VL 45 Radiohus: Vilhelm Lauritzen's Broadcasting House Lamp

Vilhelm Lauritzen is the quieter name in Danish modernism, and the VL 45 Radiohus is the piece that keeps his drawing hand in circulation. The shade was made for Radiohuset, the broadcasting house he designed in Copenhagen, and it now hangs in ordinary rooms in four glass colours and sits on tables with a battery inside. This is how the shape travelled from that building to the cordless lamp on the shelf today.

A broadcasting house designed down to its light fittings

Lauritzen took on Radiohuset, the home of Danish radio in Copenhagen, in the second half of the 1930s, and the building was finished in the middle of the following decade. It was conceived as a complete work: the plan, the concert hall, the panelling, the door furniture and the lighting were all part of one job, and the fittings were developed with Louis Poulsen rather than bought in.

That brief explains how the lamps behave. A radio building is full of long working hours, corridors, studios and offices where light has to be steady and unobtrusive. Lauritzen's answer was not the layered geometry Poul Henningsen was refining at the same firm. He worked with soft, swelling volumes of glass and metal that hold the light inside the shade and release it evenly, which is why his fittings read as calm rather than technical.

The VL 45 Radiohus Pendant is the clearest survivor of that programme. Louis Poulsen dates the design to around 1941, and the profile has not been redrawn: a rounded glass body, slightly wider than it is tall in feeling if not in millimetres, gathered into a brushed brass fitting at the top.

What the glass actually does

The shade is mouth-blown in three layers, glossy on the outside with a white inner side. On the opal version the inner layer is polished white opal, which is why that colourway looks almost solid when the lamp is off and turns into an even white glow when it is lit. The coloured versions, pale yellow, pale rose and amber, keep the same white interior, so the colour sits on the surface of the glass while the light leaving the bottom stays warm and neutral.

Sizes follow the same logic as the rest of the Louis Poulsen catalogue. The Ø 175 measures 175 x 246 x 175 mm and weighs 2.9 kg, which suits a bedside, a hallway, or a row of three over a kitchen counter. The Ø 250, at 250 x 328 x 250 mm and 4.4 kg, has enough presence to carry a small dining table by itself, and there is a Ø 370 for rooms with height to fill. Light sources are modest: E14, maximum 20 W in the Ø 175, and E27, maximum 100 W in the Ø 250, IP20 and indoor only, with a 4.4 m white fabric cord and canopy supplied.

One detail is worth knowing before you hang it. The brass fitting is untreated, so it will darken and mottle over the years rather than staying bright. That is intended, and it is the same decision Louis Poulsen makes on the brass parts of the VL 38.

VL 38: the same hand, on a stem and on a wall

Radiohuset produced more than one fitting, and the VL 38 Table Lamp is the one that most people meet first. Its rounded, tiltable shade sits on a slender curved brass stem, in powder-coated aluminium in either black or white, and it stands 380 mm high on a 135 x 175 mm footprint at a solid 5.1 kg. Louis Poulsen relaunched it in 2016 with a built-in LED of 9.6 W at 2700 K, a switch in the stand with two light levels and a 4 or 8 hour timer.

The VL 38 Wall Lamp is the same fitting turned towards the wall, at 135 x 190 x 290 mm and 2.4 kg, with the shade on a curved brass arm and the switch on the rear housing. It appeared in Louis Poulsen catalogues in the 1940s, returned with LED in 2016 and gained a black edition in 2017. Both versions run a 3.3 m cord to an external LED driver with a plug, which matters if you are planning a pair either side of a bed and want to think about where the cords will fall.

The same shade, without a socket

The most recent chapter is the VL 45 Radiohus Portable Lamp, which takes the pendant shade off the ceiling and stands it on a small base. The proportions stay close to the Ø 175 pendant at 175 x 275 x 175 mm, and the white opal version weighs 2.4 kg, the pale rose and pale yellow versions 5.0 kg.

Two changes distinguish it from the hanging version. The brass is aged, with a hairline finish and a lacquer over it, so it arrives already dark instead of developing its own patina, and a genuine leather strap runs over the top so the lamp can be carried in one hand. Inside is a built-in LED of 5.4 W at 2700 K, dimmed by touch and charged over USB-C with a 1.5 m angled cable. The glass does the job it always did, softening a small source into a glare-free pool, while the battery removes the one thing that fixed the original in place.

If you are weighing the hanging and cordless versions against each other for the same room, our guide to the VL 45 Radiohus Pendant and Portable Lamp goes through that decision in detail.

The family at a glance

Living with a Lauritzen light

These are working lamps before they are objects, and they reward being placed as such. Hang the Ø 250 pendant roughly 60–70 cm above a dining table so the glass sits below eye level for seated guests and the brass fitting stays out of the sightline. Over a kitchen counter, the Ø 175 repeats well in twos or threes at even spacing, and its 20 W maximum keeps the row from becoming harsh at close range.

For reading, the VL 38 does something the pendant cannot: the shade tilts, so the light can be aimed at a page rather than spilling across the whole surface, and the two light levels and the timer make it easy to leave on late. The wall version frees the bedside table entirely, which is often the deciding factor in a small bedroom.

A practical note on finish. The untreated brass on the pendant and on the VL 38 will change, quickly at first around the parts your hands reach, then more slowly. The aged-brass portable starts dark, so a mixed group evens out over a few years rather than immediately.

Lauritzen's work is easy to underrate next to the mathematics of the PH shades, but it has held up for the same reason: he began with how light should reach a person in a room, then found a shape for it. See the full Louis Poulsen collection for the rest of that catalogue, from the Radiohus fittings to the designs that came after them.