Concept → Reality · Rewritten

City Lamp: a night light hiding in a table lamp

In October 2010, design blogs picked up a table lamp whose base was set with glowing stones. Switched off, it looked like a building at night.

The Design Blog editors

Illustration of a table lamp whose base is set with glowing stones

Illustration, AI-generated. Not the original design.

Verdict 2026

Still a concept

City Lamp stayed a concept: we found no sign that it was ever manufactured or sold, and it is not among the projects in Anna Neklesa’s portfolio today. Neklesa went on to the Royal College of Art and now works as a color and trim designer in London.

Gingko Octagon One Desk Lamp, BlackClosest thing you can buyGingko Octagon One Desk Lamp, Black7.8Design ratingTips onto a face to change angleCheck priceOur design review ↓

The idea today

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A cordless lamp that shares City Lamp’s double life as a table lamp and a soft glow after dark.

  • Gingko Octagon One Desk Lamp, Black

    Gingko Octagon One Desk Lamp, Black

    A compact cordless lamp on an octagonal base that can stand, tilt or lie flat, an architectural block of light for a bedside or shelf.

    Our design review

    7.8Design rating
    Form8.6
    Material7.8
    Detail7.6
    Longevity6.8

    The Octagon One is a lacquered octagonal base holding a milled aluminum light bar with 36 LEDs behind a diffuser. You change the angle by tipping the lamp onto a different face of the base, which Yanko Design called stable yet light. A touch button in the base dims it, and a built-in battery makes it cordless, lasting 7 to 48 hours per charge. That battery is sealed inside, which limits how long the lamp lasts.

    Strongest point
    Tips onto a face to change angle
    Compromise
    Sealed battery limits its lifespan
    Check price on Amazon

Product images from the retailer listings, cut out and staged with AI.

  1. 2010Anna Neklesa, an interior and product designer based in St. Petersburg, sets up her Behance portfolio.
  2. 2010City Lamp circulates in October; Trend Hunter reads its glowing base as the lit windows of a building at night.
  3. 2011Neklesa completes her first degree, in interior and product design, at the Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture and Art.
  4. 2017She graduates from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Textiles.
  5. 2017Matters Journal profiles her Living Cotton, a skin-reactive material made from dissolved cotton.
  6. 2026Her Behance profile lists her as a color and trim designer in London; City Lamp is not among the projects shown.

What it was

City Lamp joined two objects that usually live apart: a bedside table lamp and a night light. The outline was conventional, a base with a shade on top. The difference sat in the base, which was set with luminous stones the designer called Dragon Pearls. While the lamp was on, or while daylight fell on it, the stones took in light. After the switch went off, they gave it back as a faint glow.

Trend Hunter, which found the lamp through our post, read the grid of glowing points as lit windows and guessed that the name came from a city block after dark. That reading stuck. The designer, Anna Neklesa, was then an interior and product designer in St. Petersburg. We could find no technical details, price or manufacturer for the lamp, then or since.

A lamp that kept a little of the evening and gave it back in the dark.

Where the idea went

The effect City Lamp relied on is phosphorescence: a material absorbs light and releases it slowly. The pigments have improved a great deal. Strontium aluminate, now the brightest and longest-lasting commercial type, glows about ten times brighter and ten times longer than the copper-activated zinc sulfide it replaced. Yet the self-charging glow never became a lamp category. The bedside problem it addressed is mostly handled today by cordless LED lamps that dim to a night-light level and run for hours on a charge.

Neklesa’s own path moved from objects to materials. She took her first degree in interior and product design at the Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture and Art in 2011, ran an interior design practice in St. Petersburg for four years, and graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with an MA in Textiles in 2017. Her work from that time, Living Cotton, is a skin-reactive material made from dissolved cotton, developed with help from an Oxford chemistry professor. Today her Behance profile lists her as a color and trim designer in London.

What it means now

City Lamp is a small idea, but a good one: light that outlasts the switch. The base did two jobs at once. By day it held the lamp up; at night it became the light. The design asked an ordinary object to store a little of the evening and hand it back in the dark, with no battery, no sensor and no app. That remains rare in lighting design, and it is still worth trying.

The original post, summarized

Our October 2010 post introduced City Lamp as a mix of table lamp and night light, built around glow-in-the-dark stones that charge while the lamp is on. It is summarized here rather than republished.

Read the full guide
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Sources