You can’t know the feeling of vertigo unless you suffer from this particular type of dizziness, which gives you a discomfiting sense of motion even while you’re standing still. It can also take the form of suicidal tendencies, since you may feel like jumping from whatever precipice you find yourself upon. But the word itself has a lovely etymology: in Latin, vertÅ means whirling or spinning. And this calls to mind lots of pretty things–dancing girls, twirling tornadoes, pirouetting ballerinas, even whirling dervishes.

Vertigo. Designed by Constance Guisset.

In this spirit, Parisian designer Constance Guisset offers her Vertigo lamp. Meant to create “a sense of intimacy,” Vertigo is composed more of negative space than of substance. It is a study of the spaces in between, of what’s left out. Thin lines circulate around a bulb in the shape of an upside down sun hat, something a Southern lady might wear to the horse races, a wild, grand swooping affair that’s as big as a table. Vertigo can be reduced to one word-lightness: "The lightness of the lamp (less than 500g for 2 square meters amplitude) makes it mobile to the rhythm of the air: it turns softly, projecting an almost transparent graphic space between the floor and the ceiling."

Like Guisset's earlier work, notably Dancing Chair, the Vertigo Lamp emphasizes lightness and fluidity. Thin slats feature in both pieces, wherein they create nests that house the essential part of the design-in the first case a chair, and in the second case a bulb.