Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: designers including Maarten Baas, Arik Levy and Maxim Velčovský introduce their new pieces for Lasvit in this movie filmed at the Czech lighting company’s Emotions show in Milan earlier this week.

Lasvit launched nine new collections at its Emotions show in Milan, including designs by a host of international designers as well as a series of kinetic sculptures by the company’s in-house team.

Czech designer Maxim Velčovský, who is also the company’s art director, created a series of hanging glass lamps called Frozen, which are created by pouring molten glass over a dome-shaped mould and left to cool.

“I was very much inspired by nature, when water becomes ice,” he says of the lamps, which are displayed in a cluster with drops of water running down them. “People are not sure whether they are looking at ice or glass, so they they knock on the lamp trying to figure it out.”

Dutch designer Maarten Baas created a modular chandelier called Das Pop using his signature Clay method in which a synthetic clay is moulded around a metal frame.

“It’s made all by hand and with Lasvit’s craftsman we also made hand-blown lightbulbs,” he explains. “Das Pop is one of my favourite Belgian bands, which is where the name comes from.”

Arik Levy designed a series of simple crystal-shaped pendants, which are available in a variety of different colours and opacities.

“We get reflections off the facets, even when the light is off,” he says. “When it’s on and when it’s off it always stays beautiful.”

The show also features the first glass chandelier by Daniel Libeskind. Called Ice, the piece is made up of clear glass cells blown into angular moulds, creating sharp, icicle-like forms.

“When you blow crystal, it’s typically bubbly and round,” says the American architect’s son, Lev Libeskind. “Our language has always been more angular and sharp. So we said, “What would happen if we took our sharpness and impose it on the glass?” The result provides a really interesting counterpoint between material and form.”

Lasvit’s Emotions show also features two moving glass sculptures, including a hanging lotus flower designed by Petra Krausová, which opens and closes in time to music and is controlled by an iPhone app.

Visual artist Jakub Nepraš also created a sculpture made from shards of glass shaped like a tree, onto which  a series of digital images are projected.

“There is craftsmanship, there is poetry behind each collection and this year there is also a lot of technology on show,” explains Lasvit founder and president Leon Jakimič. “I believe we are the first company to combine glass art with really advanced technology.”

Lasvit’s Emotions show, which also features designs by Michael Young and Czech designers Jan Plechac and Henry Wielgus, is at Office Stendhal on Via Stendhal in Milan and is open from 10am to 8pm until 13 April.

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craftsmanship with advanced technology” appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2013: these lamps by designer Arik Levy for glass firm Lasvit filter white light through red, green and blue bottle-shaped pendants.

The Jar RGB collection, for Czech glassware company Lasvit, comprises a series of bottle-shaped vessels designed to hang together in groups of three or seven.

Light is emitted through one translucent white glass lamp, while the coloured pieces made from clear glass hang alongside to create a form of RGB colour mixing.

Arik Levy unveiled the collection at Lasvit’s exhibition at Via Stendhal 35 in the Tortona district of Milan last week. The designer also showed a collection of wooden furniture inspired by traditional Japanese footwear for British brand Modus at EDIT by Designjunction.

Other Lasvit products on show in Milan included a series of vases and lamps inspired by patchwork quilts by Japanese design studio Nendo.

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Here’s a short description from Lasvit:

Jar RGB – Arik Levy

Jar RGB is a lighting project connecting thin colourful glass blowing techniques and the idea of RGB colour mixing. Using white glass for one of the hanging jars allows it to turn into a large light bulb generating the light for the entire fixture.

Above: photograph by Dezeen

Observing one jar through another and the space surrounding them gives one a unique and everlasting discovery of colour superimposition.

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for Lasvit appeared first on Dezeen.

Arik Levy‘s contribution to the Digital Crystal exhibition at London’s Design Museum in an interactive installation that uses visitors’ body movements to mutate computer-generated crystals (+ movie).

In Osmosis Interactive Arena, visitors enter a darkened room with a screen at one end. By stretching an arm or hopping to one side, for example, they can mutate the crystals on screen in unpredictable ways.

Israeli-born and Paris-based designer Levy was inspired by the idea that a master jewel cutter can predict the shape of a cut stone but not how it will interact with the light.

The installation “generates unexpected results that one cannot create with conventional tools or intellectualised creativity,” adds Levy.

Digital Crystal continues until 13 January 2013. We previously featured two other installations from the exhibition – a mechanical projector by London design studio Troika and a series of ‘light paintings’ made with spinning crystal beads by Philippe Malouin.

Other projects by Arik Levy we’ve featured on Dezeen include another crystal-inspired piece for Swarovski and a pebble-shaped device for opening bottles.

See all our stories about Arik Levy »
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Here’s a statement about the installation from Arik Levy:

Osmosis Interactive Arena

This installation creates a new bridge between the body movement, the eye, the sense of space and the impact that of all of these have over the geometric and structural mineral body.

This emotional interface transforms the object into a symphony of movement and colors, texture and density. We live on our planet not without impact, we engineer and progress not without transition… all of this generates unexpected results that one cannot create with conventional tools or intellectualised creativity.

This relates to Swarovski being a master cutter. Crystals get cut and formed by advanced tools and mechanical actions: the one and only parameter that we have a hard time to simulate or predict beforehand is the light and the way it will interact with the cut stone. This small place of incertitude is where my action takes its place and expression.

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by Arik Levy appeared first on Dezeen.

These lamps by Paris designer Arik Levy consist of dark grey ceramic vessels with brightly glazed interiors.

Called Well of Life, the series includes cylindrical shades in different sizes, plus a funnel-shaped one.

Wide tubes carry electrical flexes into the body of each lamp and offer another glimpse of the colour inside.

Watch our interview with Levy on Dezeen Screen and see more of his work here.

The information below is from Arik Levy:

In many traditions and in everyday life Light is Life… I wanted to combine this idea with the story of catching the light in a water bucket, from which I got the inspiration for the Well.

Arik Levy, who already experimented working with ceramic, sees this material as both magical and very primitive.

The material’s raw aspect, its endless shaping possibilities and the fact that one cannot foresee what will come out of the oven, are what attracted Levy in working with it.

The dialogue Arik was able to establish with the ceramic expert who manufactured the Well of Life pieces was an important part of the creation process.

The interaction between the material’s texture and the color, that becomes liquid when set in the light, makes each piece look as if it were in constant evolution.

The matte dark gray (elephant skin color) outside and the smooth yet strong coloured enamel inside create the contrast I was looking for and bring color into space: a soft color reflection will drop on the walls, while the ceiling will get a white light.

See also:

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Tesla by Kranen/Gille	Love the Bird by Marc Dibeh	Rhubarb by Emma Blanche

Israeli designer Arik Levy has designed a perfume bottle for fashion designer Issey Miyake. (more…)