Vancouver-based lighting firm AND offered two collections at Alcova throughout Milan Design Week, adapting their chandeliers to take a seat on the ground to respect the historic setting.
Lights flanked the partitions of a ground-floor room at Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, a 17th-century villa exterior Milan that’s one in every of two places for the year-long iteration of the Alcova design showcase.
The lights have been featured alongside a colourful platform rug from Italian model CC Tapis and a blue fiberglass couch from Turkish studio Uma Objects.
General, the lighting and furnishings set up was designed to distinction the historic finishes of the house, which has a domed ceiling with a fresco of the Greek fable of Daphne.
Co-founder Lukas Peet stated the situation was a problem as a result of they couldn't make any interventions within the partitions or ceilings.
“When you may't hold something confidently or work together with the partitions or the ceiling – that's a serious problem as a lighting model that works primarily with pendants,” he informed Dezeen.
This led the studio pair to launch new editions of two present gentle collections – the Vale and Collumn gentle collections. Initially conceptualized as chandeliers, the lights have been taken from their suspended context and positioned on the ground in modular configurations.
Vale has curved glass over a skinny gentle strip and makes use of an edge-to-edge connection. The studio created massive, free-standing sculptural constructions utilizing gentle, wrapping them like screens on two sides of the room.
The studio stated the Vale lights have been organized to behave nearly architecturally, as further partitions within the house.
The studio's different items have been from the Column sequence, which options thick multi-faceted blocks of glass positioned one on prime of the opposite and was knowledgeable by the classical Greek Doric column. Peet stated the lighting was organized to be like a “forest,” so folks visiting needed to work together with the lights and stroll round them.
“I feel they work collectively,” AND co-founder Caine Heintzman stated of the fashionable furnishings within the historic room. “The modularity of the lighting allowed us to adapt the set up to the house.”
Each designers joked that though that they had no concept concerning the house, the items ended up being in dialog with Daphne's fresco on the ceiling, as she represents crops, and the items have been organized as in the event that they have been “rising” from the ground.
Dozens of designers arrange items within the mansion and grounds of Villa Bagatti Valsecchi and at Villa Borsani, a secondary location in Alcova, only a few minutes' stroll from the primary.
Alcova co-founder Joseph Grima stated this yr's iteration options the primary residential places for the storefront.
He informed Dezeen that the situation, round 40 kilometers from Milan metropolis centre, was chosen to showcase the vital design exterior town – Villa Borsani was the house of Osvaldo Borsani, an vital mid-century Milanese architect and designer.
“We wished to make clear the truth that Milan is just not solely the middle – all these areas we all know very nicely – but additionally the entire space round it.”
The picture is by AND.
Alcova 2024 is offered between April 15-21, as a part of Milan Design Week. Try our information to Milan Design Week 2024 on the Dezeen Occasions Information for data on the various different exhibitions, installations and talks happening all through the week.