Daniel Costa is a design poet who hails from the Tyrol. Like a breath of fresh mountain air, his endearing personal style and enchanting optimism mix freely with his creative skills and mature sense of beauty.

After studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven, Daniel completed an internship at Studio Edelkoort in Paris, where he immersed himself in the city to redefine his work and expand his identity. In Self-reference, Daniel has responded to the organic grains of a found piece of wood before taking it on a journey of transformation to create a series of contemporary fossils.

The contextual designer explains:

“I found a tree trunk in the forest, which was cut every 50cm. A very pragmatic human interaction with the tree as a movement in time and space. I take this found piece and give it a more sensitive shape. Following the grain, the structure, the architecture of the tree. I cast the new shape in ceramic to observe the qualities of this shape in a different material.

The shape is still human – I start to burn and brush it. The grain comes out and the smooth shape starts to have a structure that is logic towards the shape. Again I cast the new shape in ceramic. I burn the shape even more. Deformation. Cast in ceramic. I sand the grain structure away to observe the deformation – anew burning the shape and casting. Anew sanding and observing the deformation…

Autonomous shapes arise that refer to themselves and their origin; shapes and surfaces that need contexts in our world. They show us potentials and new design qualities but also a strong relation to our body. It is a research that evokes an archaic quality that seems to harmoniously combine the contradictions of us humans in our troubled world with the roots of our existence. An alchemistic approach to design and our contradicting lifestyle. My longing for tactility and structure. My wish to appreciate the complex beauty of the most elementary things.”

daniel-costa.com