Dutch Designer Frederik Roij© prizes functionality, but he’s leery about products that are too functional and run the risk of being forgotten as they’re not distinctive, or, in his words, don’t have anything interesting to say: “products have a habit of disappearing because of their functionality. I want to prevent this by giving products an additional value. This value is the story behind the product-products created out of love for surprises, curiosity, and beauty. New products for a new period in time.”

Lampscapes. Designed by Frederik Roij©.

In the spirit of this harmonious fusion of utility and singularity, Roij© has given us Lampscapes-a collection of lightpieces that engages the conceptual inquiry, what if lamps were to form a community? In Roij©s conspicuous aesthetic, the answer is a novel take on the family unit-each of the pieces in the Lampscapes collection resembles a family, complete with a sexually dimorphic couple and one or more little “lampettes.” Irrevocably joined by virtue of a shared side (as are most families, for better or worse), Lampscape is oddly familiar yet haltingly strange; taken separately, the shades are unremarkable at best, but with Roij©s unsettling pastiche-”familiar shades melted into one,” says the designer-the pieces begin to look like a community. The implication is one of interdependence, as if separation would be equivalent to non-existence, a notion that-in Roij©s equation of “distinctive functionality”-seems accurate indeed. For further illustrations of this minimalistic and beautiful lighting aesthetic, take a look at Julien Bergignat’s Lamp or Dima Loginoff’s Trunk Suspension Lamp.

Lampscape is constructed of unassuming cotton fabric and pvc laminate. The collection encompasses four models: conical suspension with three “peaks” or shades, conical suspension with seven peaks, cylindrical suspension with three peaks, and a three-peaked cylindrical floor lamp. If you’re game for Roij©’s fusion of the fresh and the familiar, you’ll definitely appreciate each and every variety of Lampscape’s communal illuminations.