While it’s not usually my custom to o.d. on lighting—and this week I’ve already examined iacoli and mcallister’s handsome Frame Pendant—I just couldn’t let the weekend go by without singing the praises of Danese’s Una Sistema by Carlotta de Bevilacqua. And if you’re tempted to dismiss the choice to the sonorous surname (and my unrequited love of the hard t and glottal c), I say “phooey.” Even if Ms. Bevilacqua’s first name were Gertrude, I’d still be smitten with Una Sistema’s elegant innovations.

Una Sistema. Designed by Una Sistema for Danese.

Would that be “innovatore elegante?” I hope so, because both the product and the designer deserve the appellation. Una Sistema Joins the ranks of Haworth’s LIM and Humanscale’s Diffrient, both products that make the visual component of our working lives a damn sight more effectual. Like Lim and Diffrient, Una Sistema sports the spindly-legged profile of an overgrown grasshopper or a praying mantis, borrowing its aesthetic from the classic anglepoise lamp. But Una Sistema does much more than gesticulate and contort, the multi-directional swiveling joints getting the light exactly where you need it. It also changes the nature of this light, depending on the particular exigencies of the moment.

This neat trick is accomplished via “interchangeable LED heads,” or luminescent cards that slide into and out of the slots at the end of the lamp’s aluminum “arms.” Danese further explains Sistema’s modular propensities: “thin arms in aluminium with a printed circuit only 3 mm thick allow the user to make up diverse versions. In different sequences, various lengths and connecting terminals can be combined, thus creating desk, reading, floor, wall, ceiling, and binary versions.” Switching out the LED modules is as easy as swiping a credit card (and far less costly), so you can alter light intensity and spread.

The look of the whole ensemble takes its cue from the cards. Una Sistema features ultra-thin and light circuitry (courtesy of the LED technology) which gives the lamp the futuristic aspect that Danese had in mind, not to mention the intelligence of its conception and function: “a very flat iconic profile whose aesthetics arises from technical, constructive, electrical and, structural features… Una is a basic but highly technological product that’s produced easily and made from one material only.”

Via Dezeen