Report: Inside the Crystal Workshop
Everyone knows what Swarovski crystals are. You can find these colourful pieces of ‘glass kitsch’ in thousands of souvenir shops. They adorn phone cases and shoes in the form of glittering rhinestone appliqués and have long been a fixture on the jeans and Hollywood-style gowns of various fashion labels. Anyone making hasty assumptions about the identity of the Tyrolean family business as a result of the sparkling paraphernalia they produce however, is bound to be surprised by the brand’s new crystal studio. Cleverly built within their existing production site in Wattens near Innsbruck, and designed by Norwegian architects Snøhetta, this forward-looking laboratory has been conceived for co-creation design processes using digital production methods. Anything that conjures up ‘bling’ has been deliberately avoided, as have old-fashioned forms of representation.
