WHow do you illuminate a round room that only seems to have windows instead of walls and whose ceilings are up to 15 meters high? Not an easy task, as designer Stefan Diez and his team found out. Until now, chains of lights hung from above and formed a large circle above the heads of the guests in the Frankfurt restaurant, which now had to be used in a new way. The many bulbs were already giving off light, but that simply scattered into the room, leaving corners and entire areas on the floor in the dark. That was to change in October on the occasion of the international lighting fair “Light + Building”, which was exceptionally taking place as a special edition this fall in the Schirn café.
The restaurant “Badias Kitchen”, part of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt’s old town, has been managed by Badia Ouahi since 2015. She has had an amazing career: Born in Höchst as the daughter of guest workers, she grew up with her grandparents in Morocco in the 1980s. She came back at the age of 15, completed an apprenticeship as an office clerk after graduating from secondary school, and then studied education at the University of Applied Sciences. She also cooked on the side, opened her first restaurant and, as a mother of three children, took over the Schirn-Café seven years ago, which she also had refurbished at the time. However, she was never completely satisfied with the lighting, so she took the risk of having the glass rondel equipped with lights and lighting systems designed by Stefan Diez.
Here, Diez uses his Plusminus (Vibia) lighting system, a conductive textile strip to which lamps can be easily attached.
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Image: Ingmar Kurth
Expropriated in the GDR
The Munich designer and his colleague Arthur Desmet, who is largely responsible for the project, were able to draw on two designs by Diez Office: the Ayno lamp, designed for the Hamburg company Midgard, and the Plusminus lighting system, which was created in cooperation with the Spanish lighting brand Vibia is. Plusminus is based on a textile band into which electricity is woven in the form of copper wires. Various lights can be attached to it as easily as with a belt buckle. There are hardly any limits to the system, the bands can be stretched anywhere in the room and can also hang from high ceilings. The current flows without penetrating the band when you touch it.
In “Badias”, Diez and Desmet use cone-shaped lampshades that emit light on five levels. The Ayno, also in its new version as a wall lamp, is also attached to Plusminus – also via the click-and-connect function. The filigree design, which consists of a flexible, thin fiberglass rod with a shade attached to the end, can be tilted using two infinitely adjustable rings, directing the light in this way. The screen made of ABS-PC, a mixture of the recycled polymers acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and polycarbonate, can also be moved in almost all directions.
A small Ayno stands on the tables of the restaurant, for a more intimate lighting. It has long been in the program of the Midgard lighting manufacturer, which was revived by David Einsiedler and his wife Joke Rasch in 2015 and was founded in 1919 by the engineer Curt Fischer in Auma, Thuringia. Back then, Fischer had developed the first steerable electric lamp and applied for a patent. The success of his company was also based on this, although it was expropriated in 1972 in the GDR, in the meantime managed by his son Wolfgang.
With Plusminus, the Vibia company, founded in Barcelona in 1987, offers a lighting concept with many possibilities. The conductive textile tape, which is available in different colours, can be cut to any size. Stefan Diez has designed a whole repertoire of lights and shades. Balls, cones, spotlights or rails can be used in any room, no matter how private or public, how small or large it is. Diez speaks of the “idea of the modular system”, which he also wanted to make visible in the newly illuminated “Badias”. In addition to the room lighting, the long-distance effect of his lighting system was also important to him: he and his team wanted to make the glass body of the café, which is located in the old town, which was rebuilt by 2017 and now a tourist magnet, visible from afar.
