The Cypriot-born designer Michael Anastassiades, Royal Designer for Industry and a Compasso d'Oro winner, on the iterative business of design, with the writer Emily King.
Michael Anastassiades, the Cypriot-born designer who won the Compasso d’Oro in 2020, talks about his own process at The Hellenic Centre in Marylebone on Thursday 10 December 2026. The writer and curator Emily King joins him in conversation.
Anastassiades trained first as a civil engineer at Imperial College, then took a master’s in industrial design at the Royal College of Art. He founded his studio in 1994 and his own brand in 2007, and works across lighting, furniture, objects and spatial design.
The Royal Society of Arts made him a Royal Designer for Industry in 2015. An OBE for services to design followed in 2024, and the London Design Medal in 2025.
His lighting is the work most people know without knowing whose it is: thin brass stems and plain spheres, held in balance. He puts pieces into production with manufacturers, makes signature limited editions alongside them, and has shown solo at galleries and museums worldwide.
The evening turns on how iterative design is: the versions, the returns, the long way round. King, whose own specialism is design, draws on his recent exhibitions in Athens and Tokyo.