Behind the Feature: A WOW!house Lighting Piece for the Lalique Home Bar by Elicyon

From completed room to workshop development

At WOW!house, visitors are presented with fully realised showcase rooms. Materials, lighting, furniture and detailing are set together with a level of finish that makes the development process easy to miss.

Behind those presented spaces sits a longer chain of conversations, sketches, tests and workshop decisions. For a bespoke lighting feature, the visible result is often only the final stage of a much more technical process.

Iberian Lighting first contributed to WOW!house last year through our work with Pirajean Lees and Dedar Fabrics. Our 2026 collaboration with Elicyon and Lalique gave us the opportunity to explore that process again, this time within a room already described as a masterclass in surface design.

The finished feature brought illuminated fabric forms together with a Lalique glass element. At first glance, the composition appears relatively simple: stacked forms, softened transitions, gentle movement and a continuous flow from one material into the next.

Achieving that apparent simplicity required a detailed development process. The aim was not simply to produce a fitting that matched a drawing. It was to preserve the softness, proportion and visual continuity of the original concept while making the piece structurally sound, serviceable and properly illuminated.

Beginning with visual intent

The initial concept established many of the fixed points from the outset.

The shapes, proportions, arrangement and fabric choices had already been defined and became anchors throughout development.

The challenge was not reproducing geometry. It was preserving the qualities that sat behind it.

Although the fitting incorporated changing angles and shifting forms, there was still a softness to the overall composition. There was a flow between each section that felt important to retain.

One of the earliest discussions explored whether the stacked fabric forms could become larger continuous sections rather than separate shade elements. While technically possible, this would have introduced vertical trimming and seams that felt visually intrusive.

This is why early specification information matters so much on complex bespoke lighting projects.

Holding the transition between fabric and glass

Attention shifted toward another question instead.

How do you separate components without allowing the fitting to appear separated?

The transitions between fabric and Lalique glass became particularly important.

Conventional approaches would likely have introduced visible connector pieces, collars or exposed support elements between sections. Those details would have simplified assembly, but there was a visual hardness to them that felt at odds with the wider room language.

The overall scheme relied heavily on softened forms and rounded transitions. Introducing exposed metal elements risked interrupting the movement from illuminated fabric into frosted glass and back into fabric again.

The intention became to create something that felt less assembled and more continuous.

Rather than appearing mechanically clamped between components, we wanted the Lalique element to feel held within the body of the piece itself.

Making the light disappear

Lighting became a major consideration very early in the process, particularly within the Lalique glass section.

The challenge was not simply illuminating the glass. It was creating a consistent glow that felt integrated into the piece itself.

There was always potential for the light source to become visible rather than the material.

Initial testing quickly established that continuous LED would need to run through the length of the fitting, however the supplied LED strip introduced problems immediately. Within the relatively tight dimensions of the glass section the profile was too large and began creating visible shadow lines.

Testing also showed that three lines of light remained insufficient. Unevenness was still visible and the illumination retained directional characteristics.

The LED lighting eventually moved to four continuous lines.

That solved one issue and introduced several more.

Secondary diffusion became necessary within the glass itself, however placing the diffuser directly against the internal face altered the appearance of the Lalique element. Rather than reading as illuminated frosted glass, the material began to lose some of its depth.

Introducing a controlled gap restored this quality. The fabric sections then introduced another discovery.

As the first shades were assembled and illuminated, narrower areas of the geometry began revealing the LED lines beneath. Internal diffusion therefore became necessary within the shades as well.

Colour also became important. The illuminated tone within the glass needed to visually match the light within the fabric sections so that the piece felt coherent.

The challenge had now shifted from producing light to packaging everything within the 125 mm transition points between the shades.

Engineering around visual requirements

This is where manufacturing for design studios becomes a practical process rather than a descriptive term.

The internal structure ultimately developed around a thick-walled aluminium tube running through the centre of the fitting.

Four grooves were machined into the tube to locate the LED strips while simultaneously using the aluminium as a heat sink.

Continuous line, low wattage LED was selected to reduce visible spotting and minimise heat build-up.

From there, additional components developed around the central spine.

Machined fixing plates were designed to pass through the tube and lighting arrangement while safely supporting the Lalique glass and locking into the aluminium structure.

Laser cut plates and tabs then created fixing locations between shade elements, controlled spacing and provided mounting points for internal diffuser components.

Much of this work disappears once assembled. This was always the intention.

The most successful outcome for this type of project is often that nobody notices the engineering at all.

When the prototype becomes the piece

Unlike repeat production work, projects such as this rarely move through a straightforward sequence from approved drawing to finished manufacture.

In many cases the prototype effectively becomes the final piece.

 

One adjustment creates another requirement. Changes to lighting affect available space. Structural decisions influence visual softness. Material behaviour only becomes fully understood once physical components begin interacting with one another.

That type of development can be difficult to accommodate within many commercial programmes where time, cost and risk naturally favour proven approaches.

Showcase projects can create a different environment.

For us, this became an opportunity not simply to manufacture a completed fitting but to investigate how far the development process could be taken.

Some of the solutions developed for this project may remain unique to this installation.

Others may eventually find their way into future work.

The finished feature is the visible outcome, but much of the value generated by projects such as these often sits in the parts that remain unseen.

What this kind of project teaches us

For design studios, this is often where a specialist workshop brings the most value. The visible object matters, but so does the judgement behind it: how light behaves through material, where structure can be hidden, how components meet and which details need to be developed physically rather than assumed from a drawing.

Projects such as WOW!house allow that process to be seen more clearly. They remind us that bespoke lighting is not only a question of shape or finish. It is a collaboration between design intent, material behaviour, engineering and making.

Lalique Home Bar by Elicyon was designed by Elicyon, with Lalique as the main supplier. Iberian Lighting contributed as a specialist lighting supplier, developing and manufacturing the bespoke illuminated feature discussed in this article.