Australian lighting designer with a colourful past

Urbis: What do you do?
Volker Haug: I’m a lighting designer. I design and create artistic light fittings for bars, restaurants, cafes, homes and sometimes art installations.

U: How did you come to design? Did you have a creative family, or did you go through design school?
VH: I’m self-taught. I do have a creative family but more in the social and musical way. After school I tried out landscape gardening. I loved building ponds and small paradises but I didn’t realise that paving was such a big part of landscaping. I decided to quit landscape gardening and keep up the ponds as a hobby. Don’t ask me why but the next thing I did was become a hairdresser! Nineteen years later I finally became what I always wanted to become – a lighting designer!

U: What is it about lighting that interests you?
VH: Hmm, I don’t really know exactly what the fascination is. I guess it’s the effect that lighting has and its ability to change a space.

U: Have you ever played around with other object designs? Have you done furniture, for example?
VH: Very little, almost nothing! All I want to do is lighting!

U: Volker is an unusual name, what is your background?
VH: I lived in Germany until I was 22 years old, then I moved to London. I’ve been living in Melbourne now for 11 years.

U: Has your upbringing influenced your designs?
VH: I believe so. Some people say that my ‘industrial style is typical German’… being German it’s a bit hard to say whether or not that’s true, but there may be some truth to it.

U: Who do you admire?
VH: My guru is Ingo Maurer, the most amazing German lighting designer whom I actually got to meet when visiting the Milan fair.

U: How do the ideas for lighting projects develop?
VH: In many different ways, but here’s a story about one project. When recently travelling in Portugal someone stuck a light globe into a plastic lettuce as a joke (I hope it was plastic). That idea stuck with me, and I recently created six chandeliers full of artificial fruit for a fashion event/pop-up shop/art exhibition. My work colleague even came up with the idea to create a wearable illuminated head piece à la Carmen Miranda – it was so much fun!

U: How does the design process work for you – do you draw computer models, make models, work obsessively on one thing or have lots going on at the same time?
VH: Yes, always lots at the same time. I sometimes wish I was an octopus. I mostly visualise ideas in my head, then straight away start hands on, often without ever drawing them. Sometimes ideas rest for a while (months, years even) then suddenly come back to life when the time is right.

U: What has been a career highlight so far?
VH: Besides meeting Ingo Maurer I am stoked that my business is growing and constant work comes my way with bigger and better projects. I was ‘coolhunted’ by The Cool Hunter (thecoolhunter.com.au) in October 2007. Another career highlight was my first solo lighting exhibition at the National Design Centre (Melbourne) in 2008.

U: What are you working on at the moment?
VH: I’m about to build three massive 2.1 m diameter light shades called OMFG. These shades are made of industrial aluminium that we’ve had squashed into flat discs with the help of a forklift loaded with two tonnes of steel scraps. The discs then get anodised in beautiful colours and the OMFG gets built (think patchwork). It sounds crazy and a lot of work and it is, but the end result is well worth it!