Editorial

How do peo­ple relate to their pri­va­cy and sur­round­ings? What dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from a space and which roles do unique­ness, sym­bol­ism or craft play? We dis­cussed all this with lead­ing inte­ri­or design­ers George Yabu and Glenn Pushel­berg in New York.

We also had an open dia­log with the Cam­pana Broth­ers who are part of the Lasvit design fam­i­ly since 2016. Togeth­er, we explored the design process in rela­tion to tra­di­tion­al crafts. In our exclu­sive talk we also entered Humberto’s and Fernando’s homes, minds and imag­i­na­tions. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by our long-term col­lab­o­ra­tor, Stephan Hamel, who also con­tributed to Spa­cial with an exten­sive essay on the forms of pri­vate space. Among oth­er sub­jects, Hamel high­light­ed the strange dichoto­my of the seen and the care­ful­ly hid­den in our house­holds, as well as liv­ing as a spe­cif­ic expres­sion of one’s per­son­al­i­ty, sim­i­lar to fash­ion. An overview of res­i­den­tial instal­la­tions by Lasvit offers a glimpse of inte­ri­ors as mir­rors to who we real­ly are.

We also cel­e­brate the recent 90th birth­day of Vladimír Kopecký, the one-of-a-kind genius glass artist, pro­fes­sor and poet. He is renowned for turn­ing tech­ni­cal glass into a world­wide phe­nom­e­non and estab­lish­ing the tech­nol­o­gy of ‘ugly glass’ to the lev­el of a sophis­ti­cat­ed art­work, the exe­cu­tion of which is sec­ond to none. Expres­sive paint­ing on glass sur­faces is seen as a con­tro­ver­sial attack upon valu­able mate­ri­als: It caus­es a storm of emo­tions and is sure to raise your enthu­si­asm for years to come.

The dis­rup­tion of the con­cept of lux­u­ry is also the theme of the essay by Max­im Velčovský, Lasvit Art Direc­tor, react­ing to the Man­i­fest of Lux­u­ry by the Hun­gar­i­an philoso­pher and art deal­er Carl Las­z­lo. Laszlo’s text from 1943 is a time­less state­ment, chal­leng­ing the usu­al under­stand­ing of com­fort, asso­ci­at­ed only with finan­cial cap­i­tal. He sets this term into the broad­er con­text and uses its indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics as a spring­board to more pre­cise­ly define the essence of luxury.

This first edi­tion of Spa­cial Mag­a­zine was pro­duced under the aus­pices of a man no less rad­i­cal — Daniel Libe­skind, a world-renowned archi­tect and a mem­ber of the Lasvit design fam­i­ly since 2014. As a young­ster, Libe­skind was forced to leave his home in Łódź, Poland, and set off on a jour­ney into the unknown. In a dia­log with this cel­e­brat­ed vision­ary and philoso­pher of spaces, we intro­duce key con­cepts that link sto­ries in Spa­cial Mag­a­zine like a sil­ver thread. We’ll be glad if you find them inspi­ra­tional and con­tin­ue com­ing back to them.