Lift up

It may be a surprise that a home lift can be beautiful. What’s more it can be atmospheric, silent and sleek. It certainly doesn’t have to be a jolting, loud mechanism that hasn’t been thoughtfully integrated into a space. Enter Aritco.

Design Anthology UK recently visited the Swedish company’s headquarters to see how its newly launched HomeLift is manufactured. The first indication that Aritco takes design seriously is that it commissioned Alexander Lervik for the project. Up to then the designer had turned out furniture, lighting and personal accessories – but an elevator was new ground, and as Aritco hoped, he approached the brief with curiosity and an open mind.

What was the starting point? Alfred Hitchcock films, naturally. When Lervik began work on the designs for HomeLift, mood lighting and atmosphere were equally as important as technology in creating a lift that people would actually delight in using: “I looked at the project from a different angle because I wanted to treat it like a piece of furniture,” he says.

The result is a sleek, comfortable lift that is as pleasing to the eye as it is to ride; it would be at home in most minimal, contemporary living environments. To achieve this, Lervik considered every detail, from the ergonomics of the control panel, which includes a SmartSafety system with child locks, to the soft, recessed LED lighting along the walls and the ceiling – colour-changeable and controllable via smartphone – punctuated by Bolon flooring.

The experience starts with discreet, glazed double doors equipped with sensors. The walls are crafted from large panes of laminated, scratch-proof, acrylic glass with no visible screws or fixings, at a 10mm thickness which means they are totally customisable. HomeLift’s backlit wall is available in a range of nine patterns and colours, and each unit arrives with its own shaft so that installation in new and existing homes is fairly straightforward.  

“It took three years, from a blank sheet of paper to the final product,” says Lervik. “My ambition was to come up with the ultimate flexibility for consumers, who have to be able to identify with their choice of lift through a range of options in terms of materials and colours.”