London-based designer, Lara Bohinc, of Bohinc Studio has taken over the Miami Design District this year with her winning concept Utopia – an immersive installation of functional sculptures that realise a vision of sustainable urban living, creating public spaces where people and nature harmoniously coexist.
The other-worldly installations are made from cork and you can see them throughout the Design District, ahead of Miami Art Week. Commissioned in collaboration with Design Miami/ Curatorial Lab, Bohinc’s sculptures are also greeting visitors at the entrance of the international collectible design fair Design Miami/.
Utopia is Bohinc Studio’s first public commission in the US and spans four installations featuring irregular, bulbous forms reminiscent of growing cellular organisms and lifeforms. Friendly and dynamic, the sculptures are suggestive of living objects, mushrooming across the district with their kind yet mysterious presence.
The colourful and tactile sculptures include outdoor seaters, tables, and imposing 3-metre-tall light sculptures, placed within proximity to create intimate and comforting resting places. A constellation of nine hundred eggshaped birdhouses will be interspersed among the tree branches, providing colourful refuge and shade for local wildlife. Echoing the function of the birdhouses, a giant, centrepiece 2 metre tall egg-form will provide a playful hideout for small children. At night, the solar-powered sculptures will come to life and create an atmospheric luminous glow Painted by hand in vibrant pastel hues of pistachio, aqua, lavender, cherry blossom and eggshell blue, Bohinc’s designs pay homage to Miami’s architectural colour palette and bring elements of playfulness, functionality and comfort to the outdoor areas that the installations inhabit. With a focus on environmental issues, Bohinc’s pieces are made from cork – a natural, waterproof and environmentally friendly material, native to Portugal, constructed with the assistance of a 5D robotic milling machine and completed by hand.
The thought-provoking sculptures invite passersby to interact with their functional forms and clustered together, conceptualise a utopian future that questions how we might better engage with the natural world. Intermingling with the District’s walkways and enlivening the public spaces as a place to convene, the organic objects become a living thread, engaging with the native trees and architecture to create a place of reflection for visitors.
I am honored to be awarded Miami Design District’s Annual Design Commission this year. This is my largest work to date and my first public commission in the U.S.A. It has been a wonderful
Lara Bohinc
process creating these organic and colorful forms for this Installation, and truly rewarding to see them come to life in such a sustainable way. I’m proud to be a part of Design Miami/ Curatorial Lab’s esteemed group of commissioned designers, and can’t wait to finally see Utopia come to life in the Miami Design District as well as Design Miami/.
Art possesses an extraordinary power to transfigure our surroundings, and this year, in partnership with the exceptional talent of Lara Bohinc, our installation promises to be nothing short of mesmerizing. As we embrace the convergence of creativity, culture, and urban design, by offering a dynamic platform for artists to reshape our landscape, we also continue to elevate our community and strengthen Miami’s ever evolving art scene.
Craig Robins, President and CEO of DACRA
The Miami Design District Commission–an annual initiative in its 9th year–invites creatives to enliven the neighbourhood at a time of the year where the communities of art and design convene in the city for Miami Art Week. Utopia will remain publicly installed until mid-2024.
About the designer
After a decade-long stint with Cartier, exploring sculpture through jewellery, Lara Bohinc embarked upon creating functional pieces for living. Finding the larger medium so compelling following a series of private commissions, Bohinc launched her own studio in 2016 to dedicate her practice to and furniture design.
Working with wood, glass, metals, marble, ceramics and textiles, among other materials, the studio creates work of iconic beauty that honours traditional principles of craft and employs expertise in material and manufacturing techniques. Function fused with modernity forms the genesis of Bohinc’s contemporary design practice, feeding an obsession with the deconstruction and reconfiguration of form, expressed in the finest materials. Bohinc’s signature is a mix of contradictions: bold yet light, graphic yet fluid, angular yet feminine.
Bohinc’s design palette varies in scale, from small to very large objects, and she produces unique pieces alongside unlimited editions.
Bohinc’s obsession with material and research has taken her around the globe including a residency in Murano, Italy where she has worked with local glass blowers on a series of pieces for Venetian Hotel Bauer; to Wajima, Japan where she worked with a small community of Urushi craftsmen to create works that have been exhibited at Gallery Fumi for the London Design Festival in 2018.
Bohinc Studio launched Since the World is Round in 2018 and Planetaria in 2019 (celebrating 50 years of the first man landing on the moon) during FuoriSalone in Milan and at London Design Festival. Bohinc Studio returned to London Design Festival in September 2021 with the first edition of the Afternoon Tea collection. A second edition was exhibited at Design Miami in December 2021, marking Bohinc’s US debut. The latest body of work Peaches, which takes inspiration from the female form, presented at FuoriSalone at Alcova in Milan in June 2022.
Furthermore, the studio collaborated with Driade on a collection of ceramics objects, Swedish rug manufacturer Kasthall in 2018 on a textiles collection titled From the Sun to the Moon; with Roll and Hill on a collection of lighting titled Moonrise, with Lapicida on a series of marble tables and accessories; as well as with Skultuna for brass home accessories.
Bohinc’s first retrospective solo exhibition at MAO Ljubljana, Slovenia (Museum for Architecture & Design) was held in 2018. She has also exhibited at the Eye of the Collector and with Gallery Fumi at PAD, Nomad and Salon Art and Design. Bohinc has also collaborated with San Francisco-based Jessica Silverman Gallery and MOCO Museum in Amsterdam and Barcelona.
Permanent public commissions include Friendship Bench commissioned by Kensington and Chelsea Council for the Golborne Forum London, installed in 2017, as well as a private lighting commission for Mandrake Hotel in London in 2017.
