Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Lavassa Furniture: Peter Harrison




One of my favourite magazines is Dwell, a contemporary architecture magazine with an interesting bias towards both modernist and green design. At the back of the magazine I discovered an ad for a furniture designer who works near Saratoga Springs, NY. Peter Harrison uses combinations of concrete, wood and stainless steel.

I like that way that he uses concrete as simply another material in a vocabulary of materials. It seems entirely appropriate where it is used in each individual piece. Often designers seem to do one of two things with concrete: either disguise it—making it look like stone for example—or brag about its rough, urban appearance. Here it's just another material for constructing functional, simple but beautiful objects. It's made into shelves, columns and even corner connectors.


Harrison's work is at http://www.lavassa.com/.

Dwell magazine also has an extensive web site at http://www.dwell.com/.