Highlights from Milan Design Week 2011: Baccarat

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Highlights from Milan Design Week 2011: Baccarat

In the La Brera design district during Milan Design Week, Baccarat housed an exhibit of star designers who lent their vision to this beacon of iconic elegance and fractured light. The shifting soundscapes and the cascading rooms were like a beautiful haunted house, shadows on the wall conjuring dreams instead of nightmares.

The first lamp pictured is called Sora created by award-winning Kyoto born designer and craftsperson Eriko Horiki. She applies her skills and love of traditional Japanese Washi paper to her Senritsu (meaning melody or shiver) lantern in an east meets west glowing orb.

Baccarat - Sora - Eriko Horiki

The second is a highly conceptual candelabra chandelier by Phillippe Starck called the “Marie Coquine” which is topped by an umbrella and ends in a wooden handle. The structure itself rests on a tripod on wheels balanced by way of a punching bag. Not your run-of-the-mill construction. In the backdrop in this room, you could hear the sound of rain and thunder in the near darkness.

Marie Coquine by Phillippe Starck for Baccarat (Photo Credit: Chauncey Zalkin, What Women Make 2011)

In the third, shadows on the wall undulate like diamonds in a cave. These are the lamps of whimsical Italian designer Michele de Lucchi who through his long career where night has been his inspiration has designed for Memphis, Artemide, Olivetti, Deutsch Bank, Mandarina Duck and others.

at Baccarat, Milan 2011: Sfera - Michele de Lucchi - 'like diamonds' - (photo credit: Chauncey Zalkin, What Women Make 2011)

The light forest at the end imbued with the soft sound of crickets is the Jardin de Cristal by Yann Kersalé, a French lighting designer who has lent his hand to projects as diverse as Museé Quai Branley to the Lyon Opera House to Barcelona’s Agbar Tower, as well as countless other prestigious buildings around the world from Japan to Quatar.