The natural world is an enduring muse for lighting designer David Trubridge. It’s why the English-born, New Zealand-based creator has spent much of his career working towards reducing his environmental footprint.

“That respect for nature was always there,” he says. “I was a woodworker, and I couldn’t bear to waste material so I’d waste hours and hours trying to get all the pieces I’d need to make a piece of furniture out of one plank, when it would have been much easier to make it out of two.”

Today, David is internationally renowned for his artfully latticed kitset lighting and elaborate custom installations, two of which illuminate the hallowed halls of The Centre Pompidou in Paris. But the journey to global success has been far from predictable.

Building a meaningful life

A lifelong love of boats inspired him to study naval architecture at university, however he quickly realised his future lay beyond the shipyard. After some time spent travelling, he set out to forge a “meaningful life”; purchasing a pair of stone ruins in the north of England and recruiting friends to help with their restoration.

To David, a meaningful life was a two-pronged endeavour. On one side: “The actual lifestyle – living in the country with our own place, which I couldn’t afford anywhere else,” he explains. The other: “Making things, being creative, doing my own artwork, learning how to work with wood. Still absolutely true today.”

A self-taught furniture maker, David created pieces from his nearby workshop. In 1981, he and his wife Linda purchased a 14.5-metre sailboat named ‘Hornpipe’, packed up their home and set sail with their sons Sam and William. “It was the best thing we ever did,” says David of the family’s five-year voyage – a formative experience that continues to influence his work today.

Eventually they landed in Hawke’s Bay on New Zealand’s North Island, where David set up a studio in Whakatu and began experimenting with material and form. His most notable furniture pieces included ‘Sail Chair’ and ‘Body Raft’, the latter exhibited at the Milan Furniture Fair in 2001 and snapped up by Italian furniture magnate Giulio Cappellini, who licensed it for the Cappellini collection.

A call to biophilic design

It was around this time that David began to narrow his design focus to lighting; a decision that was driven, in part, by his unwavering commitment to reducing the environmental impact of doing business.

“That’s one of the biggest challenges of my company,” he reflects. “We’ve narrowed ourselves down into quite a small corner. Twenty years ago I was making furniture, big sculptures, jewellery … but as we became more [environmentally] efficient at making these lights, we’ve made it harder for ourselves to branch out into new areas.”

An early champion of biophilic design, David defines the term as a “way of creating” that extends beyond a vertical garden or interior foliage.

“It’s imitating the process of nature. And the process of nature is an evolving of community – everything’s interrelated and works together,” he explains. “It is an ‘enabling’ rather than an ‘imposing’ process.”

One project that exemplifies this approach is Rotorua’s Redwood Nightlights, a 700-metre-long forest walk along suspended bridges and platforms, which are illuminated at night by David’s intricate lantern designs.

“[Biophilic design] is taking what’s there, organising things, bringing in the history and everything about that place so you’re aware of it, but you’re not confronted with it.”

Sinking into the subconscious

David adopts a similarly fluid approach towards his own creative process, insisting that inspiration requires an open mind to receive it.

“If you’re in the right state of mind it will happen, but you can’t force it [or] it becomes contrived,” he says.

“Another way to describe it would be in the subconscious. By relaxing in a calming environment, you’re sinking into your subconscious. And in that subconscious you’re connected to something greater, where you can hear radio waves with longer frequencies from further away … There, you’ll find some little kernel of an idea which you carefully bring back, nurture and grow. Then the hard work begins.”

Sustainability as a process

David’s eco-credentials speak for themselves. In 2015, his company was the first to register an Environmental Product Declaration (a third-party-verified sustainability document) under the EPD Australasia Programme. The same year, his Coral Pendant Light won the Sustainable Product Design Award at the Designers Institute of New Zealand 2015 Best Design Awards.

Each of his lights have Life Cycle Assessment data, which tracks environmental impact of a product through all stages of its life. The company is in the process of registering the data with Declare, the International Living Future Institute’s database of healthy building materials.

Despite these efforts, he’s reluctant to label his brand with the ‘s-word’. “I have a massive conflict,” he says of the ‘sustainable’ designation. “We do it as best we can, but we’re still shipping stuff around the world. We’re still having an impact on the environment.”

He tackles the studio’s commitment to environmental responsibility in a similar way to his creative process – an ongoing exploration and openness to change. “Our goals are to constantly be aware of what we do, of trying to improve in every way we can.”

In 2020, he made the decision to reimagine two of his best-selling biomorphic light collections – Cloud and Ebb – out of a renewable thin plywood, eschewing their previously plastic shells in a bid to curb the company’s carbon footprint. More recently, David swapped the studio’s diesel van with an electric model, and he is currently on the hunt for an alternative to the nylon clips connecting light segments. “We’ve got a lab in New Zealand trying to find a biopolymer plastic which can replace that. All the time, we’re doing these little things to improve.”

As for what lies ahead? For David and his team, it’s about looking local. “[We’ve] got to be much more bonded with our community, creating for our community, using materials and processes that are available in our community … A local focus both in who we sell to but also what materials we use and make. That would be my goal.”

By Victoria Pearson