In Conversation: Michael Anastassiades

Best known for sculptural lighting that deftly walks a line between elegant and expressive, the London-based Cypriot designer recalls arriving in the city in 1988 to study and, eventually, to stay. ‘I was about 20 when I came here and decided to make London my home,’ he says. ‘It took me a little while to feel settled, and to integrate myself into the London design scene, but today I feel comfortable – and that I’ve been embraced as a British designer.’

Choosing London was only the first of several bold moves. ‘Right after graduating I decided not to work for anybody, and set up my own studio in 1994,’ he says. ‘Then in 2007 I set up my own brand, not just to design but to manufacture my own products.’ That pursuit of independence, at first, was about creative freedom. ‘If I had a client or worked for a company my vision would have been compromised,’ he explains. He made the most of having no constraints, producing experimental one-off pieces and small editions that probed our relationship with objects – ‘raising questions about design more than solving problems or making straightforward things to use’. 

The later step – taking full responsibility from concept to market – was a conscious effort to engage with industry on his own terms. Both gambles paid off. Today Anastassiades’s work sits in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the MAK in Vienna. He has collaborated with brands such as B&B Italia, Herman Miller, Cassina, Mutina, Molteni and Alessi. Most significant is his long partnership with the global lighting company Flos, which approached him soon after he made his entrepreneurial turn. ‘They came along and said, “where have you been all these years?”,’ he recalls.

His path to design was circuitous. He first studied civil engineering at Imperial College – a more credible career in his family’s eyes than being a ‘struggling artist’. Fortunately, he discovered the Royal College of Art around the corner, where he went on to complete a master’s in industrial design. ‘Unlike me, most people already had a creative foundation, so the two-year course felt very short,’ he says. The years that followed became, in effect, a self-directed continuation of his education: with outcomes including experimental projects such as Weeds, Aliens and Other Stories, a set of objects about our psychological ties to plants created in collaboration with speculative design studio Dunne & Raby for an exhibition at the ICA. 

Over the years, he has also made numerous contributions to London Design Festival, including a series of public drinking fountains in 2022 and the permanent re-paving of a street in Southwark using reclaimed marble. 

What’s next? After decades of charting his own course, Anastassiades is now at ease with uncertainty. ‘The unknown kept recurring: when I came to this country, when I entered the RCA, when I left it.’ As a result, he says, the future is always full of potential.