Matter is no longer forced and forged by an anthropocentric instinct,  on the contrary, technology is digested by the natural element, which becomes its skin and skeleton. The artificial is meticulously integrated into the natural, inhabits it almost invisibly, maintains its technological function and remains excluded from the aesthetic one.

At what point are we? What will happen to the natural matter that we have been domesticating for millennia in the direction of our system? How precarious is our equilibrium? How much more can we push, or pull?

They are branches laden with doubts and questions, dutiful but disturbing. But they are also laden with hope.

Maximilian interweaves his work with the history of a tree with a different “behavior”: 
the beech tree has a dominant character. Among the most widespread plants of Europe, the beech tree experienced an increase in expansion at the end of the Ice Age and from there on confronted all changes in climate: nothing seems to have stopped it as its growth supplanted that of other species. Tall and greedy for light, the beech does indeed tend to create forests that are all its own, in which other plants struggle to grow. The beech tree is a bit like man. Like man, the beech tree endures, but perhaps exactly like man, the beech tree hangs in the balance. In this second imposing lamp-tree, Marchesani stresses with aesthetic and material elements the analogy with humankind; in fact, women’s hair is woven into the branches, while the clay rosette is shaped like a cave. In that cave—the designer imagines—there could be man himself, who finds himself again, restarts from his beginnings, consciously rereads the path he has taken and from his little cave-roson looks at the beautiful, upturned skeleton of this tree. Perhaps man still has the opportunity and indeed hope, as does the beech tree, of reinventing himself himself with a new, different attitude—integrating with everything else to make the matter of the world.


The chandelier Vai o Stai is composed of several branches of Pendulous Beech (Fagus sylvatica "Pendula"). The branches, curved by steam, converge in an electrical coupling made of brass, rhodium, and copper. The end connectors are molded to the specific branches. Metal mesh, recovered from bits of cable, protects the conductors in a suspended mesh, which guides the position of the branches. The rose ceiling is an archipelago islands made of unfired earth, arranged circularly. The electrified island feeds all the branches, and holds its own glimmer of light inside a cave. Cables run in the hollowed-out branches, on the ends are grafted LEDs, whose cuts of light are protected by glass straws. The light is mediated and diffused by tubular wigs of human hair and mohair wool. Plant, animal, and human elements are combined with earths and metals in a flipped, hybrid structure. Poised, between the dominating will of both species and its direct consequences.