Adam Cornish for Alessi
Adam Cornish
(b. 1981, Australia)
Alessi
(est. 1921, Omegna, Italy)
Adam Cornish is a multidisciplinary designer working across furniture, homewares and interiors. Contributing to the storied history of Melbourne designers creating products for the Italian design firm Alessi, founded in 1921, Cornish’s Trinity centrepiece was designed in 2013. This object is part of a larger tableware collection inspired by the nautilus, a mollusc which every year adds another chamber toits distinctive shell.
‘When you look at nature, you see how all the different organisms have evolved and adapted to suit their environments’, says Cornish. He compares this to the design process, where products are simplified and improved over time through each new iteration. Cornish re-imagines the creature’s beautiful, durable and lightweight shell in an elegant, concentric structure that spirals from a simple geometric shape, merging the formal beauty of nature with modern manufacturing techniques. Produced in Alessi’s Crusinallo factory, the stainless-steel object is created by laser-perforating a metal sheet, which is then shaped using a mechanical process.
Working from his independent design studio in Melbourne, Cornish has collaborated with manufacturers and brands including Alessi, Tait, Nau, Instyle, Wovin, Junglefy and Anomaly. His designs have been exhibited worldwide at the Milan Furniture Fair, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York and NeoCon in Chicago. Cornish has won both the New York Design Award and Herman Miller’s Asia Pacific Yves Béhar competition. He holds degrees in industrial design from the University of Technology, Sydney, and furniture design from RMIT University, Melbourne.