At the Architectural Digest Design Show in New York, I met up with design guru Todd Bracher to talk about his collaboration with Humanscale and his installation for DIFFA Dining by Design. Bracher is an industrial designer and product designer. Humanscale designs and manufactures ergonomic products that improve health and comfort at work.
Bracher often lends his skills to create various design show installations. At the Architectural Digest Design Show, he created a dining vignette for DIFFA’s Dining by Design, an event that raises money to fight HIV/AIDS and to raise awareness.
“This is a project for Humanscale, a design studio that is all about the transparency, honesty and sustainability in their products. We wanted to create a greenhouse installation that implies what the architecture of a greenhouse structure looks like but calls on the imagination to complete the scenario. This idea of having a warm table to sit at and enjoy conversation and a meal. We have chairs that I designed for Humanscale ergonomics that allow you to sit for a long time enjoy yourself. I designed the lighting above, called the Vessel fixture, also by Humanscale. We are using the physics of light to control and manage light from an LED that produces a magical illusion effect that looks like an empty glass of water with light appearing on the surface of the table,” explains Bracher.
Bracher designed the vessel lamp with an LED embedded into an optical crystal that produces a beautiful even dispersion of light. The light engine is hidden, which is quite an engineering feat to do. “The real reason behind it, is that it provides an incredibly even throw of light on the surface and no glare to the eye,” explains Bracher.
The LED light source is concealed above a high-quality quartz cylinder. Light is refracted downward through a finely tuned, solid body and appears as though it is emanating from an unseen origin. This effect, called total internal reflection, provides balanced, high-performance surface illumination.
Bracher teamed up with Humanscale to create the Trea multipurpose chair, which mimics the instinctive recline of the human body without resorting to manual controls.
“I designed the Trea chair so that the chair back actually reclines when you sit in it and adjusts to any size person seated in it. Most chairs you sit in are either beautiful or comfortable but we wanted to make a beautifully comfortable chair,” says Bracher.
For the latest design finds and trends, subscribe to The Design Tourist Channel so you don’t miss a single episode of my design travels and as always, subscribe to the blog for interviews with tastemakers and trendsetters in art, architecture and design.
