Aussie ex-pat designers get some Norwegian inspiration and take it to London
October 8th, 2008
Michael Travalia and Christopher Thomas first met in a Tasmanian rainforest back in 1994. Both men took the furniture course at the University of Tasmania, renowned for producing skilled designers.
After graduating they took their own career and life paths – Thomas moved to South Australia then to Norway, and Travalia remained in Tasmania before also taking to Europe – but the two remained close friends.
From their respective bases in Oslo and London the duo have once again come together in a new venture, project HOLO. During a Norwegian designer’s retreat near the small town of Dale, and inspired by the isolation and natural beauty, Thomas and Travalia began designing and making prototypes.
The result is the first collection from HOLO, including the ‘fjord table’ and ‘cloud light’ [both pictured below]. The designs were shown at Tent London, as part of the London Design Festival in September.
The pair see HOLO as a design ‘jam session’, creating new designs for the love of design, rather than making lots of money. Although their designs are likely to be quite popular. Produced out of Oslo and London, HOLO’s first collection is available through pre-order only.








INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
Stepping into Intuit’s Sydney workplace certainly doesn’t feel like walking into an office. Why? In this film, we discover that, when joy takes precedence as a design driver, even a high-performing commercial CBD headquarters can feel like an intuitive wonderland that invites employees to choose their own adventure.
In the last instalment of our three-part performance seating series, Alex Bain from Architectus explains why sitting well shouldn’t feel like sitting at all and explores an unexpected success metric of the hybrid workplace: the grounding power of emotional support.
In the second instalment of our performance seating three-parter, we turn to DKO’s Michael Drescher and Jacob Olsen to peek behind Sayl’s confident architectural form and explore the ideas of inclusivity, adaptability and freedom to move as hallmarks of what sitting your best actually means.
Leading the charge for sustainable design, X+O and Nudie Jeans are both making a statement in Brisbane and doing it with creativity and innovation.
Designers and exhibitors are putting the finishing touches on their designs for The Project in the lead-up to Brisbane Indesign.
We all know that the traditional office space has evolved to accommodate a more fluid and intuitive solution to productivity. Our Indesign In Focus list is fit for the shift in working behaviours across the commercial industry.
Architect, designer, art director: the Italian multi-disciplinary creative, Piero Lissoni, is what many of us would refer to as a living legend. His output is prodigious. Alice Blackwood absorbs some life lessons from this orchestrator of architecture and space.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
At r.a.g.e Hot Glass Studio, the glass artist and furniture designer will trace the making of two sculptural wall sconces through live glassblowing, discussion and process-led collaboration.
With a plethora of talks, installations, exhibitions and happenings responding to this year’s theme (Design The World You Want), the eleven-day festival was the largest to date and arguably the most accomplished since inception.