Western Living Magazine
How to Make a Spec Home Stand Out: Lessons from a Not-Boring Calgary Infill
The Home Tour: A 1,400-Square-Foot Townhouse With Scandi-Cool Style
Home Tour: Inside This Mountain-Modern Home
Recipe: Green Papaya Salad from Chef Angus An
Recipe: Scallop Ceviche from Maenam’s Chef Angus An
3 Classy Australian White Wines to Toast Olivia Newton-John With
The Best Beginner Hikes In and Around Whistler
Getaway Guide: How to Spend One Perfect Day on Galiano Island
Where to Eat, Stay and Play in Canmore
‘West Coast North’ is a Love Letter to Western Canadian Architecture and Interiors
Design Obsession: This Roll-Up Drying Rack Is Maybe My Favourite Thing in the Kitchen
10 of the Hottest Homewares for Summer 2022
Announcing the 2022 Designers of the Year Finalists
You’re Invited to the Design Party of the Year!
DotY 2022: Our Judges for the Maker Category Can’t Wait to See What You’ve Got
Are you ready to let Lukas Peet alter your environment?
The industrial section of the design world is a different sort of fish. Where a slick new residence will get accolades from all who pass by it, and tourists will stop their cars to photograph a shiny new sculpture, industrial designers must adjust themselves to the reality that their masterpieces almost immediately recede into the fabric of people’s lives. To the extent they elicit a response at all it’s of the, “I should have thought of that” variety. The Spotlight Volumes lights.The work of Lukas Peet elicits a lot of “I should have thought of that.” Anyone who’s ever hung a chandelier that is supported by one cord yet powered by another eyes Peet’s deceptively simple Rudi light, its sole cord attached seemingly in the casual way cool Europeans throw on a scarf, and thinks, “Now, that’s clever.” Or they look at his industrial, felt-covered Slab series lighting, chic but muted, and think, “That’s a really good idea.” But spend more than a few minutes with the Canmore-raised designer and you realize his goals are less about personal accolades and more about designing objects whose functionality incorporates everything that is needed and almost nothing that isn’t—a product, in part, of his Rocky Mountain upbringing: “Growing up in the mountains meant I was close to nature all the time, and there’s no more insightful way to learn design than seeing nature at work: only the bare essentials of form and functionality are present and evolution takes care of the rest.” The Slab light.From Alberta, an 18-year-old Peet moved to Holland, where he spent four years at the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven (alma mater of Tord Boontje and famed expeller of Marcel Wanders). His Canadian sensibility, coupled with his exposure to the greats of European design, has resulted in a design ethos that’s all his own. It’s this fresh outlook that’s seen the now 27-year-old designer rack up accolades that would be the envy of a practitioner twice his age: commissions from Brooklyn producer Roll and Hill and Umbra, winning the Emerging Designer competition at Toronto’s Design Exchange and having a solo exhibition at their museum earlier this year. Judge Sarah Fager, a designer for Ikea, wryly understated his accomplishments when she noted that Lukas has “been very active and focused since graduation,” and judge Paolo Cravedi of Alessi singled Peet out for an even higher compliment: “We valued Lukas’s appreciation for the art of craft, something that young designers are sadly losing.” And then there’s everyone else who sees a Lukas Peet design and says: “I should have thought of that.” The Roll and Hill Rudi light.