Totem Floor Lamp by Nikita Garrido

With vertical concrete bases assembled from clean, geometric shapes and thoughtful palettes, Nikita Garrido’s lighting pieces are dramatic, elegant, and sculptural.

Nikita Garrido was born in Valence in the south of France in 1995. Self-taught in crafts and design, she moved to Paris in 2016, when the idea for her Concreto Tótem lamps originated. Her eponymous studio, which is based between Paris and Marseille, was established in 2017, and her practice includes the design and hand-made production of these lighting objects, as well as drawings and paintings that demonstrate her keen enthusiasm for stark lines and elegantly balanced geometries.

Garrido’s lamp designs beautifully fuse the cleanly defined edges of cast concrete, and the soft diffusion of light through the surmounted glass top, that contains the bulb. Each of these glass pieces is made from old flasks, bestowing the top-most part of the object with unique decorative value. Attention is also paid to the expressive potential of color; the concrete bases are produced in coral pink, sky blue, or charcoal grey, while the glass encasings may be orange, green or blue. Though the solid verticality of the lamp bases are reminiscent of the towering heft of classical sculpture, these thoughtful color selections imbue them with a soft, painterly quality, perhaps challenging the viewer’s expectations surrounding the use and appearance of concrete. The lamp-base “totems” are formed from simple shapes. Hemispheres, spheres, and a frustum (playfully redolent of an upturned lampshade) generate the appearance of a stacked column. A knowing and humorous dynamism results from the illusion of a “balancing act” conveyed by this playful arrangement, though in reality, these varying shapes are molded in one piece.

Nikita Garrido participated in 2017 Paris Design Week as part of now! le Off, where her Concreto Tótem project–fabricated with the assistance of designer and fellow concrete enthusiast Patrick Paris–was presented. Garrido’s work has appeared in The Margin Magazine and the online concept store Cool Machine, and she is currently collaborating with ceramicist Cassandre Bouilly for forthcoming projects. Two of Garrido’s Concreto Tótem pieces are currently on display at the gallery La Marchande des 4 Saisons in Arles, in the south of France, as part of their autumn/winter 2018–19 show.