Review of Patricia Urquiola ‘s work ‘shimmer’
Patricia Urquiola is a Spanish designer, who has an architecture design background. In 2001 she opened her studio of product design, display, and architecture. She has worked with leading manufacturers such as Moroso, B&B Italia, and De Vecchi. Her work is noted as being unconventional，emphatic and experimental.
Presented at the London designer festival 2015, her ‘shimmer’ series composite by simple structure and dreamily color. The tables are crafted from laminated glass bonded together at intersecting planes, which cause their profiles and compositions to alter when viewed from different perspectives. it is due to an iridescent multi-chromatic finish adding an ethereal element. ‘shimmer’ consists of several glass parts which glued together at angles without any construction materials in the seams，therefore people will more focus on the color aspect. The most appealing part of all is the color of shadow, which is like a soap bubble, the elements are constantly changing in hue, depth and transparency depending on the lighting and the angle from which people are viewed. Imaging the table in the sunlight, colorful reflections that will shift and change throughout the day.
Patricia Urquiola believes design works should own their unique character and make users’ life more pleasurable, moreover, she respects and appreciates the little thing in our daily life and convey the cultural peculiarity through design language. It can be found in her works that she has paid careful attention to the light and shadow, which might because of her architectural background. For example, the‘T-table’which designed by Urquiola in 2006, used empty carving technique，so when the light falling on the table surface, the delicate shadow appeared at the bottom. Both ‘T-table’ and ‘shimmer’ have emphasized shadow, ’T-table’ catch people’s eyes with the shadow’s patterns, while the ’shimmer’ draw people’s attention with shadow’s color. Furthermore, it can also be obviously see that she interested in mixing color through different way. In her work ‘tropicalia-chair’ which is full of passion and vitality. This series of colored chairs are made using three threads weaving with different colors and creating interesting color mixes, which make people associated with the iridescent color of ‘shimmer’.
To summarize, ‘shimmer’ is a successful work at least in three aspects. First of all, Patricia Urquiola expresses the pleasure feeling and enjoyment clearly using the elegant color and simple combine method. Secondly, it is unexpected that she really hates glass, but finally she has overcome her hatred of glass to design ‘shimmer’ successfully. Urquiola suggested that When a designer have to deal with something that she or he really don't like, sometimes things come that are really personal, It can be observed that she always ask herself to create some thing new through improving the material, technique, forms etc. The third aspects is she keeps the unique design style as always, which might thanks to her very feminine way of experimenting continually with materials, shapes and details, her works roots in a respect about life and endless curiosity to try more materials.