okamura Traverse Conference Table
Rainlight Okamura Traverse Conference Table“Rainlight design represents the aspiration to bring a fresh perspective into the world, driven by knowledge and experience, courage and passion, as well as belief.”
Rainlight Titus Ventus Lux Chilled Beam
“Our work begins with research and planning a process that, with our clients’ input will guide us toward realizing a vision that is relevant for our times and resonates with people.”
Rainlight Arcadia Maker Space Furniture Collection
“Lykouria and Grossinger form a synergy of business and culture that understands market drivers. Said Mr. Lykouria, “We recognize that the ‘market’ is composed of people with their own thoughts, impulses, and emotions. Our true end-user is human nature itself. At Rainlight we create experiences to evoke wonder through resonance with human emotion…It is a privilege and responsibility to create for the human-made world we spend our lives in. We look to the future as a better place that is our responsibility to help deliver. It is about materials and processes that affect the environment and it is also about the images we place in human consciousness. Form matters. Our work today is a message for the future.”
Rainlight Koleksiyon Tabula Desk
“So as the new company, Rainlight, heads into that future, it does so with a large body of work behind it and a bright future ahead of it.”
Rainlight Koleksiyon Rasa Pouf
“As friends of Rainlight Studio as well as many of its clients, we wish them tremendous success with the new venture. We sense a most auspicious confidence in the two principals we met with; born from experience and blessed with a great beginning.”
Media Contact:
Stephanie Miller
Director of PR
stephanie@rainlightstudio.com
Rainlight Design Studio Clestra Irys Demountable Wall System
“The thought process behind the Rainlight name comes from its locations. Since the firm has offices in London and Los Angeles, you get the ‘rain’ and ‘light.’ There is also the idea of conflict that is inherent in the product design process, a yin-yang tension that makes for the most innovative discoveries.”
Rainlight Okamura Traverse Conference Table
“The new products Rainlight is helping its customers launch this year show the depth and breadth of its design skill. All are unique, and all are very different, designed to suit the customer, not pad Rainlight’s design portfolio. They are good examples of how Rainlight works with its customers as well, often taking them in different, unexpected directions.”
Rainlight Arcadia Make Space Furniture Collection
Media Contact:
Stephanie Miller
Director of PR
stephanie@rainlightstudio.com
LOS ANGELES/LONDON, 01 March, 2018 – Design begins with an open mind. This is the principle upon which Susan Grossinger and Yorgo Lykouria founded Rainlight Studio, a new international product design studio. Collaborating with leading manufacturers across the globe, the studio will unveil a slate of new products throughout 2018 at Salone del Mobile in Milan, Clerkenwell Design Week in London, NeoCon in Chicago and Orgatec in Cologne.
Part laboratory, part workshop, part studio, Rainlight Studio embraces aspirational thinking to create products that enhance how people live, work and play.
“The things we create embody thought,” said London-based Creative Director Yorgo Lykouria, who has more than two decades of experience in industrial design and architecture. “It’s about ideas that break the mould, yet appear timeless. Our work today is a message for the future.”
“Great products have compelling stories,” added Partner Susan Grossinger, who is based in Los Angeles and has 34 years of experience in the design profession. “We founded Rainlight Studio to develop and tell these tales. We partner with ambitious manufacturers that also want to create these stories and that seek to lead, not follow, the market.”
Anchoring design innovation with business acumen, Lykouria and Grossinger each contribute distinct yet complementary strengths to the new firm. Rainlight Studio represents their aspiration to bring a fresh perspective into the world, driven by knowledge and experience, courage and passion, as well as belief.
Media Contact:
Chardonnay Pickard-Fares
Business and Marketing Manager
chardonnay@rainlightstudio.com