Frank Buchwald Machine Lights

Frank Buchwald’s machine lights exist in a realm beyond design trends or popular fashion. They have an unmistakeable identity, uncompromising, with an impeccable quality of artistic creation. Their authoritative perfection places them amongst the classics of sculptural design.

To classify Buchwald’s machine lights as ‘conventional lighting design’ would be to do them a great injustice. Although the lights remind one of the industrial machine design of the 20th century, contrary to ‘normal’ lights, where function determines design, Buchwald’s works neither limit nor subordinate themselves to the mere task of producing light. Instead, they reinterpret the task in a fundamentally unique and exemplary way. Transcending the boundaries of classic design, and escaping the constraints of the ‘merely functional’, his works explore new and as yet unseen aspects of the essence of both light and machine.

"Working on the machine lights was for me a guarantor and a constantly new examination of something hidden that interweaves and shapes the sphere of the machine like a secret principle. ..."

Frank Buchwald Designer and manufacturer of furniture, lights, and objects. 
Stations Study of design at the University of the Arts Berlin.
Painter and freelance illustrator.
Since 1998 studio in Berlin.
Design of furniture and lights.

Since 2002: work on "Machine Lights".

"For me, the idea of the machine lights developed over many years of dealing with the nature of modern technology, especially the mechanical artifacts of the industrial age. It is associated for me with the realization that an independent reality which withdraws itself from human access, exists behind the manifest appearances of mechanical objects and secretly determines the world of the machines. ...

A common mistake of our time is the belief that machines are solely products and artifacts of human planning, design, and manufacture. Working on the machine lights was for me a guarantor and a constantly new examination of something hidden that interweaves and shapes the sphere of the machine like a secret principle. ...

The attentive observer will have not failed to notice that the machine lights also live from source other than from the hand of man. Although I have worked for over ten years on the machine lights, I do not really regard them as my own work. They are beings with an own nature.

The individual models were not designed spontaneously in a moment of inspiration. It was rather a long groping for a hard to comprehend meaningful form. ... It took a long time until the moment was reached in which I could say that the designs were moving in the right direction. And it was a long path until first prototypes were ready about which I could say: yes, now it is right. ...

I have the feeling that the machine lights, the way they have now been made, come very close to what they portray. They have reached the right level of completeness and perfection. ..."

• Robb Report, 12/2023, USA
• Financial Times, 06/19, Magazine "How to spend it"
• Robb Report, 08/2017, Singapore
• Wallpaper* Magazine, 05/15, UK
• DAMn° Magazine, 05/15, Belgium
• Robb Report, 04/15, USA
• GQ-Magazine Germany, 02/2015
• ATTITUDE Interior Design Magazine, 01/15, Portugal
• Professional Lighting Design, 01/02 2015, China
• AD Magazine Architectural Digest,10/14, Germany
• Vintagexplorer, 05/14, UK
• The Heritage Post, 04/13, Germany
• Plaza Watch, 04/13
• GQ Magazine, 05/13, Germany
• WIRED, 02/13, UK
• PALACE Magazine Asia, Issue 04/12, Singapore
• B–1 Magazine, 10/11, Thailand
• LUX. Lamps and Lights! Gestalten Verlag 2011, Germany
• House of the Purple, Seoul, Korea
• The Art of Victorian Futurism, Korero Books 2011, UK
• Antipasto Lifestyle Magazine 02/2011, Hong Kong
• Friends of Bentley, 2011, Germany
• Mens Journal, 04/10, USA
• MAP Magazine, 03/10, Australia
• HOME CONCEPTS Magazine, 12/09, Singapore
• NUVO Magazine, Winter Issue 2009, Canada
• MARU, Interior Design, 12/09, Korea
• Lumdecor Magazine, 5/09, Russia
• PIG MAG, Italy 09
• Residential Lighting Magazine, 10/08, USA
• ELLE Decoration, 4/08, Germany
• Style, 10/07, Switzerland
• Financial Times Germany, 10/06, Magazine "How to spend it"
• GQ Magazine, 3/06, Germany
• AD Magazine Architectural Digest,10/05, Issue Best of Germany

STUDIO
Boppstr.5
D-10967 Berlin/Kreuzberg
3.Hof, 3.OG (3rd backyard/3rd floor)

OFFICE
Schlossstr.61
D-14059 Berlin (Cha)
Germany
Phone: +49-(0)30 - 34 70 48 02
Fax: +49-(0)30 - 34 70 48 01
Mobile: +49-(0)178 - 627 31 95


info(at)frankbuchwald.com