Four decades ago, then-design students Manfred Wolf and Jean-Marc da Costa founded their company with the aim of combining innovative lighting design with the highest standards of technology and craftsmanship. Since then, serien.lighting has stood out among lighting manufacturers for its uncompromising focus on design quality, technical expertise, innovation and avant-garde standards. The exhibition title IN SERIEN describes the initial motivation that led to the founding of the company and also gave it its name: an exploration of formally minimalist products and a contemporary aesthetic inspired by mass production, which, through the use of new technologies, was intended to stand out from the expressive one-off pieces of the 1980s.
The retrospective impressively demonstrated how consistently this fundamental approach has been reinterpreted time and again, both formally and technologically, by the designers and their team over four decades. The extensive body of work by Wolf and da Costa illustrates how conceptual continuity, combined with vibrant creativity, can evolve into a distinctive style that remains instantly recognisable even as technologies change. The creators devised an exhibition concept whose straightforwardness reflected the design, development and history of the company.
The motif of delicate objects in space, which underpins the product design of serien.lighting, has been translated on a large scale in the exhibition concept. Designers Wolf and da Costa have followed the strict geometry of Richard Meier’s museum architecture, presenting the anniversary exhibition as a modular grid within the space, in which all designs are showcased on an equal footing.
Just as in individual shop windows, the early luminaires were showcased alongside the latest models. Special designs, such as those for synagogues and libraries, were also on display, along with books, catalogues and posters spanning 40 years of the company’s history. In addition, projections offered a retrospective look at the company’s history and insights into outstanding projects where luminaires from serien.lighting provide excellent lighting.
It took our team 120 working hours to dismantle the more than 100 lights and objects in our almost 300m² exhibition, IN SERIEN: 52 displays and 4 showcases from our exhibition system were dismantled, broken down into their component parts, and almost 1,000 metres of aluminium profiles, 120 square metres of lightweight panels, over 1,600 screws and 750 metres of electrical cable were carefully packed away. They are now in storage, awaiting their next exhibition.
