Platinum A' Design Award Winner 2025
Tortato's luminous helix operates as a powerful spatial and symbolic intervention within the classical architectural container, its continuous spiraling form activating deep archetypal associations with ascent, transcendence, and the eternal dance between earthly anchorage and celestial aspiration. The helical configuration carries profound cosmological resonance across cultures, from the double helix of biological life to the spiral staircases of medieval towers designed to evoke spiritual ascension, suggesting that this sculptural lamp participates in ancient symbolic traditions while expressing them through resolutely contemporary material language. The embrace referenced in the title manifests visually through the form's outward-reaching curves, which seem to gather and hold the surrounding space in a gesture of welcoming enclosure, transforming passage through the stairwell into an experience of being received and enfolded. The material dialogue between warm brass and cool stone may be understood as encoding complementary principles, the organic fluidity of the sculptural element suggesting life force, creativity, and transformation while the geometric precision of the classical architecture represents order, permanence, and cultural continuity. The vertical orientation activates symbolic associations with connection between realms, the illuminated ribbon serving as a luminous axis mundi linking the earthbound floors with the heights above. The continuous unbroken line of light tracing the sculpture's path suggests infinity and perpetual motion, while the warm chromatic temperature of both the metallic surface and the LED illumination creates associations with solar energy, vitality, and welcome. One might observe how the work transforms functional necessity into spiritual metaphor, the practical need for stairwell illumination becoming an occasion for contemplation of movement, aspiration, and the beauty that emerges when tradition and innovation achieve harmonious synthesis.
Halfway between art and design, Embrasse Moi is the majestic light sculpture whose name recalls the play on words between the English brass and the lamp's curved, enveloping shape. The suspension lamp has been handcrafted: a large sculpture in burnished brass that recalls the DNA strand, the weave of which unfolds like a fil rouge throughout the space, giving every project an artistic accent that makes it unique.