When Space Copenhagen launched the Gravity collection for GUBI in 2018, the idea rested on a contradiction: a solid, chunky base in either marble or blackened steel, holding up a shade so light and airy it almost looks like it belongs to a different lamp. That tension worked so well that Gravity has grown far beyond its original table and floor lamps, expanding into wall lamps and pendants along the way. Now the brand is introducing two new stone bases, Maroon and Emerald.
No two Gravity lamps are exactly alike. Each marble base features unique veining and tonal variations before being individually hand-polished and assembled with its shade.
The studio’s founders, Signe Bindslev Henriksen and Peter Bundgaard Rützou, trained as architecture students at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy. They each ran their own practice for years before eventually joining forces as Space Copenhagen sometime in 2005.
Gravity wasn’t just a one-off gig for them. GUBI itself goes back to 1967, when Gubi and Lisbeth Olsen started the company making their own furniture and selling textiles on the side. Their son Jacob took over in 2001 and split the business into two lanes. One side of the business began focusing on reissuing archival designers like Pierre Paulin and Greta Grossman, and the other commissioned new work from studios like Space Copenhagen. Gravity falls into that second category.
Every lamp in the collection starts the same way: a base cut from a steel or marble slab, then hand-polished and hand-fit to its shade. The lineup ranges from a 19-inch table lamp all the way up to an XL floor lamp over five feet tall.
Working with marble meant accepting early on that the material would have its own say. Formed over millions of years, every block carries veining and tonal variations that don’t repeat, which means every Gravity lamp is unique. The marble starts as a solid slab that is machine-cut and shaped before each base is individually hand-polished to reveal its natural depth and character. Every lamp is then hand-assembled, with the relationship between stone, shade, and light calibrated by hand.
“A heavy stone base suddenly feels lighter when paired with a soft textile shade, and the softness of the light becomes even more noticeable because it emerges from something solid. That dialogue between weight and lightness became the essence of the design,” Signe says.
The Gravity collection reads more like movement than texture, and the color has enough depth that the base becomes the first thing you notice in the room.
The collection’s new colors push that idea further. The original Black, Gray, and White bases fit into a fairly restrained, architectural look, but Maroon and Emerald don’t blend in the same way. The veining reads more like movement than texture, and the color has enough depth that the base becomes the first thing you notice in the room.
“We don’t really think about trends when we design,” says Peter. “We’re much more interested in making something that feels relevant 20 years from now. We hope it feels timeless because it isn’t trying to belong to a particular moment.”
Letting a hard material anchor something lighter isn’t a new move in Danish design. Poul Kjærholm was setting slate and marble tops into slim steel frames back in 1955, combining two hard materials in one piece and letting the stone’s weight carry the design. Gravity is working from a similar instinct, just structured differently. The stone and steel are offered as separate options for the same base, which then gets paired with a fabric shade. Where Kjærholm built tension between two hard materials, Gravity builds it between a hard base and a soft one.
GUBI still sells Gravity with the blackened steel base for anyone who wants the shape without the stone. Maroon and Emerald are for a different kind of buyer, who wants their lamp to be the boldest thing in the room.
