Michael Anastassiades On His Creative Processes And Ongoing Journey With Flos

Light and its intensities are said to influence various dimensions of human life, and in the case of Cypriot lighting designer Michael Anastassiades, this is at an emotional, spiritual and philosophical level. The London-based lighting designer spent the first five years of his life in the East African country of Burundi before moving to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus—his father’s native place. “It was a place where there was an abundance of light—strong and natural, and almost too much light in some ways,” And when he moved to London to study, “that light was taken away and taken over by grey days”.

This complete contrast stirred in him an almost poetic connection with the concept of light, manifesting into his award winning creations for his eponymous label and brand collaborations—which toe the line between functionalism, minimalism and a reverence for craftsmanship.

Here, he shares his perception of light, his creative process, and how they flow into his designs for Space Furniture’s collaboration with contemporary Italian lighting brand, Flos.

What's your relationship with light. How do you perceive it?

I really believe in the beauty of natural light, and as a young boy, loved observing how it existed in nature. This has been quite an important part of my design process. Glow is a very big part of that process—it is my starting point, really. How much light do you really need?—just enough to function, no more. A lot of people feel completely insecure when there's darkness, and want light to flood the room. My dad always used to turn all the lights on, and I used to do the opposite. I would turn them on gradually as the natural light disappeared and at the same time switch things and spread things around the home to create different scenarios. I look at light not as a way to imitate nature or to make the night into a day, it’s more about the poetry of light and exploring some of its qualities of gradual transition to prepare one for the time to rest.

Tell us about your creative process.

My creative process is something that actually comes through curiosity and the way I look at the world. It begins from the things around me. These days, I tend to find myself in uninspiring circumstances. Apart from being in wonderful cities and amidst new cultures, I tend to spend most of my time on a flight or I am going somewhere in a car. But, somehow, it can become part of the process of how I see something and filter it—it could be a simple gesture of somebody pouring a cup of coffee or drinking something, or even washing their hands. These stick in the mind and remain there until the moment I am actually trying to express it—when I pick a pen, sketchbook, and start thinking about ideas. These things that come through the subconscious are really the starting point for creativity. It’s not an idea that suddenly pops up, but rather, a gradual accumulation and filtration of information in the way that it touches you. The sketching process is also constant, like an exploration journey, a natural sort of evolution towards the final product.

Shapes are an important part of lighting. What do they mean to you?
I like familiarity as a language in design. For instance, if I show you something that is round, you already know it as a form and are comfortable with it, because the sun and moon are round, we're surrounded with round objects. Then, I already have a point of conversation with you. I really believe that nothing is new in the world of design, creativity has always existed, and maybe through a different discipline, for a different way, it has repeated itself throughout history.

What's interesting to me is a gradual appreciation for the subtleties in design. I think you have a better path to achieve that through familiarity. You may walk in and not notice [an object of light] at first because it blends in with your interior and your space, then, the second time you see it, you think, ‘oh, that looks beautiful’. The third time you see it, you define it further and confirm its beauty. That is the perfect recipe for creating something that is timeless.

Tell us about the collaboration with Flos. Has the process of designing been different from that of your own brand?

I never differentiate between one and the other. With my brand—which I started before Flos—it was a different approach to expression, which in the beginning, came with a certain complexity that didn’t necessarily make commercial sense. So, when I came into Flos—organically around 2011—I already had five years of experimentation behind me. Being a larger company, what Flos has given me is an opportunity to challenge myself in terms of technology, to explore possibilities that I never even considered before. They also have a very strong R&D team, which has resulted in a constructive dialogue in making things the way I visualise them.

Do you have a favourite design from the collection?

That’s like asking someone if they have a favourite child. For me, it's defined by the time it was created and the conditions that it was created. My first piece, String Lighting that I did was special because it's so pure and spontaneous, and developed by observing a human activity of how when people want to celebrate something, they just put up four posts and hang a string of lights from one to the other. That was the starting point, we started tying a long string of thread with a ball at the end and creating different configurations to understand how it divided the space. We photographed every scale of the box and used them to develop String Light. Many of my other collections, including my most recent Coordinates lighting, all followed the same process and principles—of. concepts that allow for endless possibilities to exist.

What’s in the future for you and Flos?

I think it’s more of a direction. I have a lot of ideas that I would like to express in lighting, and I see Flos more as a very strong partner in that expression. The platform that they offer me is amazing. So it's a journey that we go through together. What that would be, I do not know—I don’t think anybody knows. The good thing is that the ingredients are there, the circumstances are there, and I'd like to keep on exploring and pushing my limits—because I think it has defined them, and it has defined me as well. It's a journey that we reach together.