The Octagon at Tom Dixon’s Coal Office took place during LDF 2020. Reception was transformed into a FAT Lounge where the new extensions to the range, FAT Chaise Longue, FAT two and three-seater sofas and FAT barstool were on display for visitors to relax, recline and slow down.
The S-chair ‘Museum’ at Octagon was an homage to Tom’s 1980s design for Cappellini. An emblem of contemporary design, the chair can be found in the permanent collections of the world’s greatest museums, from the Triennale in Milan to MoMa in New York.
I’m pretty sure that Tom Dixon, the British design rock star and his eponymous, mega-successful furniture, lighting and homewares brand requires no introduction to an audience as savvy as ours. Although, perhaps some of you may not be aware that our friends at Living Edge are the home of Tom Dixon in Australia – the only place where the TD brand can truly be experienced through its multiple facets and senses such as sight, touch and smell.
Living Edge sees the Tom Dixon brand as a pioneer in lighting, with British charm, brand heritage and an aesthetic that complements the existing collections they represent. All this together with Tom’s forward-thinking furniture designs, innovative use of materiality including super cool accessories and homewares, make the brand even more accessible to our local market.
To celebrate this fantastic partnership, we’ve teamed up with Living Edge to give one lucky reader a chance to take home one of my personal favourite objects from the Tom Dixon collections, valued at $2,890 AUD! Scroll to the bottom of this article to enter the giveaway, and while you’re at it – take a deep dive into the highlights of TD’s latest releases.
The facade of Tom Dixon’s Coal Office during LDF 2020.
Tom Dixon’s luxe furniture collections focus on materiality as well as the design, with products suitable across residential, commercial and hospitality settings alike. In a genius stroke of marketing (in my books, Tom is one of the OG master marketers in the world of design) he unveiled an ambitious project during the recent London Design Festival, dubbed OCTAGON – staged at their HQ which was voted by Mr Porter magazine as one of the most stylish offices in the world. Nice.
Showcasing the vast potential of Tom Dixon collections, the office was divided into eight architectural spaces spread over two levels – a Pop-up bar, Two Lounges, a Disco, a Perfumery Lab, a MASS Installation, a Pattern Exhibition and an S-chair ‘Museum’ paying homage to the globally recognized icon designed by Tom in the 1980s. The King’s Cross Hub was transformed into an open exhibition for visitors to immerse themselves in the designer’s universe, with a series of physics and digital events taking place throughout the week.
One of the standouts from the new collections launched this year includes the CORK family. Speaking to the expressive materiality as an underpinning theme of the brand, cork is the team’s current obsession. A material popular in design and architecture thanks to its recyclable and carbon-negative qualities, cork can be harvested without harming the tree that it grows on.
“Cork has been used for millennia in nautical, construction, apparel and food applications and is the ultimate traditional material for the future. By repurposing this wonder material for our range of extremely fat edged furniture, we have taken full advantage of the elasticity, the sound absorption and waterproof nature of CORK,” says Tom.
“I personally love cork because it’s tactile, hard-wearing, sound absorbent, fireproof, water-resistant and lighter than water, which is why it floats, so it’s easy to transport. In terms of dream material, you couldn’t really get a lot better. There is pretty much no waste in the process, even the dust from the production is used to power the furnaces in the factories,” he says.
The FAT collection is designed to hug the body, allowing multiple seating collections. The extreme simplicity of the components is a testament to the form-follows-function approach while maintaining a humorous silhouette and a reductionist aesthetic.
Available as a dining chair, barstool and a lounge chair, the FAT family becomes fatter with a new two & three-seater sofa and chaise lounge joining the collection this year.
The new brass table is arguably the showstopper of the new offering. Seriously, WOW! Manufactured in the UK and made from one single extruded box section of brass, MASS uses the most familiar unit in furniture construction – the plank. Presenting a series of familiar objects in a highly polished gold-hued material, Dixon manages to make domestic archetypes into monumental heavyweight sculpture.
The rectangular plank is used in a multitude of configurations and will eventually be presented as a made to measure construction set, with a series of predetermined junctions that allow architects and interiors designers the liberty to construct their own MASS artefact.
One of my personal favourites from the collection are the SWIRL TABLES – a series of geometric forms stacked upon one another to create multi-dimensional, functional sculptures. These sustainable tables are created from the dust that remains after cutting marble on the lathe, which is then mixed with pigment and resin to produce significant artefacts.
This side table family, each with their own distinct silhouette, colouration and personality, has been extended this year with Swirl XL and Swirl Cone Side table.
Oh, and did I mention that we are giving away one of these babies? No? Keep on reading for your chance to win. Neat-o!
Over in the lighting department, MELT offers opportunities to cluster as a swarm, huddle, herd, cluster or bunch, producing an extraordinary lighting arrangement.
The latest additions to the MELT family include the Melt Mega; a configuration of seven organic and imperfect orbs which explode from a central hub to create a dynamic lighting sculpture of infinite reflections. Melt Small Chandelier features four orbs protruding from steel tubes and is one metre high. Fitted with a new LED module, Melt chandeliers are Tom Dixon’s attempt to rethink the contemporary chandelier.
The brand’s homewares collections welcomes PRESS, a series of heavyweight grooved vases, bowls and candleholders made of fat, chunky coils of pure and clear transparent glass. Bold in silhouette and simple in function, they are manufactured by dropping big globs of molten glass at 1,200 degrees centigrade and pressed in two or three-part iron moulds to create immediately familiar silhouettes.
These thick, industrially pressed glass artefacts are engineered to catch and reflect light, and to last forever!
The SWIRL candles are Tom Dixon Studio’s boldest attempt yet to create objects with an afterlife that can be re-purposed as vases, containers for trinkets and storage of all types. Made using recycled powdered residue from the marble industry, this sustainable vessel is significant enough to be appreciated as an object in its own right, even when the scent has vanished. The candles have geometric lids (a sphere and rectangular block) that can be stacked on top.
ECLECTIC SCENT recognises that first impressions and memories are connected to the sense of smell. Tom Dixon’s journey into the world of fragrance started with Eclectic; a collection inspired by the brand’s origins as a true Londoner. The collection evokes historical memories of British life, of travelling and trading across the globe and returning to the familiar gritty smells of modern cosmopolitan London.
To explore more of Tom Dixon’s comprehensive collection at Living Edge, the British brand’s Australian home, visit livingedge.com.au.
For your chance to win your own SWIRL Table Medium, valued at $2,890 AUD, follow these three simple steps: