Designer: Klavs Rosenfalck in Architectural Digest, France. Photographer: Nicolas Matheus
Waves, shells, leaves, trees, animals, butterflies, caterpillars – nature’s living, curving, undulating shapes have inspired artists, poets and designers ever since time began. In the modern era, this timeless design aesthetic, as it applies to interiors and product design, has been given a new name: “biomorphic” and/or “biomorphism.” What does it mean, exactly?
Today, dear readers, we will take you on a tour of some of the beautiful new products that are on the market, exhibited at recent tradeshows in Milan, London, and New York, that show you the ways advances in technology have now empowered designers to interpret these timeless forms into creative luxury products and interiors for your homes.
Every innovation starts with a visionary who saw the *trend* long before others. In the case of biomorphic design, that visionary in our modern era is iconic furniture designer, Vladimir Kagan, now 88 and still lecturing about design, most recently in 2014 at Philadelphia University – according to his Wikipedia bio, here.
The sofa you see in the opening image of this post, of the recently restored Parisian interior featured in Architectural Digest, France and designed by designer Klavs Rosenfalck, is vintage Vladimir Kagan. His original designs are now highly sought after by discriminating collectors around the world.
Here is another image from this stunningly restored Parisian interior, designed by Mr. Rosenfalck, which shows his use of a biomorphically shaped red dining table in the dining room. All the architectural details by the way, are original. { And what about those herringbone wood parquet floors? So beautiful! }
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Now, let’s look at some more recent biomorphic designs that are *making waves* in the design world.
First up is the “Armadillo” bathtub [unfortunately named – given its stunning beauty! ] that is meant to reflect the layers of scales of an armadillo. It is shown here in London lit with LED lighting. These designs were part of a biomorphic design exhibit by Samsung Chemical SDI’s STARON division, meant to show designers attending the Sept. 2014 London Design Festival what types of shapes could be achieved with their solid surfacing materials. For more on this exhibit and the source of the images, click here.
Here is Samsung ‘s STARON *Whale* countertop and sink from the same exhibit.
4 years ago, at Paris’ Maison Objet exhibition tradeshow, Portugal’s Marco Sousa Santos caused a sensation when he showed his SHELL chair for the first time. Created just for this exhibition, he has gone on to found the Branco Lisboa brand, headquartered in northern Portugal. This is such a beautiful interpretation of biomorphism’s design aesthetic and we could see this chair being an iconic design collectible in the next 50 years. Could you?
In lighting, New Zealand based designer David Trubridge is one of the world’s visionaries leading the way with his stunning lighting and furniture collections based on nature, all using sustainable materials. Below is his BELLE pendant, where the light is mostly internal and the cutout pattern creates undulating, moody shadow play waves on the wall.
His website is beautiful and we encourage you to see it at http://davidtrubridge.com
This post on the design site, http://modenus.com, about his work, is also illuminating. The image below is one of Mr. Trubridge’s furniture designs, shown on Modenus.
One of the most exciting innovations in biomorphic design was unveiled at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City. Massachusetts based NERVOUS SYSTEM showed off their first cocktail table from an app they’ve developed that allows you to design any cell shaped cocktail table of your choice, and then they laser cut it and ship it to you. The larger holes are filled in with glass and the smaller ones are left open. All images, Inhabitat, here.
For more on NERVOUS SYSTEM, and the young woman and man who founded this incredible US based company, click here.
Lastly today, we want to share with you artist Teresita Fernandez’s gorgeous new installation at Madison Square Park, called Fata Morgana.
Here is Ms. Fernandez with her sculpture prior to installation.
Installed. Image Credit: Frank Webb
Nature, fueled by technological advancements, has now been brought to life for your homes, through the vision of artists, interior designers, product designers and industrial designers, all inspired by what is now possible to create, using her undulating, magnificent, timeless shapes and forms.
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Leslie Carothers
for
Leslie Hendrix Wood
Interior Designer
Midland, Texas
Founder, Hadley Court
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Gracious Living. Timeless Design. Family Traditions.
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