In the beginning there was light — light bulb, to be precise. The origin story of award-winning design company Plumen and its energy-saving 001 bulb dates back to 2007.
That year, global warming became enmeshed in the cultural zeitgeist. The Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore, whose documentary An Inconvenient Truth and others like the 11th Hour helped make environmentalism a kitchen table topic.
Global warming and a sustainable lighting revolution
Meanwhile, in London, Nicolas Roope — a fine arts graduate and digital entrepreneur — was following through on his own bright idea for how to usher a sustainable lighting revolution into the mainstream marketplace. In his words: “create a cool, coveted product.”
He and business partner Michael-George Hemus and their collaborator Samuel Wilkinson, got busy developing a game-changing concept: ‘The world’s first designer low-energy light bulb’ — a symbol of ideation as beautiful as it was good for the planet.
Launched in 2010, the Plumen 001 was the physical embodiment of Roope’s vision of cross-pollinating disciplines: creativity, art, design and technology.
A pristine exposed interlaced tubular aesthetic emerged out of the necessary tech specifications for the compact fluorescent light (CFL) — which was then state-of-the-art, using 80 percent less energy than its incandescent predecessor.