Prague International Design Festival

Winner of Grand Prix of villa Noailles Design Parade Laura Couto Rosado

24. 10. 2015

Laura Couto Rosado works with a design style of poetry, technology, and innovation. From Chant des Quartz presented last year to Veilleuse tellurique, the first project created for her exhibition at Design Parade, one finds a conception of design which establishes correlations between a subject and its surroundings.

Veilleuse tellurique serves as a sound box for the constant flexions which shake the Earth’s crust, not as violent as those we feel during earthquakes, but which are unceasing, thus showing the Earth’s permanent activity. These jolts of minor magnitude are represented by a luminous animation of 429 light emitting diodes placed delicately upon porcelain dressed in a backlit bisque skin. The regular orthogonal electronic circuits are in gold, the best possible conductor, and have been totally redesigned: Veilleuse tellurique required meeting several technical challenges, beyond the creation of an electronic code in Sèvres; the integration of electronic components upon the golden circuit required a reassessment of typical alloys, to adapt existing techniques, to resort to high technology, and to invent a process for changing defective components if necessary. The pattern of the electronic circuits which light the reflector is both decorative and functional. This process follows the reflections of Buckminster Fuller: to consider the Earth as a living organism. Veilleuse tellurique thus invites us to visualise seismic and telluric activity and to introduce it into the home sweet home.

The second project, Mister D., is a faceted mirror, an organic and geometrical portrait which, beyond being a nod to Bucky Fuller’s famous bust by his friend Noguchi, shows the manner in which reflections can forge a sculptural element thanks to a polychromed steel surface. And, in a game of mise en abyme, the spectator’s face is reflected in that of another.

Finally, Vase en puissance, three coloured vases, sixtyfive centimetres tall and created at CIRVA are, according to Aristotle’s formula, waiting to realise themselves. Each vase, whose narrow neck is a feat, invites the user to sabre it in a unique and definitive act: a low voltage electricity heats resistant alloys and the thermal shock emits a series of crystalline sounds before the tour de force ends at the moment when, with the aid of a glass wand, like a magician, Laura Couto Rosado, masterfully strikes with the greatest of precision at the predetermined point on the vase. To the violation of the glass, responds the enjoyment of its use.