In the Middle of Golden Sands

A broad plane of fine grains where you can’t iden­ti­fy the begin­ning or end. A hori­zon dis­ap­pear­ing in a sea of sand, gen­tly shaped by the wind into curved waves, with salt crys­tal­iz­ing into cal­ci­fied shapes and an occa­sion­al green oasis formed by the tough­est of plants. For some, a monot­o­nous or pos­si­bly even dan­ger­ous image of an envi­ron­ment full of chal­lenges; for oth­ers a sym­bol of adven­ture and a source of inspiration.

In Kuwait, these are the scenes of most land­scapes. Desert cov­ers most of the mere 18,000 sq kilo­me­ters of this state’s ter­ri­to­ry. You’ll find it every­where, with the excep­tion of the Al-Jahrā oasis in the west­ern end of Kuwait Bay and a few fer­tile lands in the south­west and in coastal areas. No won­der locals have such a deep rela­tion­ship with the desert. In Kuwait, you learn to love it.

SEARCHING FOR GIFTS
OF NATURE

This desert sym­bol is so pow­er­ful that an homage to its scenery and unique esthet­ic became the cen­tral theme of
a cus­tom-built light­ing for the Behbe­han­i­fam­i­ly res­i­dence in the cap­i­tal, Kuwait City. The design of the Fruits of Desert instal­la­tion required a con­nec­tion to the con­text of a typ­i­cal local land­scape, as well as the artis­tic her­itage of the region.

Because Kuwait has a great tra­di­tion of cal­lig­ra­phy, which is one of the longest-main­tained forms of artis­tic expres­sion there, design­er Ste­fan Mihailović drew inspi­ra­tion from its flu­id and organ­i­cal­ly shaped lines. He blend­ed all inspi­ra­tion into a unique light­ing instal­la­tion based on the con­trast of a place both parched and fer­tile. Explain­ing the back­ground of the cre­ation of this light­ing, he says, “I tried to imag­ine the peo­ple who lived here in the past, decades before us, before Kuwait became one of the rich­est coun­tries in the world. I envi­sioned how they sur­vived and how, in such a hos­tile land as a desert, they had no oth­er choice but to depend on the gifts of nature. I cap­tured that hope­ful moment when fruits appear, as they float above an unusu­al tree.”

OASIS IN THE
DESERT

His artis­tic inter­pre­ta­tion of pre­cious desert fruit became the sym­bol of the unique moment of fer­til­i­ty in the scorched land, addi­tion­al­ly watered by the ben­e­fi­cial rain, rep­re­sent­ed by crys­tal drops lev­i­tat­ing some 5 meters above the instal­la­tion. The glass sculp­ture inten­tion­al­ly doesn’t imi­tate a par­tic­u­lar plant, rather it works with ref­er­ences to a vari­ety of fruit and nut trees. The design­er says “I con­nect­ed the con­cept of fer­til­i­ty with the image of a fruit sim­i­lar to a chest­nut, pis­ta­chio or sun­flower seed. I sketched the ideas and from the begin­ning, they formed into the shape of crack­ing balls. They best expressed the essence of the theme and pre­vent­ed it from becom­ing too monot­o­nous and obvious.”

HUNDREDS OF
AMBER SHADES

The low­er sec­tion of the sculp­ture con­sists of 277 cus­tom-made glass com­po­nents from Czech crys­tal that organ­i­cal­ly shape and encase the branch­es. The fruits are in clus­ters of ten, rang­ing from already opened to still ripen­ing and closed. The imag­i­nary ripeness of the fruit is fur­ther enhanced by inter­nal light­ing, anoth­er para­phrase of life inter­twined into Mihailović’s design. The design­er had the larg­er fruit made by AJETO glass­works in Nový Bor, part of Lasvit edi­tions, from white opaque glass that has a slight­ly gold­en lay­er on the inside of the com­po­nents. Some small­er glass fruits are dif­fer­ent in tone and the entire instal­la­tion is dom­i­nat­ed by amber tones.

The upper seg­ment of the sculp­ture, rep­re­sent­ing rain, reflects the same col­or schemes. It is notable that the 128 rain drops are not depict­ed tra­di­tion­al­ly as a teardrop shape with round­ed bot­tom and point­ed top. They are shown as drops in the tra­jec­to­ry of their move­ment, resem­bling diverse­ly long nar­row drip­stones. “This sculp­ture has suf­fi­cient breath­ing space sur­round­ing it to func­tion as the cen­ter­piece of the inte­ri­or,” the design­er explains.

“Both day­light and arti­fi­cial light enhance the over­all impres­sion from the instal­la­tion and draw atten­tion to the beau­ty of hand-made glass at any time of the day. The rays pass through trans­par­ent crys­tal and high­light its ele­gance, while the inner light­ing shines from with­in, cre­at­ing a warm and friend­ly atmos­phere. These two effects may be com­bined to achieve a var­ied atmos­phere.” Upon the own­ers’ request, Ste­fan Mihailović com­ple­ment­ed the sculp­ture of the mag­i­cal bush with anoth­er light­ing sculp­ture locat­ed near­by in the liv­ing room above the din­ing table. He com­posed it of 14 meters of branch­es and 86 orig­i­nal glass com­po­nents. These light­ing sculp­tures sup­port one anoth­er, cre­at­ing a uni­fied look, as well as pre­sent­ing indi­vid­ual elements.

SPACE FOR
MEDITATION

Because the desert land­scape sig­nif­i­cant­ly affects Kuwait’s archi­tec­ture, most hous­es have a rec­tan­gu­lar shape arranged around a cen­tral court­yard. Sim­i­lar­ly, in this fam­i­ly res­i­dence, the court­yard pro­vides an enclosed, yet com­fort­ably opened space, shield­ed from the wind and direct sun­light of the scorch­ing desert cli­mate. This pro­vides a space for qui­et con­tem­pla­tion – while enjoy­ing the view of the orig­i­nal Fruits of Desert glass sculp­ture. The design­er also care­ful­ly added a chan­de­lier from the Cipher Col­lec­tion by Yabu Pushel­berg that the inte­ri­or design­er placed over the med­i­ta­tion foun­tain feature.

STEFAN MIHAILOVIĆ orig­i­nal­ly stud­ied fur­ni­ture and inte­ri­or design at the Mendel Uni­ver­si­ty in Brno, Czech Repub­lic. At the time, he pri­mar­i­ly worked with wood, plas­tics and met­als. Dur­ing his doc­tor­al stud­ies, he joined the Lasvit offices in Lon­don for his stay abroad, serv­ing as the right hand of the senior design­er. After three years, he estab­lished him­self as an inde­pen­dent design­er and from 2017 worked in Sin­ga­pore as a senior design­er of cus­tom-made light instal­la­tions. On aver­age, he cre­ates two projects per week and this res­i­dence was one of his first projects as an inde­pen­dent design­er. He’s cur­rent­ly been with Lasvit for sev­en years, liv­ing and work­ing in Brno, Czech Republic.