So much has occurred within the 12 months since we final caught up with Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis of Objects of Frequent Curiosity, our Designers of the 12 months 2022. In 2022, the pair opened an 800 sq m manufacturing studio of their native Greece, the results of Romanian-born craftsman Ovidiu Colea donating the content material of his Lengthy Island Metropolis manufacturing facility to the pair, as he retired from the enterprise.
Leonidas Trampoukis and Eleni Petaloti, of Objects of Frequent Curiosity, photographed on the Lengthy Island Metropolis workshop of craftsman Ovidiu Colea
(Picture credit score: Tim Schutsky)
Petaloti, Trampoukis and Colea had been collaborating for a couple of years; in 2017, the three of them created a group of tableware titled ‘Relativity of Coloration’. Having labored between New York and Athens since launching Objects of Frequent Curiosity in 2015, Petaloti and Trampoukis had been flirting with the concept of opening one thing in Athens for some time. ‘From the beginning, we had needed to activate a relationship with Greek makers, to deliver one thing again to our nation,’ says Petaloti. ‘So we took Colea’s workshop and transported it to the Piraeus, an space of Athens that traditionally hosted lots of factories. Lastly, for the primary time, we can management our personal manufacturing, which can give us all the liberty on the planet for experimentation: it’s like a baby with a full Play-Doh set. Now we will do something.’
The primary venture produced by the Athens studio was ‘Chronos’, an exhibition curated by Milanese design consultancy Mr Lawrence at Design Miami 2022. Impressed by the idea of time, it featured a panorama that included three new lighting designs in resin, their ‘Polymorph Forged Aluminum’ lounge chair, and two ‘Metamorphic Rocks’, a ‘resting ingredient’ on wheels resembling the natural types of a rock. Finishing the scene had been two ‘Tube’ lights, a 2019 design that has since been included into a number of of their tasks. The calm atmosphere of the set was a response to what Petaloti calls ‘artwork truthful insanity’, because the duo created a ‘pocket the place guests might catch their breath and really feel they had been transported elsewhere’.
2023 is shaping as much as be a busy, thrilling 12 months for the follow: from 21 January 2023, they’re taking on Bergamo’s Piazza della Libertà, because the winners of a global competitors for the flagship set up of the Italian Capital of Tradition 2023, curated by Federica Sala. ‘It’s essentially the most important venture we have now labored on to date due to its scale and public presence,’ says Petaloti. The venture is near the pair’s beginnings as architects, and can characteristic an intervention on the imposing fascist-era Casa della Libertà, utilizing a serpentine gentle set up to attach the general public to the constructing, whereas the sq. will characteristic public seating made utilizing marble offcuts. ‘The sunshine prompts the façade, it’s like a parasitic sculpture that engages each a part of it with its environment,’ provides Petaloti. ‘Gentle is a celebration, a medium that brings folks collectively in a really elementary approach.’
Gentle is a recurring theme within the work of Objects of Frequent Curiosity: specifically, the ‘Tube’ lights have lent themselves to a number of interpretations of scale and performance. Created in three shapes, the lamps are, as Petaloti describes them, ‘like Lego, a set of modules that provides you infinite potentialities’. Completely different interpretations of the lamps featured within the designers’ takeover of the Noguchi Museum in 2021. ‘And now, with these three parts, we create this monumental public set up: they provide us most capability to make new tasks ranging from the identical work.’
One other signature ingredient of their oeuvre is the usage of iridescent surfaces. An opal resin would be the focus of an exhibition of latest work, made within the Piraeus workshop and introduced at Nilufar Gallery throughout Milan Design Week 2023. ‘We like working with iridescent surfaces as a result of they alter relying on the sunshine circumstances, the climate, how briskly the viewer strikes in entrance of it: you’ve got an ongoing dialogue with the items,’ she says. ‘They’re virtually dwelling creatures.’
Objects of Frequent Curiosity on judging the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2023
Tasked with judging this 12 months’s shortlists, they instantly singled out the Tigín Tiny Houses by Frequent Data, from the Life-Enhancer of the 12 months contenders: ‘We respect the reference to the outside and top quality of the inside for such a cellular home,’ they are saying.
Additionally they really feel strongly about passing the Designer of the 12 months baton to India Mahdavi: ‘We extremely respect that she will be able to go from tremendous elaborate, tremendous vibrant, tremendous intense environments to utterly white,’ says Petaloti. ‘To leap from a multicolour world to monochrome and nonetheless be capable of transmit your work and maintain your id by means of these utterly completely different expressions is an instance of her genius. However she can also be a really beneficiant and really sort individual, and supportive of younger designers. And that’s very important to us: it’s essential to focus on this within the design world. Kindness is a plus.’
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The winners of the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2023 are revealed within the February 2023 problem, accessible in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple Information +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* immediately (opens in new tab)
Supply: Wallpaper
