Collection: Xavier Lust
Xavier Lust (Brugge, 1969) is a Belgian designer who trained as an interior designer at the art school Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels. In 1992, he opened an office in the same city, initiating collaborations with MDF Italia (one of the first to have believed in him), Driade, De Padova, Cerruti Baleri, Fiam, Extremis and Pianca. He also produced limited-edition objects and furniture, various items for art galleries, interior architecture and street furniture. The characteristic feature of Lust's work stems from his skill in working with metal on the edge between art and design and shaping sculptural furnishings like the Le Banc bench by MDF Italia: a single sheet of 6 mm thick curved and painted aluminium, winner of several awards and in the permanent collections of international museums like the Tate Modern in London, the Design Museum in Ghent, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the MOMA in San Francisco. A natural extension of this project is the Le Grande Table, an indoor and outdoor table by MDF Italia in a single sheet of curved and painted aluminium with no joints.
Aluminium is again the star of Lust's collaboration with Driade. The sculptural Virgo bookcase is a "tensioned" structure that plays on the relationship between concave and convex surfaces and the energy of a rope stretched across an arch. Lust does not shy away from other materials despite his preference for metals. With Fiam, he worked with glass to create Graph, an utterly transparent desk with a curved glass base and 15 mm glass top. In his collaboration with Pianca, his ability to experiment with metal met the company's woodworking experience, giving rise to the Confluence family of tables; steel legs converge to support a wood top, available in rectangular, round and elliptical versions.
Among his most recent productions is Hard Whale Cabinet, a limited edition aluminium storage unit with a floating volume, whose doors open by pressure to reveal a sculptural and functional interior. At the same time, the surface patina evokes the sea's reflection on the skin of a whale or clouds on a stormy day. Xaver Lust's work has often been the subject of international publications; he is frequently called upon by art and design schools and institutions to lecture at workshops and conferences. He has received numerous prizes and awards throughout the world, including the Henry van de Velde Award for Young Talent (2003), the Compasso d'Oro (2004), the IF Award (2004), the Elle Decoration International Award (2008) and the Dino Gavina Prize (2009).
