Reflex returns light to the room gentler than before
The Reflex pendant arrives not as a basic luminaire but as a thesis on how design can translate inwardness into form. For a product that invokes introspective psychology, the claim feels justified rather than ornamental. From the first glance one senses a disciplined effort to materialize the feeling of reflection through a restrained geometry, a soft luminance, and a choreography of layered elements that echo the way thoughts overlap and separate in the mind.
The object presents itself as an idealized disc, a perfect circle lightly incised along a diagonal seam that folds the membrane into two shallow wings. Within this serene geometry a small metallic hemisphere containing dual LED sources hovers like a distant planet captured mid transit. The disc is not a hard reflector; it is a textile stretched over a ring, faintly pearlescent and subtly reflective, so light does not simply pass through but pauses and returns. The phenomenon links the piece to Noguchi’s Akari lamps, which dignified shadow, and to Turrell’s conviction that light can be sculptural. Illumination here is not a beam; it is a veil, a watercolor gradient that stains the fabric and teaches the eye that edges themselves can be luminous.
The circle, a well-worn archetype in design history, feels purposeful rather than nostalgic. Research around the lamp showed people gravitate to the circle as a symbol of the sun, a primal figure of warmth and continuity that grounds the project’s most obvious gesture in everyday perception. The bisecting cut is ingenious. It converts a passive screen into an optic device that gathers and rephrases light. Seen obliquely the wings read as a delicate lens; seen from below the seam suggests a horizon line, a quiet drama that keeps the disc from devolving into an unadorned coin suspended in space.
The source is staged with equal tact. A slender supply pipe approaches in a soft S curve that feels almost calligraphic, recalling the flow of nastaliq script and the graceful bends of midcentury Italian lighting by Sarfatti, along with the structural wit of Castiglioni. The curve is not mere flourish. It displaces the mechanical vertical of the cable and introduces a human rhythm while positioning the hemisphere so it projects forward as a punctual light yet still kisses the membrane with a secondary glow. This double action becomes the lamp’s signature, yielding both task-like accent for a desk or nightstand and a soft aureole that animates the disc and, by extension, the room.
Choice of materials deserves special praise. Many diffuse shades either choke excess light or expose the harsh source within. Reflex employs a fabric membrane that walks a rare middle course, participating in the event of light rather than acting as a throttling filter or a passive obstacle. The frame reads as a quiet line, and the magnetically secured canopy, free of visible screws, demonstrates exemplary visual hygiene at the ceiling, where ugliness so often accumulates.
Beneath the poetics, the technology is straightforward. A 13-watt dual-emitter LED produces around one thousand lumens at 3000 Kelvin, with a color rendering index of 85 and a generous 300-degree spread. The numbers speak of domestic warmth rather than laboratory precision, which feels right; the lamp flatters skin tones and wood surfaces rather than auditioning as an art-museum spotlight. One could reasonably wish for a high-CRI option or a dim-to-warm module for clients who want both gallery fidelity and late-evening intimacy, yet within its stated register the engine performs with dignity.
In operation the fixture is notably versatile. The disc’s 480-millimeter diameter, balanced by the compact hemisphere, offers enough presence to anchor a small scene while remaining deferential to surrounding furniture. Suspended singly it is a disciplined companion to a reading chair. Clustered in threes or fives it becomes an elegant dining constellation with a faint kinship to the serial restraint of contemporary minimalists like Michael Anastassiades, though Reflex is more romantic and less metallic, more about textile glow than immaculate brass. The brand’s staged compositions show how overlapping discs create a moiré of translucency that hints at Olafur Eliasson’s studies of layered planes even as the palette remains resolutely white.
The much-repeated claim to introspective psychology could invite skepticism, yet Reflex earns its rhetoric by treating perception as a feedback loop rather than a slogan. The circle offers primary comfort. The membrane reduces glare. The seam produces a dappled, forest-like redistribution of light that users reportedly associated with well-being in research. Even maintenance contributes to calm. The vertical orientation discourages dust, the shade removes for cleaning, and the canopy hides complexity so the user encounters serenity rather than fussy detail. There is an ethical undertone here. If an object is built to be loved for years, affection becomes a form of sustainability, slowing consumption more effectively than sermonizing.
Environmental intelligence is also implicit in the modest power draw and in the way the fabric both transmits and reflects, encouraging rooms shaped by gentle vertical glow rather than aggressive downlight. Hang a pair near a wall and a quiet wash deepens perceived volume. Place one above a desk and the seam’s reflected light softens peripheral contrast. The approach feels closer to Aalto’s humanist sensibilities than to the harsher efficiencies of late modernist illumination.
Reflex thrives on cultural echoes. The circle and dividing line recall Malevich’s Suprematist geometries floating in indeterminate space, while the membrane’s softness leans toward Agnes Martin’s breathing fields and the wisdom of shoji, which dignifies shadow by making it luminous. From some angles the lamp resembles an eclipse, the hemisphere crossing a solar field, while the name suggests a reflective pool receiving a pebble of brightness. Brancusi lingers in the ethic of reduction that still preserves tenderness.
