Good Luck Charm
By: Helena Kardová
Photo: Ari Mahardhika, Igor Zacharov
Dragonfly Wings
At a time when companies are still trying to convince their employees to ditch working from home, a new building in Hong Kong’s Central District is making a case for the return to the office. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, The Henderson’s curved glass walls rise above one of this area’s few verdant spaces. Lasvit’s Michaela Mertlová imagined an awe-inspiring sculpture for the lobby called In Bloom, which plays with local symbols and aims to bring a sense of nature into the high-tech centre of the city. “In Feng Shui, a dragonfly symbolises happiness, so I wanted to work with that. It’s a flower composed of dragonfly wings,” explains the designer. The 188 glass components have rich finishes thanks to the technique of glass slumping, during which sheets of glass are reheated inside a kiln and, once soft, they start to sink into a mould and adopt the desired textures.
Everyday Flow
Developed in close conversation with Sara Klomps, one of the directors of Zaha Hadid Architects, the project has been in the works for the past two years. Mertlová’s idea appealed to the architects thanks to its multi-directional design and clever suspension system. “My only limit was that it should use as few fixation points as possible and I came up with the idea to suspend the object on a single rod at the centre, which makes the installation equally attractive from all sides.” The designer was keen to inject inspiration into the daily routines of people who flow through the neighbourhood as well as charm one-off visitors to the iconic structure. In Bloom is positioned quite high up, so it’s easy to spot both from the elevated footbridge as well as from the interior of the lobby.
New Breeze
In a bid to soften the demarcation lines between public and private, Lasvit will soon launch an outdoor kinetic sculpture suspended from a nearby footbridge. It may be poetically titled Breeze with a nod to the calming swaying of the sculpture, but the technological challenge was making it weather-proof for Hong Kong’s typhoon season. Hopefully, it can bring a wind of change into Hong Kong’s Central district too.
Michaela Mertlová
She joined Lasvit in 2015 and spent the first two years working from the company’s Hong Kong office. During this time, she designed an immersive installation at the Marriott Ocean Park, where a shoal of glass fish swirls from the foyer to the hotel ballroom. Mertlová is now based in Czechia and works as a Senior Designer from Lasvit’s HQ in Nový Bor. She graduated from Rony Plesl’s Glass studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and has honed her craft in the Netherlands and the United States.
