Milan Design Week Includes a David Lynch-Designed Room

For eminently understandable reasons, David Lynch is best known for his work in film and television, but those are far from his only creative endeavors. Lynch has created works of fine art and newspaper comics alike; and it’s also worth mentioning his work encouraging transcendental meditation. All of which is to say that, in terms of filmmakers’ side projects, hearing that Lynch has returned to furniture design is far from the most unexpected thing this renowned director has done.

As Cajsa Carlson reports for Dezeen, Lynch’s interior design skills made an appearance at this year’s Milan Design Week, as part of Salone del Mobile.Milano. As curator Antonio Monda told Carlson, Monda learned of Lynch’s passion for building furniture at the Rome Film Festival, when Lynch received a lifetime achievement award.

The project, dubbed “A Thinking Room,” drew on Lynch’s own penchant for meditation. “Lynch practices transcendental meditation, and he said ‘this [room] is for meditation, but those who don’t do meditation can just think and relax,’” Monda told Dezeen. Two editions of the room were built and installed on site for visitors to the exhibit who were seeking to decompress.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Salone del Mobile.Milano (@isaloniofficial)

All of David Lynch’s Films, Ranked by the Curator Behind the Giant Retrospective at the Texas Theatre

Daniel Knox talks through his current hierarchy ahead of the 12-day festival kicking off on May 24

This isn’t Lynch’s first high-profile foray into interior work. In a 2012 interview at Interview, Lynch mentioned that he had also created the interiors for the Paris venue Silencio. “I’m not really moving into anything, but people ask me to do things. Not that I would necessarily do anything people ask,” Lynch said. “But the owner of Silencio came to me and asked if I’d be interested. I had been making furniture for a long time, just for myself, so I said yes, and it was a very good process.”

All of which makes Lynch’s recent installation in Milan feel less like an outlier and more like an addition to a growing body of work. And it’s hard to argue with a room designed for relaxation and creativity — both things worth cultivating.