In Collaboration with Artemide
‘In Collaboration with’ explores the nature of collaboration between Foster + Partners Industrial Design, its clients, and manufacturers. Each feature explores how long-term relationships evolve through shared values, expertise, and innovation across disciplines.
This month, we focus on the studio’s partnership with Artemide, driven by technology, human-centred design, and the relationship between light and space.
Founded in 1959 in Milan, Artemide works closely with architects and designers, exploring how light shapes spatial experience and responds to evolving ways of living and working. This approach has established a strong foundation for collaboration with Foster + Partners Industrial Design, where products are developed through iterative prototyping, technical refinement, innovation, and sustainable manufacturing.
The partnership began in the late 1990s with the development of the Ra System, establishing an ongoing dialogue between the two companies. Since then, the collaboration has evolved across a series of lighting products including Ixa, Vea, Takku, Orsa, and Hoy.
Designing light requires the synthesis of multiple areas of expertise. Ideas are developed through close collaboration between Foster + Partners and Artemide’s multidisciplinary teams, bringing together design, engineering, technical performance, and manufacturing knowledge. This process is inherently iterative, with concepts continuously developed, tested, analysed, and refined throughout the product development cycle.
This approach is reflected across the collections developed together. Products such as Ixa, Vea, Takku, and the Hoy System explore different relationships between light, movement, interaction, and flexibility. While each respond to distinct briefs, they all focus on adaptability, clarity of function, and ease of use.
Carlotta de Bevilacqua, CEO of Artemide, added: “Innovation begins with research, scientific thinking, and the ability to see things differently. It is realised through collaboration, consolidating different disciplines, perspectives, and areas of expertise. By combining technological innovation with a human-centred approach, ideas can evolve into products that respond to both technical possibilities and the way people experience space.”
Mike Holland, Head of Industrial Design, Foster + Partners, commented: “Each product explores a different relationship between light, movement and interaction. Working closely with Artemide’s engineering teams allows ideas to be tested and refined throughout the development process, ensuring that technical performance and user experience evolve in harmony.”
The collaboration between the Industrial Design studio and Artemide continues to grow through a shared commitment to innovation, sustainability, and human-centred design. By combining expertise in lighting technology, engineering, and industrial design, the partnership demonstrates how products emerge through continuous dialogue between disciplines – shaping the way people experience space.
Today, products developed through the collaboration are specified across architectural settings including hospitality, workplace, commercial, and residential projects. Orsa, for example, has been incorporated into the practice’s projects including the rooftop restaurant at The Murray Hotel in Hong Kong, Four Twenty Five at 425 Park Avenue in New York, and the National Bank of Kuwait headquarters in Kuwait.
