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Tadao Ando accused of copying artist Willie Cole's designs with recycled Met Gala chandelier

2023-05-03T11:16:00-04:00

Last night, a star-studded crowd trickled into the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its annual gala beneath a gargantuan chandelier made of what appeared to be plastic water bottles. After the event took place, several members of the art community noticed what appeared to be suspicious similarities between the chandelier and the plastic works of American artist Willie Cole.

Cole’s work is included in the museum’s permanent collection, and the large-scale chandeliers in question were profiled just two months ago by the New York Times. The large-scale pieces were made of nearly 6,000 individual water bottles and were created to instigate a conversation about the water crisis afflicting Cole’s hometown of Newark, New Jersey, in 2019. Some have found them comparable on social media.

The pieces were also profiled in Vogue yesterday, which quoted event planner Raul Àvila as saying: "We wanted to find a way to create a sustainable design that would implement the bottles into a breathtaking installation unlike anything we’ve done before."

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.PSLAB's "lion fish" chandelier adds the finishing touch to The Jane Antwerp

2014-04-24T17:10:00-04:00

The Jane restaurant in the Groen Kwartier of Antwerp still brandishes the now-trendy artisanal interior of the military hospital chapel it once was. Throughout the entire design process, Michelin Star Chef Sergio Herman and Nick Bril closely collaborated with Dutch practice Piet Boon Architects, who then brought in .PSLAB, a site-specific Beirut studio whose work specializes in creating sensory experiences.

Complementing the brass, stone, leather, and oak, the focal point of the restaurant is .PSLAB's handcrafted chandelier that the studio nicknamed the "Lion Fish". The chandelier boasts a radius of 12 x 9 m and a weight of 800 kilograms. Its black-finished tubes are accented with over 150 glass light bulbs that disperse upward toward the vaulted ceiling. The studio also describes that at 2.75 m above the ground, "the chandelier communicates a very human scale."

Check out .PSLAB's video below to see the making of the chandelier.

3XN’s Bella Chandelier Is Ready for Installation

2011-04-18T13:44:00-04:00

When the Bella Sky Hotel, the largest hotel in Scandinavia, launches in Copenhagen May 16, guests are greeted in the foyer by The Bella Chandelier – a living scenography of light and color created by GXN, the R&D department of Danish architects 3XN.