Spanish architect @paola_bagna achieves a multifunctional, playful lightness in her small space projects in Berlin, where she lives & works.
Among her recently completed projects:
I love this white metal staircase in a 40 sqm Altbau (pre-1918), made airy with holes that give a perforated translucency and textural interest, leading up to a sleeping area in this Mezzanine & Library design for a client in Berlin Kreuzberg. The crucial feature that allows for this vertical living is the 3.57m ceiling. ✨
There’s a modular simplicity and gentle touch to Bagna’s interventions: a palette of white, wood & yellow in the study area and a full-height library storage unit in marshmallow pink that allows for the client’s books and also hidden things. 📚
As Bagna says, the natural light & view are not compromised by these additions, and the first 3 steps are designed as “a mobile piece of furniture with wheels and integrated shelving”. (Images 2 & 10)
It’s a design that turns a small living challenge in the city into a pleasure, and a playful dialogue with history. #berlin #smallspaceliving #minimalistdesign #colour #interiordesign
The artists Cy Twombly (1928-2011) and Antoní Tápies (1923-2012) are both mentioned by collage artist Elly Dijkshoorn (works for sale @gallery_lightness21 ) as being influences on her abstract work. She talks about a “vulnerable” quality as being something that she loves, in her own work too, in which paint, pencil, textile and paper are often layered in delicate balance and whispered meanings.
For me, in representing Elly Dijkshoorn in London, her words connect to the 1985 ‘Lightness’ text by Italian novelist Italo Calvino (1923-85), who wrote: ‘The images of lightness that I seek should not fade away like dreams … But how can we hope to save ourselves in that which is most fragile?’
#italocalvino #collage #collector #forsale #contemporaryartwork
Kai Ping Liu @gallery_lightness21 .
The Blue in this Bamboo Painting by Taiwanese sculptor and industrial designer Kai Ping Liu, resonates through the history of art.
Among Italian Renaissance painters from Giotto to Titian, natural ultramarine (from the Latin meaning ‘beyond the sea’) was the most precious pigment, created from grinding the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, imported from Afghanistan. Often more valued than gold, it had a spiritual beauty and presence for painters and collectors.
Later, the Dutch 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer used this blue pigment for its deep colour and inner light, pairing it often with a butter-yellow in his scientific studies of interiors, making the ordinary act of reading a letter or pouring some milk into a timeless beauty, something both humble and treasured.
Later still, Yves Klein patented his very own formula for International Klein Blue in 1960, leaping into its infinite space and making it intensely physical at the same time. “Blue has no dimensions”, he said.
In Kai Ping’s work, intense blue is paired with bamboo, like rhythmic waves. This piece is large, but smaller bamboo paintings are also available, in subtle greens too. And as spatial objects, they resonate in a white architectural space, individually or in sequence, like music. #originalartwork #artcollector #buyart #artforsale #interiordesigninspiration
Excited to do the first photo commission by Estonian photographer Kaupo Kikkas this afternoon in London for @gallery_lightness21 - blending portraiture with nature. Hoping for glimmers of sunshine! ⛅️Internationally acclaimed for his portraits of classical musicians (first image), including his famous images of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, his “Treescapes” and “Traces” series (examples shown here) are also becoming more well known and celebrated, showing a sensitive, rhythmic and at times surrealist eye, beautiful in black & white✨#photographer #artwork #music #portrait #treescape
Limited edition prints from the 'Treescapes' series being signed by Estonian photographer and visual artist Kaupo Kikkas. The prints are available from @gallery_lightness21 - please contact for details. Link in the Bio. #trees #photography #gallery #printsforsale #forest
Shigeru Ban, Japanese Pritzker Prize winning architect & humanitarian, spoke about his work last night at the Royal Geographical Society 7-8.30pm: RIBA + LKE Ozolins Lecture 2026 - an audience of 700 people!✨
I first interviewed Shigeru Ban in 2011, soon after the Japanese earthquake & tsunami and the Christchurch New Zealand earthquake, which turned into this Cardboard Cathedral project, composed from paper tubes. First for the RIBA Sustainability Hub, the interview turned into “A House of Card” for Blueprint magazine. This first conversation was the beginning of our project “Container for Thought” with Ryuichi Sakamoto (2014-18) and then our collaboration “Paper Sanctuary” in 2023-24, with @svetlana_lavochkina and @vincent_haiges_ . Excitingly this will be shown again in Dec.2026! 💛
Shigeru Ban’s words & images are always inspiring ✨
#talk #architecture #disasterrelief #humanitarian #paper
Beautiful work by Dutch collage artist Elly Dijkshoorn has arrived in the Studio @gallery_lightness21 . The music suggested by the artist is a clip from Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres” (1977). A small collage on wood, composed in acrylic paint, paper and pencil, with veiled colours in layers that create a sense of peace and space, the work unfolds like the music, and contains the beauty of silence in its layers and notes. More work can be seen on the Studio / Gallery website - link in bio.
