Felt is a flexible insulating material owing its properties to the structure of pressed layers of animal hair. Quite a few artists and craftspeople love it for its characteristics: Joseph Beuys for example turned it in into one of his signature materials for some of his most iconic works such as his felt suit, widely considered as a major contribution to contemporary art.
Beuys may not be the main reference behind a project developed for the Pollini shop in occasion of Milan Design Week by London-based architect Mehrnoosh Khadivi, yet the material of choice and the desire to create a new shape for a simple three-dimensional object is definitely there.
Khadivi designed two lamps in raspberry red and black made with felt and characterised by a soft geometrical quality about them achieved through slitting the material to give it a fluid and flowing edge while retaining a solid and compact structure.
Entitled "Roll Up", this is the second installation Khadivi developed for Pollini this year and follows a larger one that the architect created in February to celebrate the brand's 60th anniversary.
How many installations did you do for the Pollini shop in the last few months and was it tricky to integrate them in the shop space?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: I did the Christmas window which was fun and really worked well; during Milan Fashion Week there was a big event which was both a presentation of the new collection and a project to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the brand. For this I built an enormous mountain of boxes - the top of which was a chaotic and tumbling peak where plenty of shoes from the archive were tumbling out of many boxes precariously. In this way you could get a peak here and a peak there of brand heritage while towards the base a sense of order came into play where we presented the new collection.
What inspired "Roll Up" and can you tell us more about the materials employed for this project?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: "Roll up" was really an accidental project - I was actually testing some cutting patterns on thick felt for a totally different project and, whilst doing the tests, I happened to cut a pattern which i knew could be developed for a shade. The material is so perverse as a basis for a lighting project as it is totally solid that it kind of pleased me. There are a fair few variations which are currently in development which I hope to present later this year. There is a simple geometry at play with the "Roll Up" version which I find both chic and simple to comprehend. The fact that this fabric can be further manipulated both in terms of colour and the addition of other material and in terms of how it is put together either in a really technical way or in a more garment-making approach is also intriguing; these developments will really be explored in future through a more in-depth fashion-related approach to this shape.
Did you have time to go around the Salone or the various collateral events - in your opinion what's the vibe like and have you seen anything really amazing?
Mehrnoosh Khadivi: I do have some time to go around the Salone and will also be taking in some of the events. I attended a few openings and the vibe was generally good but perhaps all a bit too over impressed with itself?! As far as content blowing me away by presenting something totally amazing, well, I have yet to come across it. I hope I do, but it seems there is always this approach of presenting old pieces (we all know them very well...) year after year that I also found in Miami in December and this is disappointing when you are here looking for new things. As far as new content - I seem to be more drawn to the genuinely hand-made and obsessional works during a week like this - maybe it is a knee jerk reaction to walking into space after space where "stone as landscapes translated via tables" or "reinvented chandeliers" seem to be the theme. But maybe later on today I shall take all that back as I come across some genuine progressive ideas in design - I certainly hope so!
All images courtesy of Mehrnoosh Khadivi/Pollini
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