Landscape architect: Designer captures spirit of home in furniture range

Wiktoria Szawiel, from the MA Conceptual Design course at Design Academy Eindhoven, set out to capture the colours, textures and materials of the natural scenery she grew up with. ‘I wanted to capture the beauty and the spirituality of an eastern landscape within a physical object,’ Szawiel told Dezeen magazine. ‘I think the quality of my material experimentation lies in the combination of opposites – natural and artificial.’

The designer used materials common in Eastern Europe and wove them into delicate structures before casting the arrangements in a specially mixed milky resin to make them solid. Once dried, the resin was sanded down to reveal the complex inner patterns created by the weave.

The combination of natural and industrial materials and fossil-like aesthetic reminded us of Ruben de le Rive Box's Sediment Objects. For more examples of man-made fossils, read the New Earth Materials section of our Milan 2014: Part 2 report.