Pieces from Earth: Anya Fennet’s nomination

The shortlist for this year’s Surface Design Awards consists of an impressive 43 projects across seven categories, each entry an exemplary example of creative and innovative use of materials and lighting in both interior and exterior schemes. Some projects won nominations across several categories, resulting in 48 finalists.

As proud media sponsors of the Surface Design Show, Design Insider were keen to use our own expertise in commercial design to select the projects which stood out for us.

Our second reveal in this series is within the Sustainable Interior Surface category: Ania Choroszcynska from Anya Fennet Design has created a wonderfully engaging surface finish, making the extraordinary out of an extremely familiar material. 

Ania marries cubic architecture and flowing form with the focus on sustainable production process. The GEO01 shows Anya’s passion for natural elements, the outdoors and freedom of space.

For more than 3700 million years of Earth history, the magma to mud cycle has steadily generated new crustal rock. Reactive clay minerals are critical for the recycling of crustal rocks.

The material itself inspires Ania, as she works with terracotta creating individual components slip sprayed and fired only once to bisque temperature. She installs them as a part of wall installation.

“I work with terracotta creating these wall surface to help people’s wellbeing – especially the ones living in busy cities. I have researched thoroughly the subject of mental health and discovered that newly developed parts of brain can only destress if the prime parts of brain rest in nature or surrounded with natural elements.” – Ania Choroszcynska, founder of Anya Fennet Design.

Material is only fired once to reduce landfill gas and there is no use of toxic materials. She goes ‘green’, by reducing one firing and use energy-saving methods where she can, using sustainable ways to collect and use clay itself, and find the ways to deal with waste materials and save water.

Ania Choroszczynska is a founder of Anya Fennet Design. Ania focuses on transitional spaces and design elements that focus on human wellbeing and mindfulness. Over more than 12 years of experience in interior design, Anya has created elegant interiors for world-renowned hotel brands and now works closely with architects, project managers, factories, curators and private clients.

This is part of a series of posts for the Surface Design Awards, hosted at the Business Design Centre in Islington between the 5th and 7th of February. If you would like to register to attend, you can click here. Alternatively, you can read more about the Surface Design Show on Design Insider.