Lasvit Transforms Glass Into Art for Domus Magazine Cover
Czech glass artisan house Lasvit has created a revolutionary cover for Domus magazine's May 2025 Glass Issue, crafting the entire masthead from fused glass. This unique collaboration with guest editor Bjarke Ingels transforms magazine design itself, photographing the three-dimensional glass result to capture both material presence and ethereal beauty while exploring architecture's most paradoxical material.
Guest editor Bjarke Ingels, the visionary Danish architect behind BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), specifically chose Lasvit for this collaboration after discovering Czech Republic's extraordinary glass heritage during his 2022 research for Prague's Vltava Philharmonic. In his essay for the issue, Ingels reflects on Northern Bohemia's centuries-old glassmaking evolution, writing: "That mastery of glass – sculpted, cast, blown, melted, bent and slumped – has been incorporated into the modern vernacular of art, design and architecture." The cover showcases Lasvit's mastery of traditional glassmaking craft through a special technique called fusing. During this process, recycled glass pieces are heated to precise temperatures—hot enough to melt yet carefully controlled. The temperature must be perfectly calibrated to allow the glass to settle into heat-proof moulds, where the pattern imprints into the glass like a stamp on paper, creating crystalline textures that shimmer against the deep black background. Glassmaking in Bohemia reaches back centuries. More than six hundred years of accumulated knowledge allows contemporary artisans to push boundaries while honoring tradition. For Ingels, this represents glass not merely as transparency—"the absence of material presence"—but as crystal, as "a sheet of solidified liquid" with its own sculptural weight and presence. The Domus cover embodies Ingels' philosophy that imperfection creates beauty. The fusing process leaves traces—material memories embedded in crystal structure that reveal the making process itself, proving that the most sophisticated design often lies in celebrating rather than concealing the material's essential nature. This groundbreaking collaboration will be celebrated at the upcoming 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen, where Lasvit will also present standout glass pieces at its own exhibition. As part of the festival, BIG is opening its Copenhagen headquarters to the public, with the glass covers of Domus magazine featured among other materials explored throughout Ingels guest editorship—Stone, Earth, Concrete, Metal, Wood and Fabric—each dedicated to a monthly issue defining contemporary architecture. 
The Alchemy of Fused Glass
Copenhagen Exhibition Showcase
