The world is full of well-designed objects of striking beauty or ingenious functionality. At Artecnica, a Los Angeles home-accessories company, co-owners Enrico Bressan and Tahmineh Javanbakht strive for design that means something beyond form and function, using it to make global artistic connections. To that end, they founded Design with Conscience, a program to develop cutting-edge consumer goods that create cash for artisans in developing countries.The Italian-born Bressan and the Iranian Javanbakht started Artecnica as an architecture and interior-design firm in 1986, but gradually transitioned to selling consumer goods. The firm is best known for its Garland Light, a strand of laser-cut steel flowers that wraps around a bare light bulb to create a lacy shade. Conceived by the Dutch designer Tord Boontje, the product was a runaway hit and can now be seen in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Buoyed by their success, Bressan, 47, and Javanbakht, 46, set out to prove that good design can result in much more than pretty products. "Over the years, we've become more and more interested in sustainability in everything we do," says Bressan. "For us, the matter of sustainability is not just a question of the environment, but also of the humans within an environment."
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The process has resulted in unique products that merge high design with handicraft. |