Max Hoffman

“Lys” (/loos/) is the Danish word for both candle and light. My thesis project, called Lys, is a small flameless electric light cast in wax and suggesting the glow of candles. Lys is designed to create a space for intimacy inspired by the Danish ritual of hygge. Hygge is not about specific things or items; it is instead an environment and a feeling that arises within that environment, “an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things. It’s about being with people we love... A feeling that we are safe, that we are shielded from the world,” writes Meik Wiking in The Little Book of Hygge. I started to focus on this place: trying to achieve an effect of space and feeling within it and keeping the focus on the people who make it happen. I observed that in New York City, without the original context or awareness of hygge, this almost unconscious-intentional communication and feeling succeeded regularly at certain bars and restaurants. Lys supports this ritual within the current physical framework of these interiors with its simple, minimal and warm form that does not impose itself and keeps the attention on setting a mood.