Opulent Marble And Styrofoam Pulled From Bins Come Together In The Unique Design Work Of Savvas Laz

Based in Athens, Laz seeks to tell stories through pieces that “fuse the extravagant with the minimal”, and which “imbue every day with playfulness and pleasure”. Working with a variety of disparate materials—from discarded packing containers to marble, and more—he uses his unique aesthetic language to create furniture pieces that are anything but archetypal.

His two ‘Neo-Ancient’ collections feature objects whose “shape and dimensions are defined by the quarrying process”. Crafted from acrylic and marble, the pieces show scratches, broken edges, and other markings that Laz has left in place “to become part of the finished object”. Renowned for its opulence, marble is typically buffed and polished to perfection. Conversely, the ‘Neo-Ancient’ series presents an “aesthetic paradox that combines the rawness of marble leftovers with the glossiness of hand-finished polyacetal rods.”

To create ‘Trash-Formers’, Laz worked with styrofoam packaging, a material that is conceived of as having no value once it has served its initial purpose. The styrofoam structure, crafted from pieces of packaging found in bins, was assembled as a chair and then covered in a water-based resin mixed with colored pigment, powder, and fiberglass, to give the piece strength and to make it usable. Situated as the antithesis of the marble from the ‘Neo-Ancient’ collection, Laz uses design to elevate styrofoam as a material and to highlight issues relating to waste disposal in his native Athens.