Presented for the first time in Venice Design, held in the context of La Biennale di Venezia 2017, the Curcubita lamps enabled Tiago to discover new ways to work with cork, resulting in a creative lighting game.
The globe-shaped lamps have a natural cork visual or a dyed exterior visual - in colours of earth, red, yellow, brown or black. Given their delicate contours, the lamps almost seem to allude to molecules or celestial bodies. To mould the cork into a spherical shape, Tiago Sá da Costa cut, folded and unfolded sheets of agglomerated cork into three-dimensional shapes. Two cork halves interlock and fold around the light core, creating the impression of a hard shell with a soft, warm core that shines from the inside.
For this Venice Design exhibition, the lamps were topped off with casted bronze caps that covers the fittings, to accentuate the colours, add weight and play with the contrast between materials. The warm mat organic softness of the cork juxtaposed with the cold shiny mineral hardness of the bronze.
Curcubita was in exhibition in Venice Design, at Palazzo Michiel, Strada Nuova 4391, Venice, Italy.
