Cypriot-born Londoner Michael Anastassiades is a designer whose work spans the boundaries between product design, spatial interventions, and experimental pieces.
Anastassiades's work considers both mass manufacturing and handmade methods. As a result, it develops into a vibrant, subtle equilibrium of improvised elements and structural elements, of conscious and unconscious decision-making. Throughout his 20-year career, Anastassiades has designed lighting, furniture, and other things with a poetic yet rigorous take on technology, materials, and functions. The complex structures of his art are actually the result of a distillation of many different sources of inspiration. He takes inspiration from a wide range of sources, from the natural world to the ancient culture of his native Cyprus, the development of Modernism, personal recollections, works of art, and the world around him, and transforms them into a lexicon of timeless form and structure.
In 1994, Michael Anastassiades opened his office in London. He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from London's Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine and a master's degree in industrial design from the Royal College of Art. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, the Crafts Council in London, the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, and the Saint Louis Art Museum all have pieces by him in their permanent collections. The artist has recently had solo shows at places like the Point Centre for Contemporary Arts in Nicosia (titled "Reload the Current Page"), the Geymüllerschlössel MAK in Vienna (titled "Time And Again"), the Rodeo Gallery in Istanbul (titled "Doings on Time and Light"), Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm (titled "To Be Perfectly Frank"), the Norfolk House Music Room at London's Victoria & Albert Museum (titled "Kinetic Light 2:
At the Royal Society of Arts, Anastassiades has the title of Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). He contributes to academic initiatives at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and ECAL, Lausanne, among other prestigious universities and art schools throughout the world.
Manufacturers such as Flos, B&B Italia, Herman Miller, Cassina, Molteni, Bang & Olufsen, Puiforcat, Fratelli Fantini, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, Roda, Lobmeyr, Salvatori, Svenskt Tenn, Carl Auböck and Sigmar London, Coedition, and SCP have all worked with the Michael Anastassiades Studio. Additionally, the Studio has created limited-edition collections for the Milanese Nilufar Gallery, the Danish Dansk Mbelkunst Gallery, and the Japanese Taka Ishii Gallery.
