Lebanon – Beirut
A multidisciplinary design studio based in Beirut, which officiates in the conception of furniture, interior architecture, and graphic design, Khaled El May’s workshop relies on a myriad of craftspeople present throughout the territory of the Land of Cedars.
Favoring an organic creative process, he favors natural materials, such as wicker, leather, or thread. On the occasion of the last edition of Milan Design Week, the studio unveiled two high-ranking collections with the support of the Nilufar Gallery, a renowned institution of the design world in the Lombardy city.
The first, “Flora Modular Sofa,” unfolds through generous, organic, and colorful forms via three seats and a side table. Slightly anthropomorphic, all these pieces are dressed in fabrics printed in a range of striking graphic patterns.
Another Milanese proposal is the collection “The Lotus Series.” Presented as an exploration of the architectural expressions of the famous flower, this project began five years ago. El Mays began carving wood and marble, as if to recapture the visual sensation of the built environment. The goal was to explore how best to create works that were influenced by original form yet remained rooted in the present and projected into the future, rather than being a simple exercise in nostalgia.
The designer then turned to the lotus flower, ubiquitous in the architectural order and murals of ancient Egypt. The flower was then revisited, distorting its initial silhouette to give it wings. An aesthetic research experiment that has been declined through a myriad of marbles, as well as through tables, pedestal tables, and even an elegant grey satin seat, which seem both lost in the meanders of our aesthetic chronology, but also resolutely contemporary.
