For Sian Eliot and Ari Geva, a design is useless if it does not inspire the creator and the observer. Eliot, an industrial designer, and Ari, an electronics engineer, co-founded mema designs – a company that works with aluminium mesh to create sculptural designs.
According to Geva, “each one of us, anybody, has got a seed of design in him and to trigger it you need something that you observe and see”.
The team are more interested in designing the process, allowing the physical product to be a reflection of the concept behind it. After realising that there was no guide or reference for working with aluminium mesh, Eliot and Geva had to formulate the whole production process themselves, which involved a lot experimentation and ingenuity.
“You know the end result and that’s all. You try process on top of a process like a card tower. The last card could fall away and destroy the whole tower,” says Geva.
The end result is a true testament to their design acumen and conceptual thinking. The soft and feminine lampshades are characterised by their striking sculptural forms, which have materialised from the shaping of the hard aluminium substance into soft ripples and folds.
