COS × Studio Swine

For the sixth year running, we’re celebrating Milan’s Salone del Mobile design fair with a specially commissioned installation. Partnering with London-based design duo Studio Swine, we have created New Spring, an interactive installation and multisensory experience in the city’s historic Cinema Arti.

 

Designed to use minimal resources, the installation presents ephemeral materials in a strange new context; delicate mist-filled ‘blossoms’ that disappear on contact with skin, but can be held by visitors wearing special gloves. Producing these blossoms is the installation’s bold centrepiece, a tree-like sculpture that references the ornate chandeliers of Milanese palazzos.



“Inspired by the famous cherry blossom festival in Japan, the installation is designed to create a special moment that brings people together. A fleeting shared experience that evokes a sense of the changing seasons.”

— Studio Swine



Studio Swine (Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers) is a collaboration between Japanese architect Azusa Murakami and British artist Alexander Groves. Creating works that span multiple disciplines including art, design and film, Studio Swine explores themes of regional identity and the future of resources in the context of globalisation. Their work has gained an international audience having been exhibited at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the Venice Biennales.