The Stuff That Surrounds You: Inside the home of designer Michael Anastassiades

Welcome to the fourth instalment of the new Wallpaper* video series, The Stuff That Surrounds You. Watch as we're invited into the intriguing and idiosyncratic homes of creatives and makers (such as Veronica Ditting, Yasmin Sewell and Glenn Sestig), catching a glimpse of their interior lives via the objects with which they surround themselves, all of which tell a story.

What is the role of a designer? For Cypriot-born, London-based Michael Anastassiades, it is the pursuit of creating things that engage with diverse sensibilities. ‘You have the responsibility to allow an object to speak to many different people with many different opinions,’ he says.

This sensitivity is evident in the designer’s poetic, minimalist lighting and objects, where clarity meets a quiet sense of drama. Iconic pieces like the IC Lights and String Lights that Anastassiades created for Flos, his Mobile Chandeliers, and his Frame collection – launched in April 2025 during Milan Design Week – reveal a practice grounded in observation: ‘I always ask the question: why does something exist, why is it there, and what is the thinking behind it?’ he says. This mindset, shaped by Anastassiades’ training in engineering and industrial design, has carried through since he founded his studio in 1994.

Anastassiades’ belief in designing openly and accessibly is mirrored in his home, where he has lived since 1998. He doesn’t associate the space with a particular style, keeps few belongings, and doesn’t see himself as ‘the typical consumer.’ There are no unnecessary objects here: ‘Everything is very carefully chosen, and unless something is perfectly suitable, I prefer to live without it.’

A painting by Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi speaks to Anastassiades’ connection to water, while a chair by architect and friend Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai stands out for its lightness and strength, despite its incredible detail. A Carl Auböck object entered the designer’s home after he visited the artist’s Vienna workshop, and a piano stool by Marc Camille Chaimowicz appeals precisely because ‘it’s so far away from anything that [Anastassiades] would ever design [himself].’

That said, the designer considers it important to surround himself with his own creations. ‘It's a responsibility,’ he says. ‘You can't expect somebody else to go through something without even having a personal experience of your own products.’

One of his lights from the Fontana Amorosa series, for instance, places its source at the bottom of the fixture rather than the top – an intriguing inversion. Anastassiades’ living room is home to the Bird Cage Cabinet, designed as an homage to architect Josef Frank. The house also contains a Tube Chandelier – Anastassiades’ earliest lighting design, described as ‘a simple exercise in trying to suspend three light tubes in the most minimal way’; prototypes from his Floor Composition, including the Spot Stool created for Herman Miller; and a Copper Mirror, echoing the designer’s belief that ‘mirrors speak as much about light as light objects or light sculptures do.’

In many ways, Anastassiades' career started by ‘testing’ his own creations. Unable to find objects that felt right for his space, he realised that, as a designer, he could create them himself. ‘This marked the moment I shifted some focus from conceptual work to addressing my own environment,’ he says. ‘The first pieces I created for the house, which were later industrially produced, originated from this process.’

Elsewhere in Anastassiades' home: lingam stones naturally shaped in India’s Narmada River, reflecting his fascination ‘with the relationship of nature’; Poul Kjærholm’s PK12 chair, admired for the fact that ‘it doesn't have angles, but somehow all the curves communicate with each other’; and an egg bowl by Greek potter Eleni Vernadaki, whose work Anastassiades first encountered as a teenager.

In this space – free of excess and governed by clarity – Anastassiades’ belief in deliberate, functional design becomes tangible. That said, his objects have garnered a ‘psychological layer’ that ‘enhances [his] relationship with [them]’. ‘The object stops being just there to serve you,’ he says, ‘and becomes almost like a companion.’

Director of photography: Peter Butterworth
Camera operator: Mark James
Focus puller and camera assistant: Curtis Blair
Gaffer: Alex Verber
Sound design: Indústries Sòniques
Colour: DOMA Works
Colourist: Thomas Kumeling
Head of Video: Sebastian Jordahn