Australian Designer Ross Gardam Illuminates Milan Design Week with “Luminescent Duality”.

Ross Gardam’s ‘Luminescent Duality’ unveiled at Milan Design Week 2025. Photos: Haydn Cattach.

We’re coming to you live from Milan Design Week 2025 with a serious dose of butterflies, where the Australian design studio of Ross Gardam has unveiled an immersive lighting exhibition, “Luminescent Duality”. It’s the kind of show that makes you question whether gravity exists or whether light can be captured and transformed into physical poetry.

Held at Via Palermo 11 in the Brera Design District, Gardam invites visitors to explore the delicate dance between opposing forces within object design—specifically, how light and shadow, clarity and obscurity coexist, while making us question how light is perceived.

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Interview: Australian Industrial Designer Ross Gardam.

Creating work under the slogan "Experiential Objects that Elicit Joy & Defy Convention", Ross Gardam leads a team of designers, engineers and makers, who produce contemporary hand-crafted lighting, furniture and objects from their Melbourne studio with an unrivalled level of finish and expertise.

Aeris Lighting Collection. Photos: Haydn Cattach.

Details of the new Aeris Lighting Collection. Photos: Haydn Cattach.

Solace Lighting Collection. Photos: Haydn Cattach.

The exhibition showcases two new production collections that have stolen our hearts. First up is Aeris—a series of cloud-inspired pendants that appear to float in mid-air. Each mouth-blown glass cloud pairs with architecturally crafted brass bars that cross and kiss together with such delicacy that the whole arrangement feels weightless. In a world that sometimes feels heavy, these ethereal pieces offer a visual reprieve that’s genuinely uplifting.

Then there’s Solace—a luminous glass tear that transforms with movement, revealing two distinct personalities depending on your vantage point. The exploration of geometric form continues with the interplay of two perpendicular, intersecting circles, creating an intricate composition that’s both emotionally evocative and technically brilliant.

The piece that really blows our mind is Relic—a brutalist optical device that offers no reflection despite its mirror-like surface. Limited to just 10 editions, this monolithic cone in cast crystal glass is a collaboration between Gardam and glass sculptor Peter Kovacsy. It’s almost philosophical in its approach—a mirror that doesn’t reflect but invites introspection.

“Luminescent Duality” also showcases the Volant wall light, shown for the first time outside Australia and building on the success of the Volant collection first released at “Transcendence”, Gardam’s 2023 Milan Design Week Show in Brera.

Ross Gardam Creates New Pavilion Space & Unveils Ross Gardam Editions.

Step into the Ross Gardam universe. Set amongst the dense Australian bushland, the imagined space exists between the physical and digital, offering an open-ended exploration of the nature of beings, objects and place—and how they all connect.

Relic Edition of 10 Table Lamps. Photos: Haydn Cattach.

As a leading contemporary design studio based in Melbourne, Ross Gardam is renowned for its furniture, lighting, and object design. Gardam’s work explores materiality, emotion, and the subtle interplay of form and function by merging traditional craftsmanship with cutting-edge techniques.

If you’re in Milan this week (lucky you!), put this exhibition on your radar. For everyone else experiencing the serious FOMO, consider this your virtual design fix until these gorgeous pieces make their way into the wider world and back to Australia later in the year.

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Ross Gardam Takes Over a Brutalist Space to Present Latest Editions & Luminaires Collection.

Ross Gardam takes over a brutalist space ‘under construction’ to present the studio's latest editioned pieces and new collection of luminaires. The pieces adorn the distressed concrete architecture, illuminating from the darkness and offering a unique tension between object and space.

[Images courtesy of Ross Gardam. Photography by Haydn Cattach.]