Since studying interior design at ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels, Nathalie Dewez has been drawn to experiment as much with spatial arrangement as she has with the creation of objects. Dewez’s designs typically animate their surrounding space in a highly considered manner. Particularly in her lighting elements, a sense of delicate balance and gentle movement elevates quite minimal forms from mere functionality into something akin to kinetic sculpture.
Dewez’s designs for lighting and furniture elements often emerge in response to specific commissions, or from collaborating with architectural bureaux. Working directly on sites ranging from the domestic, through retail, hospitality and major museums, Dewez has produced custom designs that respond to the requirements of both particular spaces and the functions they serve. This first-hand experience of marrying formal, technical and atmospheric requirements feeds back into her products for brands including Ligne Roset, Hermès and Habitat.
Significant private commissions include the creation of a minimal yet spectacular pendant lamp for the atrium of the MUDAM Museum of Modern Art in Luxemburg. Over three metres in diameter, the fabric-covered inflated globe comprises three concentric spheres and balances at one end of a long axis gently secured by a counterweight. For the Queen Elizabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, Dewez designed subtly rotating light elements to create a welcoming environment in a facility for world-leading young musicians.
When Dandoy – a venerable and much-loved bakery in Brussels – underwent a re-design, Dewez created contemporary lighting elements that conveyed a certain classicism in their choice of simple, high quality materials. Each element performed a double function of illumination and reflection, drawing attention back to the store’s product.
The lamps gathered here are the fruit of a self-initiated project between Dewez and BIS Lighting: a Brussels-based manufacturer with which the designer has previously worked on custom and one-off projects.
In the Balance lamp we find Dewez working inventively with what might otherwise be seen as technological restrictions. The counterweight for this minimal, serpentine table light conceals the transformer box needed for the LEDs. Ellipse is a suspended light that gives a soft glow from the indirect light reflected within its asymmetrically folded elliptical form.
The Still pendant moves like a mobile – a balancing metal rod with a light at one end that shifts in the breeze and which can be tilted by adjusting its counterweight. Prism is a spectacular yet lightweight suspended sculpture formed from angled metal rods, casting a delicate pattern onto the surrounding walls.
Some two metres high, the slim, elegant Danse quivers like an illuminated reed on a rocking, weighted, hemispheric base. Smoke & Mirrors beguiles with light radiating from the edges of a wide, slim, wall-mounted mirror.
The forms are elaborations of hardworking designs that have become part of Dewez’s repertoire. These are the Belgian designer’s tried and tested favourites, manufactured in her home country using durable materials.
