Mario Botta designs vase for Lalique's Crystal Architecture series

Swiss architect Mario Botta, whose San Francisco Museum of Modern Art building reopens this week with an extension by Snøhetta, is the latest architect to design a vase for crystal house Lalique. Botta's limited-edition piece, titled Géo, is a square shape with a pattern of pyramids fanning out from a hole in the centre. This vase can be interpreted as the miniature of a large palace", said Botta, whose projects frequently make a focus of geometric patterns.

Specifically, the design of Géo takes its inspiration from the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, northern Italy, with its distinctive walls carved from marble to represent diamonds.
The pattern takes on refractive properties when rendered in Lalique's crystal, which is crafted into a sculptural vase using a 3000-year-old technique originally used to cast bronze in China.