#collage #exhibition #music #artwork #lightness
Among the stands at Surface Design Show @surfacethinking last week were some interesting experiments by London graduates, touching on some of the Show’s 2026 themes. I especially liked: Amelia Wylam’s fragile, translucent textiles inspired by changing patterns of sunlight and using biodegradable thread, bio-sequins and natural dyes to propose more delicate divisions of space (Nottingham Trent University); Neve Beill’s ceramic collection, glazed with used cigarette ash, the stubs collected from London pubs (Chelsea College of Art); and Helena Feng’s experiments with eggshells and Chinese leftover sticky rice - the original glue that secured the Great Wall of China! (RCA). 💛
Final image: A handcrafted porcelain ceiling & light installation showing the translucency of this material - by Andra Munro Design. It reminded me of a 1960s Formica ceiling I photographed in a Paris bar (Insta Dec.24).
On the other stands in the Show, and in the panel discussions, the focus was on Stone, Wood, Wool, Hemp, Linen, Silk, Porcelain, Leather, Burnished Metals, and Lime & Clay Plasters. Conversations touched a lot on the truth and integrity of materials, “being what they are”, on removing toxins from living spaces, and on “conscious living”, considering the back stories of materials, and placing a new value on imperfection – looking again at what has previously been discarded. Some interesting parallels with fashion SS26.
#materials #design #reuse #innovation #sustainability
Open Call 🎺 to young, upcoming or established architects, designers, artists, etc., for interesting or inspiring (unpublished) Small Space Designs in London / UK✨💛 Spaces of 25-65 sqm. Please send pics & a few details for possible features in a print & digital magazine. Please get in touch for info!
Takeshi Hosaka’s ‘Love2 House’ in Tokyo’s Bunkyo district (interior shown here) is a brilliant and very hard act to follow, in chestnut wood, concrete & aluminium. But following on from my exhibition on “Small Spaces in the City: Rethinking Inside the Box” (2023-24), as featured in the Financial Times, Dezeen, STIRworld, etc., I’m looking for new interior small spaces that function in a vertical way (with high ceilings); or homes/workspaces with modular, transforming furniture ideas, inventive storage units, stacking or layered functions, and a re-use of vintage elements perhaps; a home that can accommodate personal collections (e.g., books, art), with an emphasis on sustainability, transparency, light, flexibility, mobility, reflections, well-being, or material lightness maybe. As the designer you would be given a voice in the piece too, on this important theme in modern city living & working.
The project would need to be unpublished in the design press and accessible to a writer & photographer if it’s chosen to be featured. So the client / occupier would need to be happy with this idea. Please send pics! And please share - thanks! 🙏
#smallspaceliving #architecture #design #opencall #interiordesign
Kai Ping Liu, sculptor and industrial designer @gallery_lightness21 , blurs the lines between design and art. ✨
In his sculpture, he experiments with the tensile strength of bamboo to create curved spatial forms, often floating, or bound by blocks of marble, finding a balance and dialogue between weight and lightness.
