What’s so Miami about Miami?

The query may seem like a bit of a Gordian Knot, given that Miami—like any city that provokes exploration into its “essential-ness,”—is ultimately an unsolvable problem. Yet Nika Zupanc’s Miami Desk for Ghidini seems to ask for an answer.

I’m not sure I have one. Even so, I’ll take a stab: both stainless and satiny, streamlined and spare yet screaming indulgence, Zupanc’s homage contains all the elegance and excess of the unexpurgated metropolis. As Ghidini puts it, “a spectacularly shiny square-metre of table surface to put it all to rights… a perfectly mad place on which to produce the blueprint of your very individualism.”

Always a risky maneuver (just ask Boca Do Lobo), Zupanc’s choice to gild it in gold gives the desk a certain cache that travels far with a certain Miami demographic. But this doesn’t mean it can’t convey intimacy. The above scene (clearly not Miami) hints at the desk’s versatility: it can negotiate cozy corners as easily as it can steal the scene from expansive marble foyers—or enshadowed enclaves.

Nika Zupanc is known for her unabashed finishings. Her recent collaborations with Sé, Francfranc, and Moooi have earned her pieces an estimable epithet from Elle Magazine: “Punk elegance.”

Read more at Ghidini 1961.