DIFFA's Dining by Design 2012

Inspiration in a Million Points of Light:

MADS for

DIFFA’s Dining by Design

 March 22-26, 2012

March 5, 2012

No matter what our profession, we all need inspiration in our designs. Sometimes we turn to a single point of illumination to guide our way, and sometimes, if we’re very lucky, we can turn to a million points of light.

This is exactly what Marie Aiello draws from in her latest design titled, "A Bioluminescent Evening at Sea", a dining room she created for Dining By Design, an event put on by Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) at Pier 94 in Manhattan, NY this month. While the footprint is an 11x11 room, what Aiello of the Marie Aiello Design Studio (MADS) creates feels like the size of an ocean.

“I love the feeling of being in water,” Aiello said, who used to be a diver in some of the worlds most beautiful locales. In fact, the whole room is inspired by a single evening aboard a friend’s boat in Cartagena, Columbia, a night that Aiello describes with gratitude and wonder.

While having dinner with family and friends aboard the boat, there was a twinkling blue light that played across the sea.

“Someone yelled, ‘It’s plankton! Let’s swim in it!’” Aiello recalled, remembering the whole dinner party diving into the sea to “play” with these tiny creatures shimmering a thousand echoes back up to the moon’s light.

As she ran her hands around the water, this bioluminescence chased after her arms, tracing bright blue, sparkling lines in the sea. As leading marine biologist Edith Widder said in a recent interview with the New York Times, “Animals converse with each other in these arrays of light,” and that night, Aiello was part of the conversation.  

 That evening is what inspires Aiello’s design, entitled “Bioluminescence,” for the upcoming charity event. In every aspect of her design she says she seeks to capture that fluidity in motion, and having seen her drawings, Aiello achieves that goal and then some.

With Resource Furniture as her sponsor, Aiello utilizes many of their exciting and progressive designs. The first she points to is an amorphous tabletop—“organic and natural in feel,” Aiello notes. The table, which seats ten, boasts a translucent top in order to show off the legs underneath, reminiscent of flowing hands, abstractions loosely holding pearls.

“The table should almost disappear,” Aiello says, leaving behind the five acrylic chairs on each side of its oblong design. The chairs give the look of sparkling water that envelops the table, and one imagines, the diner in this sea of beauty and natural design. And on the table, is sure to be a stunning display with glassware from William Yeoward, china from L’Objet, and placemats and napkin rings from Kim Seybert, Inc.

 Behind the breathtaking table, two high-definiton NanoLumens screens (content supplied by Pixelfire) will be playing a looped clip of The Beach, the 2000 Danny Boyle film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and features a gorgeous love scene between DiCaprio and the female lead kissing underwater as the ocean swirls around them in the same dark blue light that Aiello describes of that Cartagena evening. And in The Beach scene, plankton plays above the lovers in the same shimmering explosions of light.

A dazzling array of effects are highlighted by Zerolux Lighting Design, creatively lighting custom wallpaper depicting a nighttime ocean, covered in glass beads by Maya Romanoff. A landscaped corral reef created by Zone 6 Design will sweep down the center of the table, and below it, Tectonic Flooring Systems grounds the viewer on an imaginary floating sea. However, as Aiello reminded of each design element, “nothing should feel completely literal.”

 Suspended above and echoing the shimmering sea light will be Swarovski Crystal Palace’s branch-like Blossom chandeliers by Tord Boontje. That design element harkens back to the designer’s focus: bioluminesence and that night on the sea just off the coast of Cartagena as the plankton, and the people, played.

“I hope that in this room you have the feeling I had during that wondrous night on a moonlit sea,” Aiello said.

Dining By Design runs March 22-26 and is open to the public over the weekend at Pier 94 in Manhattan. The DIFFA event is sponsored by Architectural Digest, The New York Times, Manhattan Magazine, EFFEN Vodka and LXTV OPEN HOUSE.  This year the event is held in conjunction with the Architectural Digest Home Design Show. For tickets and more information, please go to www.diffa.org.www.diffa.org

MADS would like to acknowledge the rest of the extraordinary team: Duggal Visual Solutions, Pietra Viva, William Yeoward Crystal, Maya Romanoff, Plexi-craft, Lites on West, Prolume, Forbes & Lomax,  and Philips Lightolier.