Since 1997, Belgian designer Hind Rabii has been crafting conceptual lighting designs alongside her business partner and husband, Michel Orban. The pair is a perfect fit, and each has a unique, yet equally important, role: “For me, I think design and beauty. For my husband, who is also an industrial engineer, he thinks of the technical first,” explains Rabii. “Then, we try to find a harmony.”
The design duo also has a go-to process. First, an idea will be drawn out in order to imagine the form. Next, a 3D illustration on the computer is rendered in order to work out the details. A prototype is made, and once perfected, materials, colours and moulds are selected and ordered. “When all is ready,” she concludes, “we make the lamp.”
Rabii cites nature as her ultimate source of inspiration—“the diversity of nature has no limits for inspiration,” she says. The designer’s approach to her trade is effortlessly organic, and she asserts that her priority as a designer is to move beyond the technical, to what she deems as the essential quality of a product: its ability to evoke emotion from a buyer. The feeling we get from reminiscing about fond, childhood memories—moments of comfort—is what she aims to elicit with her handcrafted creations.
For more information, visit her website here.