Zaha Hadid
Internationally renowned architect Zaha Hadid once again pushed the boundaries of design in her collaboration with WonderGlass for this year’s Milan Design Week.
Fragmented geometry and bold fluid forms ripple through the wake of Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid’s ground breaking work. As the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, Hadid has worked on projects all over the world, including a collaboration with WonderGlass exhibited during Milan Design Week.
WonderGlass held its showroom in Milan’s Ventura, design district and the city’s historic centre, the grand Instituto dei Ciechi, an institute for the blind. WonderGlass focuses on interactive installations that can not only be seen but also be touched. Hadid’s Luma and Swarm pieces embodied this focus in their display in a dark room with translucent white curtains draping down from high ceilings.
Hadid Design endorses the traditional techniques of glass craftsmanship to explore solutions for futuristic and stylish projects; Luma and Swarm are no exception.
The seamless dialogue of subtle and elegant refractions onto organic surfaces is magnified by the presence of Swarm, a statement chandelier signed by Hadid’s London-based studio. Composed of black crystal volumes suspended in dynamic forms, the intricately layered spatial composition of the chandelier presents itself as a unified whole. From underneath, its separated crystal suspensions can be distinguished, emphasising unity without the restrictions of symmetry.
The Luma chandelier, is another sculptural composition of four tubular segments that follow a radial trajectory and dramatically transform into diamond-shaped luminaries to subtly diffuse light with their materiality. Informed by the precise mathematical principles that define natural surface tension, each individual glass segment has been hand-blown and celebrates the unrivalled logic and beauty found within nature.
Zahid’s new creations testify her focus on quality and exploration, and affirm the WonderGlass drive to find the point of balance between the innovation of the lighting industry, human sensibility and the frontiers of craftsmanship.
