Marjan van Aubel
Marjan van Aubel’s practice began with a revelation: a coloured, transparent solar cell held in her hands at London’s Royal College of Art, and the sudden certainty that energy could be beautiful. Since graduating in 2012, the Dutch solar designer has followed that certainty across every form, from intimate objects and immersive installations to architectural surfaces, always asking not just how we harvest the sun, but how we might fall back in love with it.
Her Sunne light, self-powered and soul-affirming, has become an icon of a post-fossil aesthetic, designed to bring the sun indoors, to be lived with rather than installed and forgotten. The Studio's landmark installation The Sun, My Heart filled Somerset House with 77 suspended lamps cycling through the Sun’s daily arc, accompanied by NASA’s own recordings of its vibrations.
Her works are held permanently in MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, the V&A, the Vitra Design Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.