Skeptics sometimes argue that awards reveal juries more than objects, yet the breadth of recognition for Reflex speaks persuasively. In 2021 it captured the A’ Design Award, the LIT Design Award, the Archiproducts Design Awards, and the MUSE Design Awards, while earning a finalist placement in the London International Creative Competition. It added the SIT Furniture Design Award that year and continued with the New York Product Design Awards in 2023. The spread spans juries that prize poetic atmosphere, market relevance, and technical rigor, suggesting the lamp persuades across divergent value systems. To some eyes it reads Scandinavian, to others Japanese, to most a contemporary global idiom. Such mutability often signals longevity.
Context also means authorship. Reflex condenses the sensibility of Alexey Danilin, born in 1987 and educated in fine arts, whose path moves fluently between scenography, installation, and industrial lighting. Early work with the French decorator Vanina Boudet helps explain his feel for atmosphere and textiles. Event designs for New Year celebrations earned publication in the Send Points anthology Holiday Design. He ventured into contemporary art with the installation Futuristic Cross, later installed at the Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. The Shell transforming sofa brought his first Red Dot, marking a pivot from scenography to product. Authorial lamps at Design Week followed, with features in Interni, ELLE Decoration, and Yanko Design, and a cover for Light Design PRO. Since 2014 Danilin has designed several hundred luminaires for Maytoni, presented at Salone del Mobile in Milan, Light + Building in Frankfurt, and Maison & Objet in Paris, along with fairs in Hong Kong, Poland, Russia, and beyond. With more than five dozen international awards, he reads as a designer fluent in the alternating current between studio art and serial production. Reflex distills that hybrid pedigree into an object with the calm of industry and the sensitivity of an artist’s hand.
A critic should also nitpick. The fabric’s reflectance, ideal for indirect glow, will reveal any irregularities in the ring, so production tolerances must be unforgiving because a membrane announces tiny errors like a drumhead. A CRI of 85 is respectable yet not excellent; a high-CRI option would suit the lamp’s cultural ambitions and serve clients who prize color fidelity. A single 3000-Kelvin offer narrows application; a 2700-Kelvin variant or tunable white would extend domestic comfort. A larger and a smaller diameter would enable richer compositions from intimate niches to grand lobbies. These are evolutionary refinements rather than core fixes.
Where Reflex truly excels is in operational intelligence that comes from living with light. The removable shade acknowledges dust; the vertical geometry minimizes it; the magnetic canopy keeps the ceiling quiet. The structural pipe is substantial enough to register as intention yet slender enough to read as a drawn line in air. Together with the seam, it sets up a microcosm of figure and ground so the eye perceives not only the glow on fabric but also the crisp highlight along the dividing rib, a reminder that boundaries can shine.
In a decade crowded with pendant sculptures chasing attention through parametric bravura and photographic theatrics, Reflex chooses another path. Its performance is chamber music rather than opera. It invites the room to listen. For homes where furnishings already speak, or hospitality spaces seeking atmosphere without spectacle, such restraint is wisdom rather than timidity. The makers claim they built an object to be loved for years. The surest route to that end is not novelty but grace, and Reflex has it in abundance.
Etymology reinforces the point. Reflex, reflection, reflective all imply bending back. The lamp bends light back onto itself, bends a linear cable into a calligraphic curve, and bends a planar disc into a pair of shallow wings. Concept and construction rhyme. As Merleau-Ponty notes, perception is reversible; the seer and the seen exchange roles. Stand beneath Reflex and the reciprocity is palpable. You look at the glowing membrane and it seems to look back, faintly mirroring the room in its sheen. Such resonance is not required for competence, yet it deepens a very good object.
In the end Reflex strikes a rare balance of intellect and intimacy. Formally disciplined, materially tender, and functionally adaptable, it belongs to the family of lights that do more than illuminate; they recalibrate living space by restoring the human scale of glow. The circle is old, the seam is modest, the light is soft, and together they form a voice that feels distinctly contemporary. If production standards remain strict, if color rendering and temperature options broaden, and if a measured size family emerges, the lamp will earn a long life across private rooms and public interiors. Design at its best proposes a way of being in a room. Reflex proposes attention without anxiety, mood without melodrama, beauty without posturing. It is easy to imagine it hovering above a reading chair, a kitchen island, or an entry where shoes are tied and untied. It does not impose a style; it accompanies one. In that companionship the lamp becomes a partner in perception, a quiet interlocutor that receives the room, considers it, and offers it back a little clearer and a little kinder. What lingers after the switch is not spectacle but a steadier form of attention, the sense that light, when thoughtfully shaped, can tutor the eye and calm the mind without ever announcing itself.
