• Home
  • Topics
    • Editorial
    • Leaders
    • Around the World
    • Lasvit World of Design
    • Essays
    • Guides
  • About
  • Contact
  • Buy magazine
  • Lasvit store
  • Home
  • Topics
    • Editorial
    • Leaders
    • Around the World
    • Lasvit World of Design
    • Essays
    • Guides
  • About
  • Contact
  • Buy magazine
  • Lasvit store
Spacial Magazine

In the Middle of Golden Sands

By: Danica Kovářová, Eva Slunečková Photo: Mojmír Bureš
#Around the World
Share on:

Design­er Ste­fan Mihailović staged a sto­ry about a desert bush that bears pre­cious fruit in a fam­i­ly vil­la in Kuwait City. His means of expres­sion are over four hun­dred orig­i­nal glass com­po­nents and more than six­ty meters of met­al branch­es. This poet­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of life-reju­ve­nat­ing rain and burst­ing fruit is proof that no task is too big for North-Bohemi­an glassworks.

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.

“From day one, I knew I want­ed some­thing to be installed on the ground. Nobody else was able to make it hap­pen, but LASVIT was able to tru­ly change the con­cept of a chan­de­lier, to become a ground fea­ture. It was a dif­fer­ent con­cept from what I knew and had seen, a new idea full of inspi­ra­tion,” says the own­er Ali Behbehani.

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.

With the sun­set and oncom­ing dark­ness, both Fruits of Desert sculp­tures gain a new dimen­sion of light and become cen­ter­pieces of the space. It’s as if the fruits come alive and burst open in front of us.

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.

The glass­mak­ing exe­cu­tion of the rain­drops is also mul­ti-lay­ered. They are not only clear or amber, the actu­al glass has a lin­ear pat­tern. Do they also remind you of the trace left behind a drop slow­ly com­ing down a window?

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.”

The inte­ri­or archi­tect who designed this pri­vate res­i­dence also select­ed one of Lasvit’s pen­dant lights from the Cipher col­lec­tion, designed by Yabu Pushelberg.

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.”

Again, this is not mere­ly an esthet­ic choice. The con­struc­tion of this chan­de­lier from ele­ments of cut glass and met­al might be seen as an abstract ref­er­ence to the tow­ers that are so ever-present in the city.

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.

Ste­fan Mihailović’s sketch­es show how the idea of a sym­bol­ic burst­ing fruit devel­oped in his head, as well as how it was pos­si­ble to trans­form it into a phys­i­cal shape.

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.

The light­ing sculp­ture above the din­ing table has branch­es spread fur­ther into the space and it’s also a lit­tle small­er com­pared to the object on the ground. The four­teen meters of met­al branch­es car­ry eighty-six glass components.

“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.

Design­er Ste­fan Mihailović admits, “Noth­ing excites me more than light enter­ing glass,” and his design reflects this pas­sion through the play of inten­si­ty of the inner light in alle­goric glass fruit in var­i­ous phas­es of bursting.

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.

Scroll to top ↑
← Getting To Know The Campanas
Instant Relaxation →
“From day one, I knew I wanted something to be installed on the ground. Nobody else was able to make it happen, but LASVIT was able to truly change the concept of a chandelier, to become a ground feature. It was a different concept from what I knew and had seen, a new idea full of inspiration,” says the owner Ali Behbehani.
With the sunset and oncoming darkness, both Fruits of Desert sculptures gain a new dimension of light and become centerpieces of the space. It’s as if the fruits come alive and burst open in front of us.
The glassmaking execution of the raindrops is also multi-layered. They are not only clear or amber, the actual glass has a linear pattern. Do they also remind you of the trace left behind a drop slowly coming down a window?
The interior architect who designed this private residence also selected one of Lasvit’s pendant lights from the Cipher collection, designed by Yabu Pushelberg.
Again, this is not merely an esthetic choice. The construction of this chandelier from elements of cut glass and metal might be seen as an abstract reference to the towers that are so ever-present in the city.
Stefan Mihailović’s sketches show how the idea of a symbolic bursting fruit developed in his head, as well as how it was possible to transform it into a physical shape.
The lighting sculpture above the dining table has branches spread further into the space and it’s also a little smaller compared to the object on the ground. The fourteen meters of metal branches carry eighty-six glass components.
Designer Stefan Mihailović admits, “Nothing excites me more than light entering glass,” and his design reflects this passion through the play of intensity of the inner light in allegoric glass fruit in various phases of bursting.

Discover more

Projects

Meet Cipher

Similar articles

PS Sending Flowers

Of Ice and Men

Nature In The Sky

In the Middle of Golden Sands

Oasis of Light and Sound

How Strong Can Thin Ice Be

Popular articles

Oasis of Light and Sound

The Elusive

Hand-Made Experiments

The Unexpected Symboll-ism of Fungi

Back to the Roots

Monumentality across Media and Sizes

Download latest issue
Spacial Magazine
Lasvit

© 2023 Spacial Magazine

Privacy policy

LASVIT s.r.o. Komunardů 894/32, Holešovice, 170 00 Prague 7, Czech republic

Website by: Sharp Objects

Around the WorldEditorialEssaysGuidesLasvit World of DesignLeaders