The London-based designer Paul Cocksedge dug deep to make the furniture in his current project, Excavation: Evicted, on view at the Fondazione Luigi Rovati in Milan until 9 April (to coincide with Milan Design Week) and presented by the New York gallery Friedman Benda. At the beginning of last year, the designer was served with an eviction notice for his studio in the London borough of Hackney, and decided to explore the space he has occupied for the past 12 years—and take some of it with him—by mining the studio’s floor for material for his designs. Cocksedge scanned the studio’s foundation and then began his excavation. “The resulting findings epitomise London’s multi-layered history, with the initial concrete hiding Victorian bricks left over from the building’s former life as a stable,” the designer explains in a statement.
The objects in the show include a table with small slices of flooring embedded in a glass top and glass shelves supported by cylindrical chunks of flooring. “Intended as the last creative work to come out of the space, the pieces celebrate London’s reputation as a home for creativity—a status that is increasingly under threat as artists are displaced from their studios by property developers and rising rents,” says Cocksedge, who will vacate his studio by the end of the year.