Birdhouses and bulbous furniture: inside Lara Bohinc’s Miami Design District ‘Utopia’

Lara Bohinc has just unveiled Utopia, a new installation created for the Miami Design District. Part of the neighbourhood’s annual design commission, selected in collaboration with the Design Miami curatorial lab, the installation will take over the district’s pedestrian areas for a year, as well as welcome visitors to the fair. 

‘Utopia’ by Lara Bohinc at Miami Design District

Utopia marks the first US commission of the London-based Slovenian creative,
who started her career as a jewellery designer before moving to furniture and objects, through collaborations with brands such as Driade, Roll & Hill and Kasthall, as well as ongoing self-produced limited-edition series.

Nature has always been present in Bohinc’s geometric yet soft compositions: among her latest projects is ‘Peaches’, a series of curvaceous furniture pieces, as well as
a collection of vases for Driade shaped like abstract female bodies, or the ‘Planetaria’ collection of furniture, where spherical and tubular shapes come together to form seating inspired by celestial bodies. 

For this new installation, Bohinc once again looks to nature, using living organisms as starting points for her exploration of repeating organic forms. ‘I wanted to explore how we might live in synchronicity with nature,’ she explains. ‘I wanted to create something that’s based on the idea of the cell, exploring how things grow and move, organisms, eggs, mushrooms and mycelium, the development of life.’ The designs also references Buckminster Fuller, whose Fly’s Eye dome is part of the Design District’s permanent installations and a strong influence on Bohinc’s creative thinking.

The resulting installation features outdoor seating, including stools and armchairs connecting into sofas, as well as tables and oversized light sculptures (equipped with solar panels). Bohinc also created 900 egg-shaped birdhouses, and an egg-like centrepiece that she imagines as a sculptural refuge for animals and children. ‘The design process was like, let’s just throw some things around and see what happens, in the same way the natural world creates itself,’ she says. ‘It’s almost like letting the eye wander in a way, and then just really observing when is the right moment to capture the final effect.’

Now in its ninth year, the annual design commission is part of the Miami Design District’s ongoing mission to enrich the local community while supporting creatives from a variety of fields. Bohinc’s installation follows commissions by Germane Barnes, Fernando Laposse, Philippe Malouin and Dozie Kanu, among others. ‘With the exceptional talent of Lara Bohinc, our installation this year promises to be nothing short of mesmerising,’ says Craig Robins, president and CEO of Dacra, the real estate innovator behind the district’s development. ‘By offering a dynamic platform for artists to reshape our landscape, we continue to elevate our community and strengthen Miami’s ever-evolving art scene.’

The pieces will be arranged across the district to create vignettes that encourage interaction, in a nod to ancient rituals of people gathering in circles, and to offer a practical moment of pause for visitors. ‘Miami faces many ongoing environmental issues, including the rising sea level, so I wanted to create something that’s really about coming back to life and protecting life,’ says Bohinc. For this reason, she chose to work in cork, a tactile material known for its sustainability credentials and natural waterproof properties. Working closely with a specialist workshop in Portugal, she created forms that start from the initial egg-shaped idea, ‘mushrooming and ballooning like growing cells’. The pieces were milled from cork blocks using 5D robotic milling machines, before being finished and painted by hand.

To connect the installation with the city, Bohinc curated a colour palette referencing classic Miami hues, with pastels inspired by Miami Beach art deco, the turquoise of the sea, and the glass from contemporary architecture around the Design District. The palette includes shades of pink, lilac, blue and green, with the material’s presence defining the final shade on the surface.

For Bohinc, this project is a continuation on the trajectory of organic, soft forms that have defined her work in recent years. ‘For a while, my work was very geometric, but the beauty of being creative is that you can allow yourself the freedom to change,’ she says, explaining how after spending more time indoors during the pandemic, she started veering toward a softer aesthetic.

Such a major commission as this will bring her work to the biggest audience yet. ‘I’m really interested in developing a language that contributes to the visual landscape,’ she says. ‘I hope that this will be the beginning of something that sprouts from that.’

Utopia will be installed 22 November 2023, and will be on view in the Design District for a year

larabohinc.com
miamidesigndistrict.com

A version of this story appears in the December 2023 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!