Little Wing Lee’s varied oeuvre is, as the Brooklyn, New York-based designer and founder of the Black Folks in Design network, puts it, intentional. “The range of scales is interesting to me,” she says.
Lee established Studio & Projects in 2019, fueling her practice through a dialogue between cultural, hospitality, and residential spaces. “Once you work on different typologies, you bring those elements to other projects,” she says. “Thinking about residential design can influence guestroom design. Thinking about working in a hotel lobby can inform the way you work on a residential [public space]. For me, it’s a natural transition to develop custom products.”
Earlier this year, Lee debuted what she describes as her “very tiny, very bold design” for See No Evil Pizza, which opened on the concourse level of the 50th Street downtown 1 subway station in Manhattan, as well as two rugs for Odabashian, inspired by West African textiles and African American modern art.
This fall, she’s anticipating the reveal of her ground-floor interior and residential amenity spaces for the Ray Harlem, the Frida Escobedo- and Handel Architects-designed mixed-use building from accessory lifestyle brand Ray that also serves as the new home for the National Black Theatre.
Lee’s Crepe collection for RBW creates a depth of light and form with a layered diffuser and shade
Then there’s her recently introduced collection of serene sconces and flush-mount fixtures for RBW lighting, a relationship she’s nurtured since her days as design director for Ace Hotel Group’s Atelier Ace. Composed of four distinct, spherical designs, the range pays homage to industrial lamps and vintage glassware alike.
Copia, for instance, sports a soft silicone diffuser—an RBW first—surrounded in casted glass, and nautical Cape is sheathed in a wire cage. Crepe, with its seamlessly fused diffuser and shade, explores light and the way it “can play with something that is glossy or translucent,” says Lee. Art Deco-style Cuff, meanwhile, pairs sand-casted metal and brass and calls to mind heirloom earrings.
After a slate of early concept meetings with RBW in her office, Lee tackled the initial sketches and 3D prints and visited RBW’s innovation team in Kingston, New York. Then the prototype process commenced, and options narrowed. “We had seven different colors for Copia,” Lee remembers. “Which ones are the strongest? Which give designers more options? What’s realistic? It’s a back and forth from there.”
Lee adds that she didn’t go into the process assuming she would end up creating different iterations of one light. The collection works “because they all come from Studio & Projects, from my brain. I was thinking about the different ways I specify lights for projects and what I would want to use.”
With its delicate curves, the Crepe sconce is inspired by vintage glassware
This article originally appeared in HD’s August 2024 issue.
