Lighting the way for sustainable design
New Zealand’s best known furniture designer David Trubridge celebrates 20 years of his iconic pendant light
4 min
David Trubridge is not one for standing still.
Whether it’s finding his own path in seldom explored parts of the world, or reviewing the production processes of his internationally recognised lighting range, the English-born designer is, it would seem, in a constant state of movement.
That’s not to say he is always working.
For Trubridge, who has made his life in Aotearoa New Zealand, taking time to explore areas as diverse as Antarctica and Iceland through to Patagonia and remote parts of Australia, is about giving himself time just to be.
In Australia recently to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his emblematic Coral light at the Sydney Mondoluce store, as well as their affiliates in Brisbane and Hobart, he made time to take a hike through Tasmania.
“I need that ability to recharge,” he says. “I love to get right off the trail because when you stick to the path, there’s a safety factor where you know you will always find your way back.
“I want to find my own course, and see where it leads me. That’s my design philosophy too.”
Trubridge’s path to success is the stuff of legend. A self-taught designer and furniture maker, he studied naval design and had already enjoyed professional success on a small scale while living in the UK, initially creating pieces of furniture for his family and smaller clients before expanding to commissions for significant sites such the Victoria & Albert Museum and St Mary’s Cathedral In Edinburgh.
In the 1980s, Trubridge and his wife Linda decided to sell their house, buy a yacht and set sail with their two children, arriving in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1985. By 1988, he had exhibited at the National Furniture Exhibition at Auckland Museum.
As his opportunities expanded, the Trubridges sold their yacht in the early 1990s, using the money to fund building their own home — and a studio for David. Local interest in their house was such that Trubridge went on to design a number of homes in the area.
Designs for more furniture followed, notably, the Body Raft bench, which Trubridge took to the Milan Furniture Fair in 2000, where it was picked up by Italian design powerhouse Capellini.
Interested in the applications of plywood but, Trubridge turned his attention to lighting, resulting in the Coral design. Again, Trubridge made the trip to Milan in 2004, where it was warmly received — and an ‘overnight success’ story was born.
”I was a guy in a shed in the backyard when Capellini picked up the Body Raft bench,” he says. “The market for handmade furniture in New Zealand was very small and I was looking for a bigger market.”
Twenty years on, the Coral design has been joined by a range of biophilic pendant lights, including the Toru, the Navicula and the Kōura. All made from bamboo plywood and shipped out to clients in kit form to reduce the amount of packaging and space required, the lights are designed to be both sculptural and throw shadow patterns.
While the lights are highly successful commercially, it’s evident that Trubridge continues to strive for improvement, particularly in terms of environmental impacts.
“The design process does not really change much for me,” he says. “It is more important for me where we source the materials,” he says. “A lot of the embodied energy you can’t recycle. I would like to source a new material that is of our land, that is compostable and recycled. I’ve been looking at New Zealand flax which is very fibrous, like hemp.”
In the meantime, he has eliminated almost all plastics from the production process in recent years and he is exploring energy efficient lighting options beyond LEDs. For every Toru light sold, $50 goes to Sustainable Coastlines, a New Zealand charity committed to keeping the country’s beaches clean and plastic free.
While there is still much work to be done in terms of sustainability, Trubridge is hopeful.
“There is an awful long way to go but the mood is there, I think. There will be some big changes,” he says.
“We are trying to achieve sustainability and we are working towards it. We are always trying to improve and do better. How can we supply the things that people need that have the least impact?”
Only time — and more work — will tell.
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Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
4 minA sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.
The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.
The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.
This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.
The debt behind the AI build-out
Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.
Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.
JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.
The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.
That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.
A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.
When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.
Inflation changes the calculation
September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.
The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.
CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.
Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.
Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.
The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.
China adds another source of pressure
Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.
Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.
The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.
That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.
A reset rather than the end of the boom
The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.
What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.
The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.
More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.
For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.
Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.
The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.
Fact box
Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent
Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent
Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent
SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent
US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually
Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion
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