Plumen - MorningCalM April 2019

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GREEN LIGHT

London-based lighting company Plumen designs LED light bulbs beautiful enough to generate real excitement for a sustainable future. Its products show that soft light can be wielded as soft power.

Are these the end times? There’s no denying that climate change is transforming our planet. Less certain is how much of it will change and how quickly. Nicolas Roope’s consciousness of the dire state of the environment truly awakened in the early 2000s, and he was dogged by the idea that he should use his skill as a designer to help create a survivable — and beautiful — future. The original Plumen 001 light bulb, released in 2010, was an energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) whose tubes were twisted into a complicated knot of Gordian proportions. Its coated tubing gave off a diffuse light, creating a focused ambience without the antiseptic bareness of a cubicled office.

Roope has been designing for decades. One of his earlier works, created under design brand Hulger, was a series of corded telephone receivers that could hook up to cell phones. He’s also one of the founders of Poke, a communications agency that has worked on a host of campaigns for major brands. “What I was seeing in the advertising, communications world was lots of brands and companies trying to tell us to consume more responsibly,” he says. “I was looking at the products, the things you would need to use to change your behavior, and they were all deeply uninspiring. So you had this psychological dissonance where you started to associate climate change or doing the right thing with pain or discomfort.”

Plumen’s light bulbs — so far there are three designs, not including an LED version of the original 001 that came out last year — show the power of pleasure, as well as the necessity of harnessing it to effect more tidal change. “Being obliged doesn’t really move markets,” says Roope. “You have to get people to desire it, to see it not just as worthy but as aspirational, because you see it in fashion, right? What drives fashion is aspiration.” It’s the Great Gatsby take on sustainability — getting people to look longingly toward the green light.

And it’s easy to look longingly at Plumen’s light bulbs. Roope majored in sculpture in college, and the three years he and his team spent designing the Plumen 002 resulted in a bulb of soft curves inspired by the work of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth. But the 003 is Plumen’s glittering jewel. In fact, its central feature was designed with a jeweler. Inside the bulb’s glass encasing, a small gold-colored ornament surrounds the light in delicate layers — a firefly caught in a jar. Light reflects off the flared tiers to wash the surroundings in gentle Midas warmth.

“I think people really appreciate great lights, but actually very few people know how to do it,” he says. “And they might spend a lot of money on a television, but they’re not going to spend any money or effort on lighting. But actually if they did, they would infinitely improve their environment.”

Our environment has the power to affect our moods and behaviors in ways that we haven’t finished figuring out. When imagining a romantic dinner date, we often picture it candle-lit. There’s evidence that even the mere presence of a bare light bulb, compared to an overhead fluorescent light, can provoke us to solve problems more insightfully. The kind of light we use influences our circadian rhythm, which is why we’re now advised to limit blue light before bed, and the diminished sunlight in winter can have a profound effect on mental health.

“I think we’ve all been trying to make sense of all the crazy complexity and everything. Everything seems so unwieldy and out of our control,” Roope says. “I think what’s started to surface for me is just that appetite or need for simplicity and clarity.” He adds that simplicity isn’t quite the perfect word — it’s design that’s honest. “You don’t have people saying one thing and the experience is completely different,” he says. “And that’s not in a boring way. As a necessity, as a standard.”

The price of Plumen’s products reflects a necessary sea change in the way we look at light bulbs. “They were one of the classic objects associated with built-in obsolescence,” Roope says. “It was basically a racket.” Those days are over; the LED version of Plumen’s 001 light bulb has a lifetime of 20,000 hours. It’s just one more way we can throw out our fondness for disposability, and Plumen underscores the idea that a green future doesn’t have to be austere. “We will have to sacrifice, and we will have to change,” Roope says. “But I think what’s happened is that the excitement and the opportunity of that change is becoming more thrilling to people.”

The company is already working on the 004, 005 and 006, continuing to light the future in a mood of optimism. For Roope, it’s clear that these are the end times. “I think what we’re seeing at the moment is the end of an era,” he says. “I think it’s the last spasms of the old guard, and what will come in is a new era that we’ll have defined quite differently.”