You Probably Already Know Laurids Gallée
His shapeshifting lighting designs have made him a hit online, but for the Rotterdam-based designer, it’s all about the IRL experience.
If you’ve got an algorithm that is any way skewed towards design and homeware, chances are, you’ll have already seen Laurids Gallée’s work.
The Rotterdam-based designer, who was born in Austria and studied at the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven, has become known for his captivating work with light.
To share that work with the world, he regularly uploads simple, raw iPhone footage of himself moving around his lamps to Instagram, showing their shapeshifting nature. No over-edited reels, no fuss.
Growing up surrounded by artists, making things was just part of daily life for Gallee. “It wasn’t a big interest at first, but later I realised creativity was the only path that truly made sense to me.” That quiet inevitability has carried through to how he works today – deliberate, unhurried, and totally absorbed in the material in front of him.
Right now, that material is mostly resin. Galleé has spent years working out how to use it as a vehicle for light rather than just a vessel, controlling reflections, refractions, opacity, and transparency until the lamp becomes something closer to a sculpture.
“In a way, I’m sculpting light, with resin acting as its body,” he explains. The result is work that never quite sits still. Move around a piece, and it reads differently. Change the light in the room, and it shifts again. There’s no fixed version of it.
Resin isn’t the only material Galleé works with, though it’s the one that’s made his name. His broader interest is in production itself – craft, applied arts, industrial machinery. “I guess the best way to understand something is through practice,” he says, “and that curiosity naturally pushes me to explore new skills.” There’s no such thing as a shortcut in his process, which is part of why the work feels so considered.
That hands-on approach also speaks to a wider shift in how other designers are operating today. The one-off, collectible space has expanded significantly over the past decade, and Gallée has a clear read on why.
Production knowledge is more accessible now, he argues, and the internet has changed who designers actually need to talk to. “Designers can now reach audiences directly,” he says, “making it possible to produce independent work that wants to live outside of industrial production.”
The gallery model, the limited edition, the direct Instagram sale – these aren’t seen as compromises anymore. For a lot of designers, they’re the whole point. Whether that model, and its reliance on self-promotion, creates its own traps is another question.
“I would love to see a lot more daring work from established designers. It does get boring sometimes.” – Laurids Gallée
Galleé is sceptical of the idea of fame in the design world, at least in any meaningful sense, but he’s not naive about the commercial pressures that come with running a studio.
“Successful designers often need to stick to what works or has worked,” he says. The problem, as he sees it, isn’t that designers develop a signature, it’s that so few of them seem willing to risk it once they have one.
“I would love to see a lot more daring work from established designers,” he adds. “It does get boring sometimes.” Coming from someone whose entire practice is built on unpredictability, it’s a fair point.
