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Chanel and Es Devlin team up once again for an installation at Miami Art Week

2021-11-03T17:59:00-04:00

A French luxury staple is bringing an in-demand designer to Miami Art Week in celebration of its founder and the brand’s most important birthday.

As part of the 100th anniversary of the iconic fragrance line’s commercial debut, artist and designer Es Devlin has teamed with the fabled fashion house Chanel for a public installation that will honor the legacy and cultural significance of its signature Chanel No. 5 perfume.

Drawing on the namesake’s deep connection to the natural world, the installation features a Grecian-style labyrinth surrounded by greenery inspired by the original twenty plants whose essences form the base of the signature fragrance. Visitors will engage with all five of their senses as they enter the labyrinth’s five concentric pathways, conceived as dance routes in reference to the Greek tradition, that complete an interactive experience in combination with an ethereal soundscape designed to highlight the company’s sophisticated laboratory vetting process.

The ...

Glass box theater? Designers like Es Devlin are making the Fourth Wall out of something new

2021-10-21T17:59:00-04:00

Even before Covid-19, many ambitious productions had been taking place not in the three-sided black boxes that defined the experimental zest and emerging punk of the late 1970s, or […] theater-in-the-round pioneered in ancient Greece and Rome, but in elaborately engineered glass cubes that evoke the International Style’s high Modernism and the minimalist penthouses of the contemporary metropolis. There would not seem to be a more flagrant violation of dramatic immediacy.

Glass cube sets from Miriam Buether, artist Todd Knope, and Expo 2020 Dubai British Pavillion designer Es Devlin have been popular among directors like Sam Mendes. One of Devlin's previous designs was based on a temporary Rachel Whitehead installation in East London from 1993. The artist's work will take center stage once again with the reopening of Mendes' The Lehman Trilogy, which plays at New York's Nederlander Theater until January 2nd.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway (@lehmantrilogybway)

“There’s a message embedded in a single room,” the three-time Olivier Award winner told the Times, “that architecture itself is the vessel through which history — whether intimate or monumental — is enacted. Glass helps you make that message explicit: A room is more than just a passive container. It remembers life.”

Es Devlin's UK pavilion is unveiled as the Expo 2020 Dubai officially kicks off

2021-09-30T12:26:00-04:00

Lauded as one of the “must-see” highlights at this year’s Expo 2020 Dubai, the entry from the United Kingdom stands above the crowd thanks to a unique collaborative design from London-based artist and designer Es Devlin.

Photo © Alin Constantin Photography

The 20-meter (65.5-foot) conical CLT structure will host a program that highlights advancements in artificial intelligence, sustainable food, fashion, and other technologies relating to the Expo’s theme of “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.” The pavilion also includes an interactive feature, inspired by Stephen Hawking, that will transcribe and then broadcast user-aggregated messages into space using machine learning technology.

Photo © Alin Constantin Photography

Devlin, who, in the past, has collaborated with luminaries like Bjarke Ingels and Benedict Cumberbatch, and who was responsible for the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony Union Jack set design, came to view the pavilion as a showcase for not only technology and com...

Interdisciplinary stage designer Es Devlin fills Pitzhanger with giant mirrored planes

2019-09-25T16:15:00-04:00

In this new large-scale work...visitors are immersed within a vast chronological landscape mapping pivotal shifts in human perspective over 75 millennia...the locations and moments represent a personal and subjective cartography and have been chosen by Devlin and her studio team to invoke our collective memories/history and to provoke dialogue and debate.

The Es Devlin: Memory Palace exhibition, designed by Es Devlin, the famous interdisciplinary stage designer who was featured in the first season of Abstract, is an 18-meter-wide sculpture that fills the entire Pitzhanger Gallery space and is accompanied by mirrored planes that exaggerate its presence, creating a heightened user experience.

The name of the exhibition builds off of the mnemonic technique that situates memories within spatial locations in one's mind. Devlin identified areas where she believed human thought took significant shifts and has situated those moments into distinguishable fragments of cities and buildings. The intent is to present a three-dimensional evolution of human thought.

London's third Design Biennial to be directed by Es Devlin and will explore the theme of 'Resonance'

2019-02-27T14:54:00-05:00

The third edition of the London Design Biennale, which will take place from September 8th, 2020 through the 27th, will explore the theme of 'Resonance.' With Es Devlin at the helm as artistic director, the Biennale will showcase the responses of over 50 participating countries, cities and territories to the prompt laid out by the notable artist and designer.

"We live in an age of hyper resonance, the consequences of which are both exhilarating and devastating," cautioned Devlin. "Everything we design and everything we produce resonates."

As someone who has created stage sets for the Weeknd, Beyoncé, Adele, and the like, Devlin is well-acquainted with space in the digital era. Known for her artistically and technically ambitious approaches, she regularly harnesses the power of fast-paced technology to grab a mass audience.

Devlin's set design for Lady Gaga's Monster Ball US Theater Tour (2009/2010)

"In our global, digital era, design can reach instantly across borders and bridge cul...