The German company’s multi-fixture solution Team gives users the spatial tools they need to be in a healthy light environment while at work.
By teams, for teams. This is the idea behind Tobias Grau’s latest collection Team, a holistic lighting solution which addresses the need for flexibility and adaptability in today’s workspaces – whether at home or the office. Five typologies of desk, standing and suspended lamps are equipped with of state-of-the-art advanced motion, light, and noise sensors to make this possible. Team's BEAM-LENS technology adds to these capabilities premium glare reduction and light distribution, as well as impressive colour rendering.
Tobias Grau paid a lot of attention to the different types of needs required by different types of workspaces and most importantly, different types of workers. Perhaps most timely of the set is Team Home, a fixture that the company calls the ‘first professional home office lamp’. The luminaire can easily be attached by clamp to any surface while Integrated Tunable White technology gives a user the ability to programme their desired light setting at will, depending on the time of day. Team One is also geared toward the individual, albeit the hot-desker. Adaptive to height-adjustable desks, its sensors automatically regulate light to ambient brightness based on the area’s occupation.
The designers understood that many workers today are likely to be experiencing a lot of movement from the office to home and back, and wanted to respond to that. ‘All unfixed Team models are so compact that you can carry them easily around the interior,’ says Timon Grau, who together with Melchior Grau is responsible for the brand’s creative direction. ‘Furthermore, the user interface is so intuitive that you can rearrange work settings frequently.’
So, where does Team fit into collaborative work in shared spaces? The right-angled Team Two distributes light across an entire desk, carving out a nook for focused workflow between double workstations. For those working in a group of four, there’s its counterpart Team Four, a T-form structure which provides maximum illumination without taking up too much space. Team Suspension – suspended variations – service larger communal places. This model is suited for co-working or studio tables, lobbies, corridors and breakout areas, but could also be installed over large meeting and conference tables, as well as in foyers, canteens, and social spaces.
Where home-office lights often fall short on ‘the light output and smart sensor control’ boasted by office lamps, the latter miss out on ‘colour rendering and design quality’. ‘Team brings these qualities together,’ he believes. After all, there was no time like the present to respond to this gap in the market: ‘It feels like the pandemic created more overall awareness and openness to new models of collaboration,’ as Melchior Grau puts it. ‘This global disruption will also unleash many innovative forces, as it pushed everybody to think and act differently. More people can now relate to the importance of dynamic workspaces and professional home office setups.'
