The international Light + Building trade fair for lighting and building technology is currently taking place in Frankfurt am Main. Time for a brief report on the main innovations in the field of technical and decorative lighting.
It can be even more compact! This is probably the best way to summarize the development direction of most manufacturers. Anyone who thought that the advances in LED technology had surely been exhausted can be proven wrong in Frankfurt. Almost everywhere you look, you can see a clear development towards even more efficient technology, even slimmer housings and even more compact luminaires.
The technology is now so advanced that the freedom of design is clearly no longer limited by the lighting technology components. An attractive product therefore depends more than ever on a good idea, a clear application concept and perfect implementation. The search for a new form is essential in order to be able to assert oneself on the market, bringing the idea behind a luminaire to the fore.
Representative of the fusion of state-of-the-art technology and an imaginative design idea is a luminaire in the form of a wafer-thin and perfectly shaped soap bubble, which was surprisingly taken up by several suppliers and developed into a product solution. With the „Stellar Nebular“ luminaire from the architecture and design studio BIG, the manufacturer Artemide is presenting a very well-made solution at the trade fair, in which every single luminaire is given an individual shape in the handcrafted manufacturing process, thus ensuring maximum individuality.
Sophisticated OLED technology, on the other hand, produces ultra-thin surface luminaires whose housing covers are now only a few millimetres thick. This technology enables new interesting design ideas and very fine shapes. As seen, for example, in the beautiful floor lamps from Finnish manufacturer Tunto Oy.
With „After 8“, Molto Luce presents an extremely thin, almost two-dimensional pendant luminaire that impresses with its very high-quality workmanship and clean current routing through thin steel cables.
It is also noticeable that manufacturers are currently experimenting more with the shapes and patterns of traditional glass production, with the actual light source receding into the background or becoming a flowing, integrated component of an expressive light sculpture.
Zumtobel is experimenting with bold surface structures and materials in the highly modular „Izura“ linear pendant luminaire, which wraps itself around the luminaire as a delicate shell and thus combines numerous customization options with circular design.
The range of ideas extends to the point where luminaires become purely decorative furnishing objects and no longer produce light that can be used for functional reasons. In the attractively designed special area „Light + Building Trends“ in Hall 3.1, three small pavilions will be presenting ideas worth seeing in a beautifully designed area under the three trend themes Welcome Tomorrow, Embrace Simplicity and Create Uniqueness.

From a design point of view, the sustainable stand concepts of some manufacturers such as Erco and XAL are definitely worth mentioning, where existing and reusable building elements are used for stand construction and furniture in an uncompromising way that has never been seen before. The result is not only original, but is also very advantageous in other dimensions, as it leads to significantly less material transportation, which in turn saves CO₂ and costs, as well as significantly shorter set-up and dismantling times, and thus to significant overall cost savings for exhibitors.
„Be electrified“ is a fitting motto for this year’s Light & Building. In view of this industry show, there should be no worries about European manufacturers, at least in terms of their ability to innovate!