The challenge was to achieve background lighting for something that was going to hang on the wall. Similar to what a TV manufacturer does too. Light and colour create moods and shouldn’t be neglected in your living space. The corners bothered me on a rectangular cabinet with RGB LEDs behind it. The shape cut across the reflection. So I needed a round cabinet and I experimented with several corpus sizes and diameters.

Just looking at the simple prototype, the emotional effect of the later product was clear to see. Well, of course, the round shape is not new, but we seem to have forgotten that many emotionally significant objects have this shape. Whether it’s a full moon, wedding ring, the pupil of the eye, clocks, CDs and LPs or simply a ball, we human beings react in a positive way to the circle and the globe. They draw us to them and let us connect experiences. Round mirrors on the wall, round lamps and round windows are all familiar, but a cabinet is unusual. A picture that quickly came to mind was the sunset with its round disc over the horizon. You can re-enact this picture everywhere with a round wall cabinet.

Added to the shape, you now had the lighting radiating out in all directions and surrounding the cabinet like a corona. Changing colours add a dimension of time as the ensemble is continuously changing. So what was it now, a piece of furniture or a lighting object?

In order to make it a piece of furniture, it was important to give the design a purpose. And in spite of the shape, it was possible to create a container that could hold objects within the chosen proportions. And even perhaps give these a better framework than other shapes.

It was interesting to note that it was mostly women who responded to the cabinet spontaneously at the Cologne Furniture Fair that has just come to an end.

About the author:

Michael Rottmar is an electrical engineering technician and designer. He has worked for international companies in marketing and sales among other areas for many years. Here, his enthusiasm for the emotional components of a product also grew. In 2008, Michael realised his ambition to put his ideas into practice and founded his own company, miroco. The interplay of shape, colour and light became a passion, and the first product to come out of this is the round wall cabinet called rotondo. www.miroco.com