As the notional hub venue for London Design Festival, the Victoria & Albert Museum provides a prime location for large scale installations with the power not only to impress the international design community, but engage the wider general public. For this eleventh edition of the festival, the Canadian design brand Bocci was invited to create a chandelier that could deliver on both fronts.

Bocci creative director Omer Arbel responded with 28.280, a site-specific piece that cascades through the museum’s main atrium, a 30-metre void that cuts through the entire height of the mid-19th century building.

The installation is built around Bocci’s popular 28 pendants. The 28 pendants result from a complex glass blowing technique whereby air pressure is introduced into and then removed from a glass matrix, which is intermittently heated and then rapidly cooled. The result is a distorted spherical shape with a composed collection of inner shapes, one of which is made of opaque milk glass and houses a light source.

280 of these discreet 28 units were suspended by an erratic, vine-like, heavy copper suspension system that commands as much presence as the glass pieces it supports.

The chandelier will remain in place at the Victoria & Albert Museum until 21 November this year.
www.bocci.ca