Some designs begin with a sketch. Others begin with a problem that needs solving. Flamingo began with something quite different — another piece of furniture entirely.
There was no original brief to design a floor lamp. There wasn’t even an idea to create something inspired by a flamingo.
Instead, Flamingo evolved.
One thought led to another. A practical idea became a prototype. A comment in the workshop changed the way we looked at what was sitting in front of us. Proportions changed, functions moved, pieces disappeared and new ones arrived.
Eventually, an entirely new object emerged.
That process — allowing a design to develop rather than forcing it towards a predetermined outcome — became as important to Flamingo as the finished lamp itself.
And perhaps that’s why the final piece feels the way it does.
It wasn’t styled to look like a flamingo.
It actually started with Symbiont
The story begins with Symbiont, our modular furniture system designed through Formacy by Colin Whitehead and Manuel Canestrini.
As we continued developing Symbiont, we began looking at what else the system could become.
One direction was to separate elements of the system and create individual side tables. Different sizes could serve different purposes, and an optional handle could make a table easy to pick up and reposition — beside a sofa when you needed it, or pulled closer when you wanted somewhere for a drink, book or laptop.
It was while looking at that handle that another thought occurred.
What if the handle kept going?
And what if, instead of simply being something used to move the table, it became the support for a light?
Suddenly the side table could do something else entirely.
It could become a side table and floor lamp in one.
It was a relatively simple thought.
What followed wasn’t quite so simple.
From an idea to something we could stand around
One of the advantages of designing furniture alongside a working furniture workshop is that an idea doesn’t have to remain on paper for very long.
We can draw something, talk about it and then make a quick mock-up.
It doesn’t have to be beautiful.
In fact, our early mock-ups often aren’t.
Pieces can be crudely cut and screwed together because, at that stage, that’s not the point. The purpose is to get an idea out of our heads and into three dimensions.
You can walk around it.
Touch it.
Look at it from across the room.
And very quickly discover whether what made perfect sense in a sketch actually makes any sense at all when it’s standing in front of you.
I mentioned the idea of extending the Symbiont table to Manuel and incorporating a light.
His response was essentially: make a mock-up and let’s see.
So I did.
When Manuel came into the workshop and saw it, he stood looking at it for a moment.
Then he said something along the lines of:
“It looks very animal-like.”
We both have a tendency to find animal characteristics in forms occasionally, and after looking at it a little longer he said:
“It looks like a giraffe.”
I stood back.
And laughed.
Because it did.
That seemingly insignificant workshop conversation changed the direction of the entire project.
When the object starts talking back
Once we’d seen the animal-like quality, we couldn’t really unsee it.
So we started playing.
Did the table have to be round?
What would happen if it became oval?
Could changing that single shape give the object more character while also improving its proportions?
We sketched, cut, moved things around and made more mock-ups.
The round table began to stretch into a softer oval form. As it did, the piece started feeling less like a conventional lamp-table combination and more like a creature.
The giraffe comparison began disappearing.
Something more bird-like was emerging.
And somewhere in that process Manuel said:
“Flamingo.”
That was another one of those moments.
We looked at the object again.
Long legs.
A tall, slender body.
A head held above it.
There was something there.
But the piece still had three legs.
And if we were going to follow this idea, perhaps we needed to stop thinking about modifying Symbiont and start thinking about Flamingo as an object in its own right.
That decision changed everything.
What if it stood on one leg?
We went back to the drawing board — and back into the workshop.
If this really was becoming Flamingo, we wanted to capture something of the extraordinary balance and elegance of the bird without literally designing furniture shaped like an animal.
We weren’t interested in creating a novelty.
The reference needed to be subtle.
So we began removing things.
The original table disappeared.
The geometry changed.
We experimented with moving the round element to the bottom and developing a much simpler upright lamp.
We made another quick mock-up.
And it didn’t work.
It looked awkward.
That’s an important part of designing that finished photographs rarely show.
Sometimes you have to physically make the wrong thing before you understand what the right thing needs to be.
But that unsuccessful version also made something else apparent.
The table had actually been useful.
Why remove it?
Why not bring it back?
The moment Flamingo found its leg
My first thought was relatively straightforward: put a round table back into the centre of the upright.
Manuel pushed it further.
Rather than returning to a conventional round surface, we revisited the elongated shape we’d already been exploring.
