Cover photo: Costanza table
Sleek, simple, elegant. At home in any setting. The Costanza lamp by Luceplan is a true lady, a contemporary icon that reached its 40th anniversary in 2026. Without losing an ounce of charm, it remains timeless with apparent effortlessness. Designed by Paolo Rizzatto, co-founder of the brand, it reinterprets the classic hat-shaped lamp by simplifying its design and focusing on interesting innovations.
Rizzatto himself stated: “Costanza’s modernity lies precisely in this: not in breaking with tradition but in reviving it, in giving it new life with today’s tools, materials, and technologies. It is an act of subtraction not only in form but also in technology, which has made the lamp disassemblable into parts and industrially reproducible. For me, designing means ‘reaching beyond,’ taking a step forward from what already exists, moving closer to contemporary sensibilities.”
The innovations that make Luceplan’s Costanza special
“When imagining this new lamp, I didn’t want to refer to a specific lampshade, fixed in memory, but to an atmosphere, to the context that surrounds us, to the things we’ve all seen, to the images we’ve always looked at,” Rizzatto told Domus in 1986, shortly before the launch of Costanza.
It is clear that the focus of the project is the lampshade, which the designer transformed into a thin sheet of polycarbonate; the element is sold flat, ready to be assembled with extreme ease by securing the truncated cone shape with snap-in pins.
The Costanza lamp’s switching system was also cutting-edge for its time. A touch-sensitive metal rod controls both the on-off function and dimming with a simple touch of the fingers.
The Costanza lamp collection
The Costanza lamp collection has evolved over the years, always maintaining a strong sense of identity: from the original family of floor, table, wall, and pendant versions, to the launch of Costanzina in 1992, and on to the Lady Costanza, Grande Costanza, and Grande Costanza Open Air, the range has progressively expanded to adapt to ever-changing contexts—from the home to the office, from hospitality to outdoor spaces.
The design exploration also extended to color, with the 2013 introduction of the Radieuse palette, featuring saturated tones, and the Mezzo Tono palette, with pastel shades, developed in collaboration with Studiopepe to highlight the textural quality of the diffuser’s matte surfaces.
40 Years of Costanza: Special Edition Lampshades
The special editions celebrating Costanza’s 40th anniversary transform the white lampshade into a graphic surface, without compromising the object’s purity.
The first version features a pleated effect that nods to the world of haute couture and gives the polycarbonate the appearance of a soft fabric.
The second features a dense pattern of small squares that creates a dynamic interplay of opacity and transparency, particularly visible when the lamp is lit.
In the third version, the thin plastic is enlivened by a dense striped pattern, which adds a sense of dynamism.
