Site: North America

Designer Seppo Koho

”I truly enjoy turning sketches into wooden prototypes with my own hands. Finding a concrete solution to implementing a detail after persistent experimenting is a fascinating moment!” says the award-winning architect Seppo Koho, the designer of the Secto Design lamps.
Some sketches of the Octo Small pendant lamp and a ruler on a desk. The designer is sketching.

Sketching the Octo Small.

Architectonic touch

Secto Design has collaborated closely with Seppo Koho (b. 1967) since the company’s founding in 1995, initially on furniture and, from 2002 onwards, exclusively on lamps. A promising interior designer freshly graduated from Helsinki University of Art and Design at the beginning of the collaboration, Koho later expanded his expertise by earning an architecture degree from Tampere University of Technology. Today, he is an internationally renowned lighting designer, operating his own design studio.

Koho’s architectonic touch is evident throughout the Secto Design lighting collection. He describes the lamps as illuminated spaces viewed from the outside, much like cosy houses radiating a warm glow on a dark evening. Versatile and timeless, the luminaires suit both public and private interiors, a sign of good design that has guided the company philosophy early on.

The designer stands beside a woodworking machine, holding blocks of wood.

Seppo Koho makes the first prototypes by hand.

Design philosophy

Seppo Koho not only designs the lamps but also makes the first prototypes by hand himself. He has always been interested in wood crafting and experimenting with the possibilities that wood as a material can bring. Making a wooden prototype of a new lamp solves many details in the design a computer drawing cannot solve.

Seppo Koho’s aim is to make lamps that give a harmonious light without the blinding shine coming from visible lightbulbs. The light source is hidden in all the Secto Design lamps whereas the light itself is visible in the fascinating patterns it makes on the walls and floor. The play of light and shadows together with the warmth of the birch wood give Seppo Koho’s minimalistic designs a poetic twist that intrigues people all around the world.

Secto Design Oy owns and controls all the intellectual property rights of the designs of its products and related material such as photos and drawings. All use of Secto Design Oy’s intellectual property rights without written permission is strictly prohibited. Secto Design Oy takes the protection of intellectual property rights very seriously.

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