Inspired by water (reminding me of the notebook drawings by Leonardo of water and hydraulics that bridged science & art), Kai Ping’s dancing, sculptured forms, from his series “Loop of Hydrology”, move in the slightest air movement, each “in accordance with the expression of its own shape.” The space they playfully articulate remains free - connecting here to John Cage’s 1948 “In a Landscape”.
For sculptures & commissions @gallery_lightness21 see Bio link.
Lightness, in the sense of Italo Calvino’s 1985 text of that name, and the approach of Gallery Lightness21, is not about frivolity or ignoring the weight, darkness and horrors of the world – which are all too prevalent and brazen right now. It is about seeing things with new perspectives, to find solutions, and treading gently, “with precision and determination”, in ways that are “light and soft”, but never weak. The example that Calvino gives is the mythological figure of Perseus, “who flies with winged sandals”, writing:
“To cut off Medusa’s head without being turned to stone, Perseus supports himself on the very lightest of things, the winds and the clouds, and fixes his gaze upon what can be revealed only by indirect vision. … Medusa’s blood gives birth to a winged horse, Pegasus – the heaviness of stone is transformed into its opposite. … Perseus’s strength always lies in a refusal to look directly” – the artist or poet’s vision – “but not in a refusal of the reality in which he is fated to live; he carries reality with him and accepts it as his particular burden.”
#italocalvino #lightness #sculpture #materiality #stone
Very much enjoyed London Art Fair on Wed. evening, with its focus on British art (20th & 21st century), with a great little exhibition by The National Trust including “The Art of Modern Living: 2 Willow Road” – the home of Ernö and Ursula Goldfinger, which is open from March in Hampstead. I’m going to visit!
✨
Here is a collection of works I liked as I wandered round & met dealers – 1 & 3. Isabel Fletcher, ‘Cut-Out Grid’, 2025, calico & thread, and ‘Ripple’, 2025, Ballet shoe offcuts & thread, 2025; 4. John Ward pottery (great to see after editing a book on his work for Lund Humphries, 2022; 5. Victor Pasmore, ‘Linear Projection’, c.1971; 6. Leslie Hilling, ‘On Childhood #2’, 2025; Marc Chagall, ‘Intérieur fleuri au couple sur fond de poème’, 1975, over a printed poem page; 8. Peter Lanyon, ‘Self-Portrait, Knickerbocker Period, 1949; Henry Moore, from 2 Willow Road, National Trust; Paul Feiler, ‘Orbis’, 1967. #artfair #britishart #exhibition #londonart
Music is ‘Solitude’ by Ryuichi Sakamoto, just because I like it! ✨Also because, even in the crowds you can still have solitude with art.
“It is weight that gives meaning to weightlessness.” Isamu Noguchi
Photos by Kai Ping Liu
I’m very happy for @gallery_lightness21 to be representing Taiwanese sculptor & industrial designer Kai Ping Liu!✨ He has just sent me his photos from The Noguchi Museum @noguchimuseum in New York, and is kindly allowing me to post them here!
We’ve also had a really interesting conversation about Noguchi’s approach to Lightness, as a counterpoint to Weight, which is something in Kai Ping’s work too – see his painting and bamboo sculptures in the Bio link & next post..
His bamboo pieces often seem to float in space, but are also sometimes kept in stillness by small blocks of marble.
In his 1985 essay, Italo Calvino also talks about Lightness as a consciousness, not a denial, of weight and reality, as a play between material & immaterial, and this is important in the art & design I’m representing.
Noguchi, working with Washi paper, bamboo, stone, marble, wrote: “Inherent in Akari are lightness and fragility. They seem to offer a magical unfolding away from the material world.” (1987)
Now the world, more than ever, needs a new perspective, new ways of thinking, to move away from the horrors unfolding and multiplying. Lightness is not a call to look away, but because of this Weight (as Milan Kundera described too, in 1984) it is a call to find ways to change & challenge this reality, to lift the weight, to handle gently and with more care; to respect the Other or what is deemed the opposite. #italocalvino #isamunoguchi #sculpture #newgallery #materiality