A pill-like top with D-shaped ends gave us a softer, more refined form.
Then came the important move:
don’t centre it. Cantilever it.
We cut the new table shape, positioned it off the upright and put the mock-up together.
And suddenly we could see it.
The upright visually passed through the table, the surface reached out to one side and the composition appeared to balance around a single slender support.
Flamingo was standing on one leg.
That was probably the moment when the design truly became Flamingo.
Not because we’d added something decorative to make it look like a bird.
Quite the opposite.
We had refined the geometry until the character appeared naturally.
And from there, the question changed from what could this be? to:
How good can we make it?
Making the table move
The cantilevered table gave Flamingo its distinctive silhouette, but it also presented another opportunity.
Why should the table remain fixed?
If it could swivel around the central post, Flamingo could adapt to the person using it.
Beside a sofa, the table could rotate over the seating area and become somewhere to put a book, reading glasses, a remote control or a drink.
Move it away again and the space opens.
That also changed the way we thought about Flamingo.
It wasn’t simply a floor lamp with a shelf attached.
It could perform as a floor lamp, side table and sofa table, while occupying the footprint of a single piece.
That adaptability became fundamental to the design.
The movement wasn’t there simply because we could make something move.
It had a reason.
Refining the stance
Once the overall idea had been resolved, our attention moved to the smaller details.
And with an object this visually simple, small details become enormously important.
The lower section initially felt too heavy.
A flamingo’s leg has an extraordinary delicacy to it, and we wanted to suggest some of that lightness without compromising the structural integrity of the lamp.
So the lower support was tapered.
We continued refining it until the leg appeared to narrow almost to a point, visually lifting the piece from the floor.
Then we looked at the upper section.
It was still square.
Against the newly refined lower leg, it suddenly felt unresolved.
So that changed too.
Angles were introduced and the profile was pared back, allowing the line of the upright to flow towards the lamp head.
Gradually, the object became quieter.
That’s often where refinement happens in furniture design.
Not by continually adding detail.
By knowing what can be taken away.
Then came the cord
Of course, drawing a beautiful line on paper is one thing.
Getting electricity through it is another.
We now had a slender timber structure, a swivelling table and a light at the top.
Somehow, power had to travel through all of that.
And because the table rotated around the upright, simply running a conventional cable down the back wasn’t an elegant solution.
This became one of the more technically challenging parts of Flamingo’s development.
Eventually we decided that rather than treating the electrical cord as something embarrassing that needed to disappear, we would make it part of the design.
We selected a cloth-covered electrical cable, which also gave us the opportunity to introduce colour.
And for Flamingo, red seemed almost inevitable.
Against the natural timber, that small red line gives the lamp an unexpected graphic quality while subtly referencing the colour found in the bird that had inspired its eventual identity.
But making the cord visible didn’t mean simply leaving it hanging.
Its path had to be designed.
Designing the path of a cable
The cable travels internally where it needs to and becomes visible where we wanted it to.
It passes through the upper structure, through the rotating table assembly and then re-emerges into a carefully rebated channel running along the timber leg before finally exiting cleanly at the base.
At the lamp head we encountered another problem.
The depth and curvature required to conceal everything internally began making the top too cumbersome.
It was compromising the very lightness we’d spent so much time creating.
So again, the solution came from changing our attitude towards what needed to be hidden.
We allowed the cord to emerge.
It rises out of the timber, loops visibly around the upper section and then disappears back into the rebate.
Something that began as a technical problem became one of Flamingo’s most recognisable details.
That’s a principle we return to often in design:
if something can’t be successfully hidden, perhaps it shouldn’t be hidden at all.
Sometimes the solution is to celebrate it.
Giving Flamingo a moving head
There was still another opportunity.
If the table could rotate, why couldn’t the light?
We wanted Flamingo to provide more than one type of illumination.
The lamp head was therefore developed so it could swivel and rotate, allowing the light to be directed according to the situation.
Turn it towards a chair or sofa and it becomes a task light for reading.
Change the angle and it provides softer ambient illumination.
Rotate it towards a wall or into a corner and the reflected light creates an entirely different atmosphere.
Functionally, it made sense.
Visually, it did something else.
It gave Flamingo its final piece of character.
Like a bird turning its head, the lamp subtly changes posture as the light moves.
Again, the reference isn’t literal.
You don’t need to see a flamingo when you look at it.
But once you know the story, it’s difficult not to.
