18 Sep Designer Lighting in Sydney | Gineico x Bang & Olufsen
Authentic design, quality and history
Gineico Lighting has introduced a curated collection of FontanaArte and Venicem to the Bang & Olufsen flagship showroom in Double Bay — five Italian pieces, installed within a working interior and open to view seven days a week.
Light and sound are invisible until they change the way a room feels. Both shape atmosphere, sharpen attention, soften architecture and give an interior its emotional register. It is this shared territory that makes the collaboration feel less like a meeting of brands than a conversation between disciplines. Here, exceptional Italian light sits alongside some of the world’s most recognisable Danish audio design, where sound, material and form are considered together as part of the architecture of everyday life.
A meeting of design worlds
Founded in Denmark in 1925, Bang & Olufsen has spent a century exploring the relationship between sound, craftsmanship and design. The brand continues to develop its products in Denmark, with an emphasis on material integrity, longevity and the idea that technology should be conceived as part of the experience of an interior.
Its Double Bay flagship is particularly suited to that philosophy. Located within the Cosmopolitan Centre, the showroom was conceived as a sensory environment, pairing Bang & Olufsen’s technology with a restrained Scandinavian material palette.
At Gineico, luxury lighting has never simply been about decoration. The pieces that endure are those with an intelligence behind them: proportion, material, craftsmanship and an understanding of the way light behaves once it enters a room. Bang & Olufsen approaches sound with a similarly exacting eye — performance matters, but so does the object itself and the way it inhabits a space. It makes Double Bay a natural home for Gineico, and creates an environment where designer lighting in Sydney can be considered alongside sound, furniture, finishes and technology as part of a complete interior.
FontanaArte and Venicem: two chapters of Italian design
The first installation brings together two Italian houses with very different histories but a shared respect for material and form.
FontanaArte was born in Milan in 1932 through the work of figures including Gio Ponti and Pietro Chiesa, beginning a relationship between glass, architecture and light that would become central to the company’s identity. Venicem represents a younger chapter: founded by Massimo Tonetto and Melissa Lunardi in 2013, the studio explores the dialogue between primary forms, crafted surfaces and materials, influenced by the artisanal traditions surrounding Venice.
Together they introduce another layer to the showroom. Light with presence.
The collection at Bang & Olufsen Double Bay
The first Gineico edit introduces five pieces, each offering a different interpretation of decorative light. The collection will continue to evolve and expand over time.
Re by FontanaArte: the King enters the room
Designed by Milanese artist Bobo Piccoli in 1968, Re takes both its name and its attitude from the King on a chessboard.
Together with Regina, Re was conceived as a luminous sculpture. FontanaArte describes the designs as sequences of mouth-blown opal glass forms with a pronounced scenographic presence.
Re is the vertical figure of the pair.
Spheres, cylinders and rings rise into a silhouette that feels at once graphic and strangely human, possessing enough presence to establish its own territory within an interior.
Unlit, its opalescent form reads almost as sculpture.
Illuminated, those volumes become a sequence of diffused light.
Re and Regina were re-editioned in 2020, returning Bobo Piccoli’s remarkable 1968 designs to a contemporary interior landscape.
For anyone exploring Italian lighting in Sydney, Re is a reminder that a lamp can do considerably more than complete a scheme.
It can create the context around it.
Regina by FontanaArte: the Queen in repose
If Re is upright and commanding, Regina is horizontal, poised and composed.
Also conceived by Bobo Piccoli in 1968, Regina shares Re’s chess-inspired visual language, with opal glass elements assembled into its distinctive sculptural profile.
The two designs can be placed together as a deliberate pair or positioned separately within the same interior, connected through a common rhythm of shape and light.
Their dimmable quality changes the expression again.
At higher intensity, the form possesses energy and clarity.
Lowered, it becomes softer, almost abstract, turning illumination into atmosphere.
This ability to alter the emotional register of a room is central to the most compelling luxury lighting in Sydney.
Light is not simply present.
It is calibrated.
Optical Floor by Venicem: brass, glass and vertical light
Optical Floor distils Venicem’s material language into a slender architectural composition.
A natural burnished brass structure supports a glass trihedron available in amber, smoke grey or clear crystal, emphasising the fitting’s strong sense of verticality.
Light passes through the glass diffuser as a soft linear glow, allowing the geometry and materiality of the fitting to remain the focus.
The pleasure of Optical lies in restraint.
Its materials are luxurious, yet the design never becomes ornamental. Brass, glass and light are allowed to speak clearly.
Venicem uses the same language throughout the wider Optical family, which extends to floor, table, wall and suspension forms.
Within the broader collection of FontanaArte and Venicem, Optical offers a distinctly contemporary expression of Italian craft, particularly suited to clients seeking luxury lighting in Sydney that is refined rather than overt.
Circle Table Portable by Venicem: geometry, made intimate
Circle Table Portable reduces the idea of a lamp to an almost elemental gesture.
Its minimalist circular geometry, compact scale and cordless format give the piece an ease that feels entirely contemporary.
Rather than dominating its surroundings, Circle creates an intimate pool of warm ambient light exactly where it is placed.
That portability offers unusual freedom.
A dining table. A console. A bedside setting. An intimate hospitality interior.
The object can move as the way a space is used changes.
The wider Circle family extends through table, wall, ceiling and floor versions, carrying the same geometric language across an interior. Venicem has also used the portable design within highly considered design environments including Milan’s Molteni&C flagship store.
For designer lighting in Sydney, its appeal is not simply visual.
Circle demonstrates how a beautifully resolved object can become part of the way a space is actually lived in.
Tropico Table by FontanaArte: giving shape to light
Designed by Gabriele and Oscar Buratti, Tropico continues a design exploration centred on what the designers and FontanaArte describe as the “shape of light”.
The project follows the Equatore collection of 2017 and explores how glass and metal can collect, contain and diffuse light within space.
In Tropico Table, marble, glass and metal become part of that choreography.
Light passes through opaline and transparent layers. Carefully considered curves capture reflection. Blown glass softens the source. A mirrored metal element introduces a precise moment of brightness.
The result shifts between solid object and luminous atmosphere.
Among the FontanaArte and Venicem pieces on display, Tropico makes the dialogue between material and illumination particularly explicit.
It is precisely the kind of fitting that demonstrates why Italian lighting in Sydney deserves to be experienced illuminated rather than understood only through an image.
More than a showroom display
The significance of this collaboration is not simply that Gineico lights can now be found at another Sydney address.
It is the context in which they can be experienced.
Bang & Olufsen Double Bay is an immersive environment centred on design-led audio and home technology. Introducing FontanaArte and Venicem into that setting allows lighting to enter the same conversation.
Where can I see Gineico designer lighting in Sydney?
The Gineico Lighting collection can now be experienced at Bang & Olufsen Double Bay, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Bang & Olufsen Double Bay
Cosmopolitan Centre, Shop 1–5
2/22 Knox Street
Double Bay NSW 2028
Open seven days a week, 10am–5pm.
