Le Corbusier's Borne Béton designed in 1952, now on production by NEMO

Borne Béton is a concrete lamp that was designed by Le Corbusier in 1952 for the Projet Unité d’Habitation de Marseille (Housing Unit) and for the Bhakra Dam and Sukhna Dam in India. On production by NEMO, the light is now available for both indoor and outdoor use in two sizes: a large floor lamp model and a small table lamp model. Both models use LEDs.

After revolutionising the approach to natural light in architecture with the horizontal window and inventing the renowned brise soleil or sunshade, Le Corbusier designed lighting fixtures immediately following the war. These customised projects, notably for the Unité d’Habitation de Marseille, are available today thanks to a challenging industrial production process undertaken by NEMO to appreciate the play of volumes with light, even when artificial, one of Le Corbusier's continuing concerns.

The Italian design firm has become established as a simple contemporary interpreter of Le Corbusier luminaires designed as definitive projects, produced exclusively for the architectures for which they were designed. The archives that have been drawn and photographed have become the precious basis to revive them and make them accessible to everyone.

“The work between NEMO and the Fondation Le Corbusier was to fine-tune a benchmark of details, finishes and versions, without ever altering the essence of these products, without ever lapsing into nostalgia or reviving retro, without ever changing their unique Spartan and sophisticated nature,” summarises NEMO's CEO Federico Palazzari.

Borne Béton (1952) by Le Corbusier

Small model: Height 31 cm, width 30 cm
Large model: Height 50 cm, width 50 cm

Nemo has reissued great masters like Le Corbusier, Vico Magistretti, Franco Albini, Charlotte Perriand and Kazuhide Takahama for less than 15 years, introducing new classics like the small MR Light by Javier Mariscal and designing new systems, new technical solutions, making the cutting-edge Italian firm one to follow. The modular Spigolo range that can be endlessly rebuilt by Studiocharlie and In the Wind by Arihiro Miyake with its torsion system specially developed by Nemo enabling 360° LED lighting illustrate a game-changing industrial philosophy based on the best possible complicity between production and style.

Source: Nemo

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