“This felt like a secret spot,” says designer Michael Anastassiades of finding his home and studio which overlooks the rail tracks of London’s Waterloo Station. “I didn’t mind the noise the trains made, I was more interested in the flow of people.” The apartment is a voluminous trove of kinetic light sculptures and meticulously arranged objets d’art. “I really believe in proportion and also that everything has to relate to the space around it,” says Anastassiades, who trained as a civil engineer at London’s Imperial College and whose works are in the permanent collections of both the MoMA and Victoria and Albert Museum. Today a notable collaborator of Italian lighting house Flos, Anastassiades enlisted the help of Belgian architect and friend Wim de Mul to forge a live/work space that would also function to display his inventions in 1994. These include his Tip Of The Tongue light, where an opaline sphere teeters on the edge of a metal cylinder as if about to roll off, and brass lights that seem to balance intrinsically in the air. “I’m interested in the instability that exists in design,” he continues. “In the mobile series, everything is in perfect equilibrium until there is a slight movement in the air around you, and the fixtures start moving. You realize how delicate everything is.”
Michael Anastassiades: Reload The Current Page launches at Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia, Cyprus on January 31.