Discover the house of designer, Michael Anastassiades

Welcome to the fourth instalment of the brand new Wallpaper* video sequence, The Stuff That Surrounds. Watch as we’re invited into the intriguing and idiosyncratic houses of creatives and makers (comparable to Veronica Ditting, Yasmin Sewell and Glenn Sestig), catching a glimpse of their inside lives by way of the objects with which they encompass themselves, all of which inform a narrative.

What’s the function of a designer? For Cypriot-born, London-based Michael Anastassiades, it’s the pursuit of making issues that have interaction with numerous sensibilities. ‘You’ve got the duty to permit an object to talk to many alternative folks with many alternative opinions,’ he says.

This sensitivity is obvious within the designer’s poetic, minimalist lighting and objects, the place readability meets a quiet sense of drama. Iconic items just like the IC Lights and String Lights that Anastassiades created for Flos, his Cell Chandeliers, and his Body assortment – launched in April 2025 throughout Milan Design Week – reveal a follow grounded in statement: ‘I at all times ask the query: why does one thing exist, why is it there, and what’s the pondering behind it?’ he says. This mindset, formed by Anastassiades’ coaching in engineering and industrial design, has carried by means of since he based his studio in 1994.

Anastassiades’ perception in designing brazenly and accessibly is mirrored in his house, the place he has lived since 1998. He doesn’t affiliate the house with a specific model, retains few belongings, and doesn’t see himself as ‘the everyday shopper.’ There aren’t any pointless objects right here: ‘Every thing may be very fastidiously chosen, and until one thing is completely appropriate, I desire to reside with out it.’

A portray by Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi speaks to Anastassiades’ connection to water, whereas a chair by architect and pal Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai stands out for its lightness and power, regardless of its unimaginable element. A Carl Auböck object entered the designer’s house after he visited the artist’s Vienna workshop, and a piano stool by Marc Camille Chaimowicz appeals exactly as a result of ‘it’s so far-off from something that [Anastassiades] would ever design [himself].’

That stated, the designer considers it necessary to encompass himself along with his personal creations. ‘It is a duty,’ he says. ‘You possibly can’t count on someone else to undergo one thing with out even having a private expertise of your individual merchandise.’

One in all his lights from the Fontana Amorosa sequence, for example, locations its supply on the backside of the fixture quite than the highest – an intriguing inversion. Anastassiades’ lounge is house to the Fowl Cage Cupboard, designed as an homage to architect Josef Frank. The home additionally accommodates a Tube Chandelier – Anastassiades’ earliest lighting design, described as ‘a easy train in making an attempt to droop three mild tubes in probably the most minimal approach’; prototypes from his Flooring Composition, together with the Spot Stool created for Herman Miller; and a Copper Mirror, echoing the designer’s perception that ‘mirrors communicate as a lot about mild as mild objects or mild sculptures do.’

In some ways, Anastassiades’ profession began by ‘testing’ his personal creations. Unable to search out objects that felt proper for his house, he realised that, as a designer, he may create them himself. ‘This marked the second I shifted some focus from conceptual work to addressing my very own setting,’ he says. ‘The primary items I created for the home, which had been later industrially produced, originated from this course of.’

Elsewhere in Anastassiades’ house: lingam stones naturally formed in India’s Narmada River, reflecting his fascination ‘with the connection of nature’; Poul Kjærholm’s PK12 chair, admired for the truth that ‘it would not have angles, however one way or the other all of the curves talk with one another’; and an egg bowl by Greek potter Eleni Vernadaki, whose work Anastassiades first encountered as an adolescent.

On this house – freed from extra and ruled by readability – Anastassiades’ perception in deliberate, purposeful design turns into tangible. That stated, his objects have garnered a ‘psychological layer’ that ‘enhances [his] relationship with [them]’. ‘The article stops being simply there to serve you,’ he says, ‘and turns into nearly like a companion.’

Director of pictures: Peter Butterworth
Digital camera operator: Mark James
Focus puller and digicam assistant: Curtis Blair
Gaffer: Alex Verber
Sound design: Indústries Sòniques
Color: DOMA Works
Colourist: Thomas Kumeling
Head of Video: Sebastian Jordahn