Almost three thousand years since Homer – on his 40-year Odyssey – became the only mortal to hear the Sirens’ song and survive them, Nicoletta Russo De Li Galli resurrects the myth and magic of this ancient archipelago through the craft of her newest protégé: Greek designer Savvas Laz.

Savvas Laz graduated from ÉCAL’s advanced masters in Design for Luxury & Craftsmanship before returning to Greece to set up his own creative practice. Here he has been collecting discarded styrofoam packaging from the bins next to his home-studio in Neos Kosmos, Athens. He combines loose pieces into sculptural forms and encases them in a hard-wearing, seamless finish that binds the assemblages together structurally and imbues them with endless, newfound possibility. Finishing touches and materials like mirrors, lights, textile, and upholstery also compliment the dynamic compositions enhancing their new functionality further still. Through Laz’s process polystyrene – the polarising, universal, mass-produced, single-use, industrial material that is notoriously difficult to recycle – is salvaged, reimagined and transformed into unique, lasting, functional, even personable works of art: Trashformers.

Nicoletta is the visionary patron of the arts discovering unique talents across Europe and the world. From Li Galli to London, she dreams up fantastical ventures and provides designers and artists the freedom, space and support to bring them to life through their work. She first encountered Trashformers just over a year ago in Athens and immediately purchased two of the earliest pieces. The chairs live in her home on the Greek island of Kastellorizo, where she commissioned Laz to design the Pink House (2021), an immersive Trashformer world. After the success of the Pink House oeuvre, Nicoletta invites Laz to intervene on Gallo Lungo, adding his signature flair to the decades-long tradition of design interventions and creative follies introduced to the island by the handful of high-profile custodians who have called this iconic rock Home.

Historically, Li Galli has been synonymous with legend. Today it is a magnificent muse playing host encounters and, as Nicoletta calls it, “a contamination across the arts”. The newest addition to this timeless hotspot is the Grotto: a spatial experience blending contemporary critique, future-facing ideas, industrial materials, traditional crafts, and Mediterranean landscape with the Italian art of living. It is the point of entry onto the island and the first of many wonders for all guests arriving at this paradise. Through this gesture Nicoletta invites her guests to engage in a dialogue across millennia. Using Savvas Laz’s primitive-futuristic world-building she summons the mythical Greek past.

Docking on Gallo Lungo – largest of the three islands – visitors walk up a stone path and arrive at the brilliant white grotto that recall the Cicladi island style. The space is exposed with openings towards spectacular views. In the deep sills of the pointed-arch windows spellbinding mirrors cast blue apparitions across the walls and ceiling. Nature and craft collide here. The dramatic scenery beyond the arches echoed in the reflections and primal language of materials and form in the grotto. All brought to the foreground unifying backdrop of island-white.

Each day, during the summer, the residents and guests of the island congregate at the Grotto for the morning ritual; a swim in the sea followed by a customary aperitivo, lounging on the sun beds and dipping in the grotto’s carved out iceberg lagoon.

n the centre of the room a sculpture on wheels roams as a drinks caddie or cocktail bar. On the walls, more mirrors – anthropomorphic Trashformer oracles – revealing sapphire visions. Beside them metallic and grotesque forms grow like an industrial alien coral.

The aluminium fittings are in fact excavated remnants and off-cuts from the ancient craft of metal casting in sand that Laz used to create bespoke fixtures for Nicoletta’s Pink House. The continuity from Kastellorizo to Li Galli hints at the designer’s evolving practice as well as the longterm-vision and upcoming gesamtkunstwerk showpiece projects made possible by the growing collaboration between the two visionaries. The artist-patron relationship, often viewed as a relic of the past, is revived through the subtle arts of intuition and trust between them. The magic of this synergistic exchange is evident in both the smallest details and grand totality of their shared creative vision.

Like the Sirens of the sea before them, Nicoletta & Savvas cast a new spell over Li Galli, and beyond... They tune, with his changing forms and her vibrant curatorial vision, a new song of artistic wonder and construction of an adventurous world that is recognized in the international design and art scene.

Adrian Mülle Is an anti-disciplinary artist and designer. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut and was an apprentice with the late Dame Zaha Hadid. He is a practicing architect with commissioned works for the Tate Modern and the Venice Biennale. Muller is the recipient of the New Artist Society scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he is currently pursuing an MFA in Designed Objects, and Ceramics.