Draga & Aurel crafts jewel-like furniture from liquid resin textured with sea salt
Italian duo Draga & Aurel has created a collection of striking furniture from Murano glass, resin and concrete, which forms their Dubai Design Week debut.
Crafted in collaboration with local brand Collectional, the pieces are currently on display in an installation at Dubai's annual Downtown Design fair.
Central to the collection are the bulbous Soffio lamps, formed from translucent sheets of glass combined with globular components salvaged from 1970s chandeliers.
"It all started with a kind of 'rescue me' gesture, saving the vintage glass bubbles we discovered here and there," explained studio founders Draga Obradovic and Aurel K Basedow.
The pair travelled to Venice, where "Draga wants to celebrate all her birthdays", and collaborated with local glassblowers to create the lamps.
"We gave the bubbles new life by combining them with newly blown pieces, creating a dialogue between past and present," they told Dezeen.
"We also revived traditional blown-glass techniques, from craquele to cotisso and gold-leaf inserts, pushing them even further through our own creative experimentation," added Obradovic and Basedow.
The Cava coffee tables are squat, geometric slabs of concrete layered with epoxy resin, a material that the studio has become known for.
Despite the different elements, both the resin and the concrete were poured into moulds to create the handcrafted furniture. The liquid resin was coloured in burnt red and amber hues before it set.
"We like to think that, through the production process, which demands care and attention at every single step, we give these 'humble' materials a new life, transforming them into something precious, into jewels," reflected Obradovic and Basedow.
The duo applied sea salt to the slabs of resin and concrete to give them a more textured and tactile finish before attaching the materials to complete the tables' composition.
Alongside the Cava coffee tables, Draga & Aurel also designed Lava – similar furniture with rounded, more refined resin tabletops.
Stendhal is an architectural console table made from ruby-red resin supported by two pillar-like concrete legs, while Rescue Me is a low-slung cabinet made from a patchwork of multicoloured resin cupboards positioned atop a transparent plinth.
"For our debut at Dubai Design Week, we wanted to present a synthesis of our expressive studio language," said Obradovic and Basedow.
As Dubai Design Week kicks off across the Emirati city, explore projects from last year's edition, including a parametric cardboard pavilion by British designer Ross Lovegrove and spiky palm tree-style lamps by Spanish studio Masquespacio.
The photography is courtesy of Draga & Aurel.
Dubai Design Week 2025 takes place from 4 to 9 November 2025 at various locations across Dubai, United Arab Emirates. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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