Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/65912
Floe desk lamp Nicolas Cheng Born in Hong Kong but based for the past 10 years in Europe (first in the Netherlands, where he studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven; now in Stockholm), Nicolas Cheng's oeuvre is as varied as they come. It has in- cluded everything from delicate jewelry (natural sponges affixed to silver- cast twigs and slung on Sisal fiber, for instance) to marble-and-resin desk lamps to carved-cork trays and chandeliers. As disparate as these objects may seem, they are bound by Cheng's acute sensitivity to and awareness of material—both natural and man-made. He was inspired to enter the field after seeing an image of Le Cor- busier's Notre Dame du Haut chapel in Ronchamp, France, a striking, staunchly contemporary, curvaceously organic-looking structure built in the 1950s using decidedly modest means (stone and concrete, for the most 84 CULTURED part). "The image just stuck in my mind," he says. "The subtleness of the shape, the volumes, the way the natural light filtered inside creating space. It was perfection, how everything was condensed and integrated: the human scale with the scale of the architecture with nature." It's this very sort of interconnectedness that Cheng expresses in a new project for Caroline Van Hoek's booth at Design Miami/Basel. Cheng will exhibit a bespoke vitrine he made in collaboration with fellow designer Beat- rice Brovia (and the help of Belgian glass company Meyvaert) stocked with a series of silver objects. "Our vitrine, whose surface fades from mirroring into transparency, protects and embraces its content rather than displaying it clearly," he says. "But at the same time, it partially reflects both its sur- roundings and the taste of the person who selected the pieces inside." COURTESY CAROLINE VAN HOEK