"On view at the London Design Festival 2010 at the V&A is Michael Anastassiades's Kinetic Light, swinging in the Norfolk House Music Room at the V&A, like a silent metronome. "I wanted to design something to suit the room," said the desiger.
Michael Anastassiades trained as a Civil Engineer and is an Industrial Design graduate from zhe Royal College of Art. After working as a freelancer for various design consultancies, he set up his own studio in 1994. Since then he has been developing his work as a combination of product, furniture and enviroment design - creating works which established a psychological dimension between objects and users.
For years Michael has produced his work in very limited quantities as editions of quality crafted pieces and small runs. In 2007 he set up a company to increase the availability of his objects. He travelled around the world and located small family run workshops to fabricate his pieces. The workshops were selected for their unique manufacturing skills and tradition in the use of materials."
I wanted to design something
to suit the room.
Michael Anastassiades
Kinetic Lights
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"Living in a historic R.M. Schindler apartment in Los Angeles may be architecturally desirable, but for designer Gabriel Abraham, it did have one drawback: "The walls and ceiling were made of plywood, so it was very hard to install lighting fixtures." Abraham found inspiration in a photograph of the Potence lamp that French modernist architect Jean Prouve designed in 1950 for his La Maison Tropicale, a prefab metal house design erected in the Congo. The Potence, which is nearly 7 feet long, has been reissued by Vitra and sells for $1,560.
Working on a more modest budget, Abraham crafted his own, smaller version of the wall-mounted swiveling lamp, shown in the Schindler apartment above.
"Friends got to like it, so I started to make them as gifts and it caught on," Abraham says.
Now he produces small quantities in Los Angeles. The bent-steel lamps are available in black, white, gray and a natural oil-rubbed finish with 3- or 4-foot arms ($375 and $450). He also builds custom sizes.
(lamps, unknown)
upcoming Feb 2010,
The authors were guided by the idea of a perfect workmanship. The simplicity of the structural elements stresses their functionality and the combination of the bright colours with the pale hue of the wood gives the object subtleness."
