Hasta La Ideas

Slovenian designer Nika Zupanc has referenced an essay by English writer Virginia Woolf to create a latticed writing room and furniture for French fashion house Dior.

When asked to create a piece for Dior‘s Esprit – Miss Dior exhibition, Nika Zupanc used Modernist writer Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay A Room Of One’s Own as a starting point for a small pavilion that a wearer of the Miss Dior fragrance could use to write in.

“The text has come to symbolise women’s emancipation, which detailed the material conditions that restricted women’s access to writing,” Zupanc told Dezeen. “It conveyed the idea that a woman capable of writing always needed money and space for herself.”

With this in mind, she designed a small sanctuary that a woman could use for writing books, poems and letters, or simply reflecting.

“I set out to transpose extremely feminine codes to another scale, taking things into a more serious sphere that was gigantic and impressive,” she explained. “This spawned the idea of a pavilion designed like a solitary bubble, the ideal place for dreaming, for escape, for creation.”

Raised up on pointy legs at each corner, the wooden lattice structure extends up to five and a half metres above the ground and over the space to create a small room accessed from a small set of steps.

“The simple structure in hand-extruded black meshed wood required 1400 hours of joinery work alone,” said Zupanc. “The idea was to get as close as possible to the imagery of caned furniture.”

The designer integrated Miss Dior motifs such as the bow, the pale pink colour and lattice pattern into the elements of the project. Translucent pink curtains that veil the entrance are the same colour as the perfume liquid.

These match the pink metal legs of a chair, which extend up and curve around to form the shape of a bow. A scaled-down version of the wooden lattice is used for the seat.

The chair and a simple writing desk furnish the space, with a version of Zupanc’s bell-shpaed Lolita lamp for Dutch brand Moooi in a cooper pink edition suspended above.

Zupanc was one of 15 designers and artists asked by curator Herve Mikaeloff to contribute to the exhibition celebrating the perfume, which will be shown in the Galerie Courbe at the Grand Palais in Paris from 13 to 15 November.

Read on for more information from the designer:

Room of One’s Own
Nika Zupanc for Miss Dior

“That heady feeling when you encounter a fragrance, blown up into a larger-than-love object. An homage to Virginia Woolf, it has just enough space for the very fabulous but utterly basic tools needed for heart searching – a table, chair and lamp. A metaphysical sanctuary with emancipatory potential” – Nika Zupanc.

All women long for a room of their own where they can write happy endings to gloomy affairs or short messages full of emoticons, a very private place indeed. It seems all of this room searching ended in a splash of perfume, creating that heady feeling of being in a bubble. By blowing it up a fairytale-like pavilion materialises. An invitation to hide and seek.

As an homage to Virginia Woolf, there is just enough space for the very fabulous but utterly basic tools needed for heart searching – a shiny table, chair and lamp. However, it is the staggering height taking a cue from the Venetian piano nobile that needs to be filled up with cravings and whispers. The wooden wall carved in the signature Miss Dior quilting brings transparency and a hint of a doubt. The realness of this larger-than-love object becomes questionable. Much alike that of a fragrance, the presence, depth and dimensions of which are merely in your oh so captivated head.

Miss Dior Chair

There is something daring in this object of controlled prettiness. The connotations that a bow has to live up to – that of a surprise, a gift, of immaculacy – are all but forgotten here. Taking it back to its simplicity and plain knotted shape a bow is a bow is a bow. Its odd pink frivolity is counterbalanced by the reserved metal frame and its brave new function, that of a sitting tool for those heroic enough to wear their heart on their sleeve.

The post Room of One’s Own writing pavilion
by Nika Zupanc for Miss Dior appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2012: Slovenian designer Nika Zupanc presented a set of outdoor furniture and lamps like huge pink bubbles at Spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan.

The Summertime collection includes folding chairs with metallic pink frames and black leather seats, and a table with turnkeys at the sides so the top flips upright to become a blackboard.

The Bubble lamps are blown from pink glass with black holders and come in 45 or 60cm diameters.

See more work by Nika Zupanc on Dezeen here.

Bubble lamps were also presented by Swedish designers Front at Spazio Rossana Orlandi, although theirs blow actual soap bubbles every few seconds – check it out here.

The Salone Internazionale del Mobile took place from 17 to 22 April. See all our stories about Milan 2012 here, and check out photos on Facebook and Pinterest.

Top image is by Saša Hess. Product photos are by Dragan Arrigler.

