2019 Designer Awards

Page 32 www.lux-review.com LUX 2019 Designer Awards Borne of AMA Group, one of the largest architectural consortia in continental Europe for more than 50 years now, Mercurio Design Lab (MDL) creates new milestones in architecture, interior design and industrial design. Drawing on its parent group’s vast industry experience, MDL coalesced out of fifteen years of work in the Asian market as a focused studio that serves the high-end lifestyle design industry. Today, the firm works with visionary developers and private owners that want to leave a mark in the industry. Its service offering was borne of the necessity to be creative while doing something useful. Since its inception, MDL has been a place for ideas and thoughts, with a high energy to generate architecturally meaningful works in the design world. The team is composed of passionate architects, engineers, designers and artists who integrate art with technology in their design process, while respecting the three fundamental criteria: the functional, the aesthetic and the social. The creative director, Massimo Mercurio, constantly seeks ways to soften buildings and help them have a stronger affinity to the natural world. Over the years, this innovative studio’s work has evolved to embrace a more cutting-edge style, fuelled by a craving to experiment with ideas and move them beyond the limits. As futurists, pushing the envelope of contemporary aesthetic into new territories, the team approach the dynamic fields in a mathematical way so that everything looks perfect. Massimo’s strong engineering background (he has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering) lends a sense of balance between pure bold creativity and the reality of manufacturing MDL’s creativity. Mercurio Design Lab S.r.l. (MDL) is an award-winning Italian design studio that creates avant-garde concepts with the aim of setting trends within the vibrant Asian market. We profile the firm to gain an insight into the secrets behind its phenomenal success. Mercurio Design Lab Best Master Planning & Interior Design Studio 2019 - Italy While the studio works at any scale, it carefully selects a limited number of projects to undertake each year, focusing the attention on works that will impress a significance on the design scene to leave a mark. Among the firm’s latest projects are Laguna National Golf & Country Club Hotel as well as the Indonesia One project. Laguna started as a remarkable concept with an organically shaped roof that attempts to visually merge with the sinuous undulation of the golf course where it is situated. The design advocates one of MDL’s core principles in composition: how a simple concept carries more strength than excessive complication. Here, a lone pencil stroke can represent the building with tremendous strength. This stroke resembles the sinuosity of a quadratic equation on paper as an intended effect because mathematics describes beauty with majestic elegance. The music of concrete is crafted through the music of math and it gently, fluidly, yet assertively comes into reality. Meanwhile, Indonesia One, due to its prestigious address in Jakarta’s downtown, as well as its colossal size and height, easily ranks among the firm’s most important projects. From a composition point of view, the team had to substantially reign in their free spirit of creativity as the client decided to abandon MDL’s first proposal that was too provoking and audacious, in lieu of a more practical and easy-to-maintain building. As a result, the team opted to follow a linear, classic and rational approach, curbing