Money, religion, sex—these are just a few of the societal obsessions that Atelier Biagetti has addressed in its designs. The Milan-based studio, founded by husband and wife Alberto Biagetti and Laura Baldassari, has made a seat in the form of a giant gold bar, a light fixture with a latex curtain, and a vaulting-horse-shaped bench wrapped in shiny silver leather, among other playful domestic objects. Now they’ve made their way to humanity’s latest preoccupation: wellness.
“It’s a kind of totem,” Biagetti says of Flower Tower, the duo’s latest addition to Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades collection. (They previously designed a dining table that evokes the waves of the Adriatic Sea.) Debuting this month, the modular light fixture is made up of rings of glass, handblown in the Venice area and stacked into columns of varying heights, its scalloped footprint a subtle nod to the fashion brand’s logo. In an engineering feat that took years to develop, two light sources at the crown illuminate the whole fixture without any visible internal wiring, as if by magic.
“When you meditate, you visualize a giant column of energy, of white light, from the bottom of your body to the top of your head,” explains Baldassari of the inspiration for the piece. “This energy is connected to your body, to your soul, and also to the people around you.”
Totemic forms have occupied a pivotal place in the history of radical Italian design. Picture the colorful ceramic wonders of Alessandro Mendini and Ettore Sottsass, or Gufram’s iconic 1972 foam cactus by Guido Drocco and Franco Mello. Atelier Biagetti and Louis Vuitton now place Flower Tower in that canonical landscape, all the while proving that furnishings can have an emotional and spiritual purpose. As Biagetti points out: “You can travel not only with your body but also with your mind.” louisvuitton.com