Daniel Liebeskind: The Architecture of a Tea Set and a Coffee Set

(jiří macek) Daniel Liebeskind, the great American architect of Polish origin, who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and The Metropolitan University in London among other buildings, has just designed a pair of luxury tea and coffee sets for Sawaya & Moroni. These sets turn drinking coffee or tea into a great architectural game. The set had its premiere at the Design Week in Milan in the showroom on the renowned Via Manzoni.

Daniel Libeskind conceived the set as a square with a row of detached buildings that continuously change as one uses its individual elements. At first sight, the sugar bowl, the pot, the milk container, and the cups do not seem to have anything in common with the usual shapes of these objects. They are, rather, virtual buildings from the architectural visions of the architect, who is also working on the solution how to insert a new peninsula into the sovereign waters of the Principality of Monaco in one of his latest designs entitled the Grace Cap.

Each motion on the table, each sip of coffee, each shift of the sugar bowl opens the great theme of contemporary urban planning and, thus, provides a conversation topic for people at the table. The eeriness of the whole vision is emphasized by the silver from which the set is made. Although it may sound paradoxical, this conservative material, transformed into Liebeskind’s vision of a city, seems to be as powerful as cybernetic super-materials.

www.sawayamoroni.com

Design Week, Milan, 2009.

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