The Swarovski Optik lens
Installation of Swarovski Perspectives by John Pawson at the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
29/5-24/11
as a collateral event of the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia
The largest Swarovski lens ever made - a 40cm wide concave crystal meniscus made from optical quality glass - is at the centre of Perspectives. The Swarovski Optik lens reflects and magnifies the exquisite beauty of the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore. Placed beneath the Basilica's central cupola it provides visitors with architectural perspectives beyond the range of the naked eye, thereby inviting them to look at and appreciate Palladio’s glorious 16th century Benedictine church with fresh eyes. The spectacular reflective work was first installed in the Geometric Staircase of St Paul’s Cathedral for the 2011 London Design Festival. The move to Venice is in homage to the genius of Palladio, the greatest architect of the Italian Renaissance, and will create a dramatic optical experience that depends on material simplicity and complex combinations of light, space and proportion to reveal the Basilica in a new way.
Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore
The monastic community of San Giorgio was founded in 982, when the island was donated to the benedictine Giovanni Morosini by Doge Tribuno Memmo to build a monastery dedicated to San Giorgio.
When the celebrated Italian architect Andrea Palladio arrived in Venice in 1560, he made great improvements to the refectory and in 1565 was asked to prepare a model for a new church. Although work was not completed until Palladio’s death in 1580, the body of the church was complete by 1575 and it was ultimately finished thirty years after the death of Palladio in 1610. The interior of the church contains beautiful sculptures and considerable works of art created by Jacopo and Leandro da Bassano, Sebastiano Ricci, and Domenico and Jacopo Tintoretto. The church of San Giorgio achieved the title of ‘basilica’ under pressure from the Venetian prelate Giuseppe Sarto (the future Pope Pius X) to mark the hundredth anniversary of the election of Pope Pius VII.
Perspectives by Swarovski
Perspectives will be placed beneath the central cupola in the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, providing visitors with architectural perspectives beyond the range of the naked eye, thereby inviting them to look at and appreciate Palladio’s glorious 16th century Benedictine church with fresh eyes.
John Pawson says: "The Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore is an immensely complex spatial environment. The temptation is to try to take in everything. The Perspectives installation is about offering viewers a dynamic visual experience of Palladio’s architecture, based around a single, sharply honed perspective."
Visiting Swarovski Perspectives
Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore
Isola di S.Giorgio Maggiore
I-30124 Venice
Italy
Opening times
Monday – Saturday: 8.30am – 6.30pm
Sunday: 8.30am – 10.30am 12.30pm – 6.30pm
From 1 June – 24 November 2013
Related links
www.swarovskigroup.com
The designer
The hemisphere
John Pawson
John Pawson was born in 1949 in Halifax, Yorkshire. After a period in the family textile business he left for Japan, spending several years teaching English at the business university of Nagoya.
Towards the end of his time there he moved to Tokyo, where he visited the studio of Japanese architect and designer Shiro Kuramata. Following his return to England, he enrolled at the Architecture Association in London, leaving to establish his own practice in 1981.
From the outset the work has focused on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials, rather than on developing a set of stylistic mannerisms - themes he also explored in his book Minimum, first published in 1996, which examines the notion of simplicity in art, architecture and design across a variety of historical and cultural contexts.
Early commissions included homes for the writer Bruce Chatwin, opera director Pierre Audi and collector Doris Lockhart Saatchi, together with art galleries in London, Dublin and New York. Whilst private houses have remained a consistent strand of the work, subsequent projects have spanned a wide range of scales and building typologies, ranging from Calvin Klein Collection’s flagship store in Manhattan and airport lounges for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, to a condominium for Ian Schrager on New York’s Gramercy Park, the interior of a 50-metre yacht and sets for new ballets at London’s Royal Opera House and the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
Over the years John Pawson has accrued extensive experience of the particular challenges of working within environments of historic, landscape and ecological significance, key examples including the Sackler Crossing - a walkway over the lake at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - the Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in Bohemia and the former Commonwealth Institute in London, scheduled to open as a new permanent home for the Design Museum in 2015. www.johnpawson.com
Nadja Swarovski
Nadja Swarovski is a Member of the Swarovski Executive Board and Chair of the Swarovski Foundation’s board of Directors, at the world’s leading crystal manufacturer founded by her great-great-grandfather Daniel Swarovski in 1895 in Austria. As global patron of design for the company, Nadja is committed to forging relationships in the fashion, jewelry, architecture, design, film and art industries in order to create new products celebrating crystal, while continually positioning Swarovski at the forefront of design and consumer trends.
Born in Germany, Nadja is an Austrian citizen educated in Europe and the US, obtaining degrees in Art History, Foreign Languages and Latin American studies from Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1992. She later completed a graduate course in Fine and Deconstructive Arts at Sotheby’s in New York, and in Gemology at Gemological Institute of America in New York. She is currently based in London.
Nadja’s career began with Larry Gagosian, the New York gallerist, followed by a time with legendary fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert. She joined the family business in 1995, working for Swarovski in Hong Kong and travelling extensively in Asia to gain an international perspective before returning to New York. Early in her career Nadja befriended fashion icon Isabella Blow, who supported her vision of bringing Swarovski’s rich heritage of working with the leading couturiers of Paris to the forefront of the brand’s contemporary image. Blow introduced her to young design talents who became long-time Swarovski collaborators, such as Alexander McQueen and Phillip Treacy.
This laid the foundations for a series of visionary initiatives which have established Nadja as one of the 21st century’s major patrons of design. These include the Swarovski Collective and Runway Rocks, which aim to support and celebrate both emerging and established talents in fashion and jewelry design, as well as luxury jewelry business Atelier Swarovski, whose designers include Zaha Hadid, Christopher Kane, Viktor & Rolf and Karl Lagerfeld.
In 2002 Nadja launched Swarovski Crystal Palace, an experimental platform which pushes the boundaries of lighting and design through collaborations with artists, architects and product designers using the medium of crystal. This has resulted in a spectacular body of work which provides a snapshot of the most exciting and creative minds of the first decade of the 21st century and includes work by Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid, Tom Dixon, Ross Lovegrove, Tord Boontje, Arik Levy and Yves Béhar. Last year Nadja marked its tenth anniversary by working with London’s Design Museum to commission the groundbreaking exhibition Digital Crystal, which explored the future of memory in the digital age.
Nadja is Chairwoman of Swarovski Entertainment Ltd, which develops, finances and produces feature films with global box-office appeal. Its first feature, Romeo & Juliet, written by Julian Fellowes and starring Douglas Booth and Haillee Steinfeld as the star-crossed lovers, is due for release in Fall 2013.
Nadja is dedicated to charitable activities and oversees Swarovski’s Global Corporate Responsibility efforts. Earlier this year she consolidated the company’s long-term commitment to philanthropy by establishing the Swarovski Foundation.
www.swarovskiperspectives.com