Simple doesn’t necessarily mean simple to make
The mechanism required to achieve that movement became another exercise in engineering.
It needed to rotate smoothly.
It needed to hold its position.
The electrical connection had to work with the movement.
And whatever mechanism we developed couldn’t overwhelm the clean form of the lamp itself.
It took considerable experimentation to resolve.
That is one of the contradictions of simple-looking furniture.
The less you see, the more carefully everything behind it often has to be considered.
The finished object should never need to explain the engineering required to make it work.
You should simply be able to rotate the table.
Move the lamp head.
Place your book down.
Turn on the light.
And use it.
The complexity belongs to us as designers and makers.
The simplicity should belong to the person living with it.
A floor lamp that became something more
By the time Flamingo was finished, we’d travelled a considerable distance from that original Symbiont side table.
Yet the DNA of that first idea remained.
It was still about creating furniture that could do more.
Flamingo became a floor lamp, side table, sofa table and sculptural presence in one compact piece.
Its rotating table allows it to adapt around furniture rather than dictating where furniture must sit.
Its directional head changes from task lighting to ambient lighting.
Its slender footprint makes it particularly suited to contemporary living spaces where every piece needs to justify the room it occupies.
And when it isn’t being actively used, it still contributes something.
It has presence.
Not because it’s large or visually loud.
But because its silhouette is unmistakably its own.
Natural timber, black timber — and a flash of red
Material choice was important because the form needed warmth.
Flamingo was developed in oak timber, with natural and black finishes allowing the same design to take on quite different personalities.
In the natural finish, the grain and warmth of the timber soften the architectural geometry.
In black, Flamingo becomes more graphic and sculptural, its silhouette taking greater prominence.
Then there’s that red textile cable.
A small intervention, but an important one.
It breaks the seriousness.
There’s a little bit of humour in Flamingo.
And there should be.
After all, this entire piece owes part of its existence to two designers standing in a workshop looking at a rough mock-up and deciding that it resembled an animal.
From a workshop mock-up to design recognition
There is something particularly satisfying about looking back at the rough prototypes and then looking at the finished Flamingo.
The journey wasn’t linear.
We didn’t draw the finished object and then simply manufacture it.
We drew.
Made.
Looked.
Changed.
Made again.
Removed something.
Put something back.
Moved it off-centre.
Changed the shape.
Solved one problem and discovered another.
And slowly, Flamingo emerged.
That is why having Flamingo shortlisted in the IDEA Awards was such meaningful recognition for us. I’m
The award recognition wasn’t the reason the piece existed.
It came afterwards.
For a design that had grown so organically through experimentation, conversation and making, having it recognised by the Australian design industry was an affirmation of the thinking and refinement behind the finished object.
Flamingo was also exhibited during Melbourne Design Week, giving the piece another opportunity to move beyond the workshop and be experienced as a piece of contemporary Australian design.
The value of not knowing exactly where you’re going
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Flamingo is that if we’d known exactly what we wanted to make at the beginning, it probably wouldn’t exist.
The design benefited from uncertainty.
It benefited from that first mock-up looking like a giraffe.
It benefited from an oval replacing a circle.
It benefited from an awkward prototype that told us we’d removed something we actually needed.
It benefited from Manuel suggesting that the table shouldn’t be centred.
It benefited from the cord becoming difficult to conceal.
Every one of those moments forced another question.
And every question moved the design forward.
That’s the part of furniture design that a finished photograph can’t always communicate.
A finished piece can look inevitable.
As though it could never have been anything else.
But behind that apparent simplicity can be weeks or months of conversations, wrong turns, prototypes, technical problems and tiny refinements.
Flamingo carries all of that history within it.
You simply don’t see it.
And that’s probably exactly as it should be.
Flamingo — designed to live with you
Ultimately, a piece of furniture has to move beyond its story.
It has to work in somebody’s home.
Pull Flamingo beside the sofa and rotate the table towards you.
Place down a glass, a book or the remote.
Turn the head and bring the light over your shoulder to read.
Later, rotate the table away, turn the head towards the wall and let the same object create soft ambient light across the room.
Tomorrow, move it somewhere else.
That’s where all those sketches, prototypes, conversations and engineering decisions finally make sense.
They disappear into the experience of using it.
What began as an idea for adding a light to a Symbiont side table became something neither of us had originally intended to design.