Milan Design Week: Mehrnoosh Khadivi x Pollini

I'm republishing today a feature I did for Dazed Digital about Mehrnoosh Khadivi's installations showcased at Pollini's boutique.

There is an interesting mix of technology and craftsmanship in the installations created by architect Mehrnoosh Khadivi, of London-based Craftwork Studio, for Milan’s Pollini boutique.

“Mirror Drop 1” is a kinetic wall hung geodesic dome à la Richard Buckminster-Fuller made of acid yellow mirrors that create light games, while “Wool Works” integrates natural wool and aluminium elements, fusing large scale decorative textile design with jewellery and macramé.

Both the pieces are handmade and hint at the high quality of the historical footwear brand founded in 1953 in Italy. Khadivi recently redesigned Pollini’s Via della Spiga concept store, housing all the collections of men and women’s footwear and accessories.

What inspired the “Mirror Drop 1” geodesic dome (any Richard Buckminster-Fuller references) and “Wool Works”?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: “Mirror Drop 1” is inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s domes and by the spirit behind the homemade 1960s dome structures at Drop City, the first American hippie community, built on the outskirts of Trinidad, Colorado, by a group of art students inspired by a Buckminster Fuller lecture. Here domes became associated with a new lifestyle and subculture: a mix of acid visions, political idealism and chopped out car top panels, Drop City became a stop off point for hundreds of hitchhikers on their way to the Haight-Ashbury hippie mecca in 1967, turning into the first rural hippie artist community. In 1967 the group, consisting of 10 core people, won Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion award for their constructions and had this commercial to promote the site that stated: “Kids, tear the top off your daddy’s car and send it, together with 10 cents in cash or coin, to Drop City, Colorado…”. “Wool Works” was instead inspired by Sheila Hicks and a fascination with combining different disciplines together. Playing with scale in an unexpected way creates something unexpected, so there is a strong visual interplay in this piece between graphics, materials and textures.

Both the designs are linked with geometry, what fascinates you about this discipline?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: Geometry is mainly concerned with shape, size and properties of space, so it is a branch of maths that most architects and designers rely on when they create. I personally love to play with patterns and shapes in my work as a starting point to a project. The geometry in both “Wool Works” and "Mirror Drop" however could not be more different: the former is concerned with lengths and measures that have been around since maths became man’s preoccupation, while the dome is a 20th century invention. What I love about both the pieces is how they can form infinite varieties of shapes and patterns. When I look at geodesic forms I am constantly intrigued by the way that simple triangular patterns are forced into three dimensional space and the many variations of shapes and patterns that are then possible.

Is this the first time you do such a project that reunites fashion and design during Milan Design Week?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: It is the first time I am showing in Milan and I am very happy to have this opportunity. I designed the store for Pollini on Via della Spiga very recently and it was only completed in Febuary of this year during Milan Fashion Week, so it is a fitting backdrop for the work.

What was the most challenging thing about designing the Via della Spiga concept store?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: The challenge was predominantly a spacial one and then one of producing a design that would work both for the men and women’s wear collections equally well. I was lucky in that we were given permission to enlarge and open up the little central window between the two large arched vitrines into a new entrance.

In the last few years the boundaries between fashion and architecture have often been eroded by collaborations between architects and fashion designers: would you ever design shoes or accessories for Pollini?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: If I was invited to I would love to work on accessories and shoes for Pollini. We actually did a concept shoe a couple of years back with a one-off handmade sample as part of a macramé project based on taking a single macramé knot and interpreting it in several ways using only black leather and rubber. The results were a plant holder in ‘60s-‘70s style in which the knot was part of the construction, a chair created employing a blown up knot and a pair of shoes where the knot was used as the base for the upper.