FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
May 31, 2006
Yves Behar: Man for all Species
Is Yves Behar the new Leonardo?
Everybody's favorite product designer, Yves Behar, was a one-man design lab last week at New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair.
For starters, he was the genius behind the coolest lamp at the show. His LED "Leaf" lamp for Herman Miller, looks like a Mobius strip, and uses 40% less energy than conventional bulbs. Its lifespan is a remarkable 100,000 hours --- a good thing, since it costs a pricey $525. At a Soho party in his honor, Behar regaled guests with the lamp's cool touch controls that operate like an iPod's flywheel: One lick for the cool-warm spectrum (fluorescent to incandescent), the other for intensity (from cozy dimness for romance to brilliant, land-your-aircraft here wattage).
But that's not all! This boy wonder has also produced a crazy looking high chair for Calla, that looks like the grammaphone in those old Victrola, "He hears his master's voice," ads.
But, wait -- there's more! Not content just to create for design groupies and trendy babies, Behar is reaching out to the animal kingdom, with a collection for Gino and Dog that the kids at the California Co