Here are some more details from Zupanc:

Another year, and a bunch of new poems for taking Milan out of its comfort zone. This time, Nika Zupanc is bringing with her a squat of innocent looking pieces that mindfully explore the limits of the industry when it comes to emotional effect and the juxtaposition of materials.

Zupanc has no intention of taking anything lightly so she makes something as forgiving as summer a hostage for the quest of finding novel expressions to transgress the rationalism, utilitarism and practical common sense. To accomplish this, she uses her poetic judgment, inner battles with stereotypes and long-lasting affairs with technologies.

The ultimate design repertoire, consisting of a lamp, a chair and a table, are now taken into a completely wild territory: the summery outdoors. Numerous interpretations of their generic nature equip the objects with a disturbing beauty and defamiliarization of collective summer memories brings an uncanny allure to the Summertime collection. The Bubble lamps are made of an extraordinary pink glass, produced by Vistosi brand with centenary tradition in glass of Murano for Nika Zupanc. But the flourish blow up of rosa antico is what makes them an intruder to the mise-en-scène of dying glory of Lord Byron’s Venice. Foldable Summertime chairs with their red gold embroidered seat cushions are unsettlingly engaging, while the Summertime table in its noir surface and toy-like winding mechanism hides the potential of an impromptu blackboard or a mirror, your own private vanity fair.

Summertime

The sweet feeling of forever and the permanent bitter lack of nowness are the main characteristics that Nika Zupanc extracts from summer and multiplies in her objects du jour.

The Summertime pieces are stripped down to pure form, to their utilitarian value only to be inflated with poetic longing.

In the quest of finding new ways to transgress the practical common sense and to test its limits of emotive effects, Zupanc argues technologies and ways predominantly associated with the so called boys club and their playground. To accomplish this, she uses her poetic judgment, inner battles with stereotypes and long-lasting affairs with technologies.

The repertoire with which Nika Zupanc likes to play hard consists of a lamp, a chair and a table. A true classic is this time taken into a completely wild territory: the summery outdoors, resulting in numerous interpretations of their generic nature. The iconic summer elements and sounds of seagulls have to survive in a new context. Defamiliarization of viewer’s perception of these memories is something that brings an uncanny allure to the collection.

The Bubble lamps are made of an extraordinary pink glass, produced by Vistosi brand with centenary tradition in glass of Murano for Nika Zupanc. But the flourish blow up of rosa antico is what makes them an intruder to the mise-en-scène of dying glory of Lord Byron’s Venice. Foldable Summertime chairs with their red gold embroidered ancors and tubular metal frames are unsettlingly engaging, while the Summertime table in its noir surface and toy-like winding mechanism hides the potential of an impromptu blackboard or a mirror, your own private vanity fair.

Bubble lamp – a natural born intruder

Taking Venetian street lamps for a hostage of its poetic needs is what you will come to expect from this illuminator of the most mischievous kind. That it unprecedentedly blows up the proportions of Murano glass and does so in pink implies its role of an invader to the mise-en-scène of Lord Byron‘s Venice. Perfectly shaped, it silently glows with no buzz or fuzz, like it is just waiting for the next vaporetto. Its misplaced beauty is noticed instantly, even from across the room.

Materials: glass, metal
Glass blowing produced by Vistosi brand with centenary tradition in glass of Murano.
Colours: pink glass, black lamp holder
Lamp diameter: 60 and 45 cm

Summertime chair – the disruption of the outdoors

With its strong foldable tubular metal frame it could have been just another well-behaved object, resisting the demanding life in lush gardens, however, it has a more subversive role to play. Dipped in red gold colour it brings an uncanny allure to the sweet tackiness of summer memories. In the meantime the embroidery of an iconic summer visual, an anchor, stirs up a palette of novel connotations, finally allowing you to have an affair with this post-suburban bad boy gone red gold.

Materials: tubular metal frame, shark outdoor textile, embroidery
Colours: black upholstery, red gold frame

Summertime table – an afternoon painted noir

Designed as a surface of purification and temptation, it makes a staggering first impression and a lifelong obsession. Of course it can take all the challenges of a sleek coffee table, but its toy-like winding mechanisms hint at the potential of switching perspectives. On the one side it is, how very cerebral, an impromptu blackboard for taking down emotional bits and bobs. On the other, your own private vanity fair with a full length mirror, waiting for the first blink of an eye.

Materials: tubular metal frame, enameled tin plates, mirror foil
Colours: blackboard, red gold legs

Milan 2010: Dezeen are in Milan today where the design shows are underway, including this pavilion covered in wooden windmills by Slovenian designer Nika Zupanc. (more…)