Designer David Wiseman and Corning GlassLab at Vitra Design Museum / Interview

If you want to see how contemporary designers experiment with glass, attending the GlassLab performances of the Corning Museum of Glass is a perfect idea. During this year’s Art Basel, the museum brought its mobile glass laboratory to the Vitra Campus. VernissageTV watched designer David Wiseman and the Corning Museum glassmakers working side-by-side on new designs.

The concept of the GlassLab is that the designers bring their sketches and concepts and work with the glassmakers to realize them. The teams rapidly prototype their design ideas in live sessions, allowing audiences to observe the evolution of the designs as they are created. Since its inaugural program more than 20 top designers such as Yves Béhar, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Max Lamb, Nacho Carbonell, Atelier Oi, and Matali Crasset have worked with GlassLab.

The hot glass design performance program was inspired by glass design workshops presented by the Corning Museum at Domaine de Boisbuchet, a design retreat center and cooperative effort of the Vitra Design Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou, C.I.R.E.C.A. in the Charente region of Southwest France. Since then, GlassLab sessions have taken place in public design venues like Design Miami and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Designer David Wiseman, a 2003 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), lives and works in Los Angeles. He draws on the natural world for his primary inspiration, yielding poetic and realistic renderings of extraordinary natural phenomena – blossoming branches in porcelain and bronze, the tangle of a pomegranate tree’s canopy beautifully orchestrated across a ceiling, a bird hidden in a bronze fireplace screen. In his unique lighting, fabricated natural and found elements mingle in illuminated branches and his “Collage” chandeliers. David Wiseman also specializes in unique, site-specific custom commissions.

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum recognized Wiseman’s achievements with the inclusion of his “Cherry Blossom Canopy” installation in the National Design Triennial 2006.

Designer David Wiseman and Corning Glass Lab at Vitra Design Museum. June 17, 2010.

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