Heritage innovation is one of the most widespread trends in contemporary design, and in particular in Made in Italy design, where the relationship between history and modernity has never really been conflictual, but the result of dialogue and continuity. Innovating patrimony, working on the archive, does not only mean preserving and re-proposing what has been, but adapting it to contemporary technologies, needs and sensibilities.

This horizon of thought undoubtedly belongs to iGuzzini, which since 2022 has been working on the Italian Echoes project, through which it proposes re-editions of iconic pieces designed in the 1960s and 1970s. The company is rediscovering its archive, giving it a contemporary look with more sustainable light sources and innovative materials. iGuzzini wants to reinterpret an effervescent period, in which there was a great desire to do and all the research was basically oriented towards innovation. Luigi Massoni, who worked as the company's art director, brought in many designers, most notably Gio Ponti. All these factors formed a cultural approach and made a great leap forward.

The programme of editions began with the Polsino table lamp designed by Gio Ponti, to which were added the Zurigo hanging lamp by Luigi Massoni, Nitia by Rodolfo Bonetto and Sorella by Harvey. The latest arrival – presented at the Salone del Mobile 2023, in the spaces of Euroluce – is the Clan lamp, dated 1968 and signed by Harvey.

The Clan lamp perfectly reflects the experimental climate of the Golden Age of design, combining formal and typological tradition with the modernity of industrial materials. The product enhances the possibilities of plastic materials, which can be blown as glass, and of thermoforming, which can create spherical shapes with varying degrees of transparency. For the table version of Clan, iGuzzini took an ironic and sustainable route beforehand: the base is an ordinary plastic tube to which a decorative cut-out has been added. iGuzzini now reissues the complete family: floor lamp, suspension lamp and table lamp. The 2023 re-edition respects the original colours: white, cream, orange. Optics and materials have been renewed to make the lamp visually more comfortable and sustainable in all its parts.

Renewed through the use of sustainable materials light sources, this design milestone is in total harmony with our times, recognising the eternal value of the aesthetic translation of a technical function, as Ponti liked to define it.