Koho by Mika Tolvanen

Finnish designer Mika Tolvanen brings a rechargeable, outdoor, portable LED lamp named Koho to Euroluce 2013 for FontanaArte.

 

When summer comes to the countryside so do the fireflies, keeping us company with their luminous, discreet and timely presence. As they dance in the air, they help our eyes distinguish solids and depths in the dark of warm summer nights.

In a sense, Koho is like an oversized firefly. Inside his Helsinki studio, Mika Tolvanen (1975) did not have fireflies in mind when he designed Koho — the Finnish word for "fishing float" —, but the concept of a lightweight mobile object dancing on the water’s surface also features in the piece's name.

 

Mika Tolvanen
Koho di Mika Tolvanen per FontanaArte è stata presentata a Euroluce 2013

Koho is a small, irregularly shaped cylinder, softly rounded, with no sharp corners. Its simple, little-connoted appearance makes it the perfect light receptacle. Its lid comes in three colours — yellow, grey and blue — and contains the light source, a 3-Watt LED card. The polyethylene body has vertical grooves and holds the light source, and the lamp can be placed on either its body or lid.

Koho is switched on by simply skimming your hand across the touch device on the lid. When on, the lamp has an autonomy of approximately seven hours, after which it flashes to signal the need to recharge it. If the lamp is not recharged, the driver card in the lid cuts off the power supply to prevent the battery running down completely.
 
Practical, portable and rechargeable, Koho is the perfect travel companion on warm summer nights — when there are no fireflies around!

 

 

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