How Michael Anastassiades turned poetry and precision into timeless designs

If you look up or around you in some of the world's most sophisticated spaces, chances are you'll see some of Michael Anastassiades' lighting designs. Created with intense precision and a sense of visual poetry that is perhaps closer to magic, his pieces combine precise proportions and a sense of balance that have made him a design icon in the 30 years since he founded his studio.

In September 2025, Anastassiades was announced as the recipient of the London Design Medal, celebrating excellence in the field of design and remarkable contributions to the city's designscape.

Who is Michael Anastassiades?

Born in Cyprus, Anastassiades studied civil engineering at the Imperial College in London, and the MA in industrial design at the Royal College of Art. These two elements of his background complement each other in his work, merging an engineer's mind with a design language that writes its own rules. ‘I’m sure the engineer is still in me when I design,’ he says. ‘I always strive for precision even if there’s a last layer of unpredictability in the end product.’

Early works

Anastassiades' early works demonstrated an interest in experimental designs and how objects can help shape behaviours. The Message Cup and Antisocial Light, two designs from 1993, were based on simple technology that gave a glimpse into the future, and was meant to explore communication and our relationship with objects.

Both ideas were based on user interaction. The Message Cup featured voice recording and playback so that the people in a home could use it to record a message (by turning the cup upside down). The Antisocial Light was based on the concept of silence and conversation, only lighting up when there is silence in a room, while voices and background noise would make it dim, and eventually switch off.

During this time, Anastassiades' work decidedly leaned towards the theoretical and conceptual, also working closely with speculative design studio Dunne and Raby to create objects that offered an emotional point of view to mundane gestures and rituals – including household plants and nuclear anxiety.

Lighting design

The first lighting design that debuted the Michael Anastassiades brand (as the designer had started creating objects and lighting for his London home), was created in 2006: the Tube Chandelier was made of three tubes of light arranged around a central brass element. ‘The design for this fixture began as an exercise of subtraction,’ he says of this design. ‘The challenge was to suspend the minimum number of incandescent light tubes in a sculptural configuration to form a vertical chandelier. The supports needed to be discreet so when lit, only three glowing lines would be seen.’

No other designer has been able to achieve the same balance of poetry, perfection and perfect illumination. Over the past two decades, his collection has grown with lighting objects that are as iconic as they are essential. Although all belonging to a language that is clearly Anastassiades, each design is unique and surprising in its way to interpret light and space.

Examples of this are almost too many to name: his Mobile Chandeliers, for instance, are a series of lighting structures featuring both straight and curved elements. 'Constructed following the principles of a mobile, these are arrangements of linear tubes, geometric light sources, reflective surfaces and counterbalancing weights,' he explains.

The Tip of the Tongue collection, meanwhile, is characterised by an illuminated sphere that sits on the cusp of a brass base. He called this design 'a delicate gesture' that 'evokes the familiar phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word from memory, expressing a moment of tension in the form of the design.’

Designs such as the Peaks series and the Arrangements elements (the latter designed for Italian company Flos) show Anastassiades' brilliance at multiplying a design to illuminate an architectural space.

Furniture design and more

But Anastassiades' oeuvre extends way beyond lighting, with a portfolio that brings his design language to a diverse variety of objects and genres. He has designed furniture for Spanish outdoor specialist Kettal, and, curiously, a ceiling fan that blends the restrained aesthetic he is known for with extreme functionality.

His designs of tables and chairs for companies such as Cassina, Molteni & C, Tacchini and Fritz Hansen (just to name a few) combine corners and folds that make the pieces both essential and intriguing to look at (and use in a space). 'I have a belief that great projects can only develop with great relationships,' he once told Wallpaper*.

'I love to live with the designs that I created,' he continued. 'I think that's really the ultimate test: that moment when you walk into a space and the piece is there. Design is a learning process, and you learn from experience. Sometimes all you need is to see it, to confirm all the things that you wanted to achieve.'

Despite his close links to the design industry and the entrepreneurial nature of his work, Anastassiades is very connected to craftsmanship and culture. Alongside his practice, he regularly works with institutions and historical companies in ways that expand the scope of his design works. Notable examples include 'To be Perfectly Frank', a 2013 collaboration with Swedish company Svenskt Tenn was a homage to Josef Frank's work for which Anastassiades reinterpreted notable works by the Austrian architect.

'Cheerfully Optimistic about the Future', a 2021 project shown at ICA Milano, featured lighting objects made of bamboo precisely held together with tied strings, and inspired by 19th century artifacts.

10 Michael Anastassiades designs to know (and own)