10 Questions With. Michael Anastassiades
April 27, 2021
“Who
isn’t?” Michael Anastassiades replies, when asked if he is inspired by Alexander Calder, the American sculptor known for his mobiles. Last year, when named Maison & Objet Designer of the Year 2020, Anastassiades hypnotized curious onlookers with “16 Acts,” an installation of 16 mobile chandeliers. With small motors setting them in motion, the mobiles created a soothing geometric light show and memorable retreat from the busy tradeshow floor during the winter edition of the usually bi-annual Paris furniture fair (The Fall 2020 edition was canceled due to COVID-19).
Since founding his studio in 1994, the London-based Cypriot designer has worked with the likes of B&B Italia, Cassina, and Herman Miller. In 2007, he founded his namesake manufacturing label, in order to also produce his own lighting and objects and, as he says, “express my ideas in the most uncompromising manner.”
Electrifying Design: A Century of Lighting debuts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
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Illumination Through Design
The first electric light was invented in the early 1800s by chemist and inventor Humphry Davy (1778-1829). It was a transformative moment. Since then, lighting technology has developed at speed. Today, we can control lamps remotely from our mobile phones. Energy efficient lightbulbs are helping to reduce our carbon footprints. The concept has fascinated engineers, scientists, architects and designers worldwide.
âLighting design has transformed our daily lives and influenced major design movements over the past 100 years,â says said Gary Tinterow, Director at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The institution is launching a new large-scale exhibition on the subject, titled
Trashy, eclectic and collectible: Memphis and the joy of bad taste Rowan Moore
Memphis was a firework. Launched with a bang in 1981, with a party in Milan with 2,500 guests, it glittered and popped until its fragments fell to earth in 1987. Which possibly was always the plan, if there had been a plan. Memphis never sought immortality, nor the establishment of eternal verities to rule design for ever. It was about life lived in the moment – to the extent that inanimate objects can communicate such a thing – about the freedom to create and make mistakes.
David Bowie, an avid collector of the design collective’s work, spoke of “the jolt, the impact, created by walking into a room containing a cabinet by Memphis”. Its effect was, as he said, “visceral”, at least when it started. But its ice-cream colours, its doo-wop-Mesopotamian-Picasso-deco-iconic-ironic wonky eclecticism had, by the time it wound down, become a cliche of advertising agency reception a