The Seismic coffee table from Atelier Purcell
Architectural interior designer Alexander Purcell Rodrigues has launched Atelier Purcell, a luxury furniture and lighting brand available in the U.S. and U.K.
Founder of his eponymous architectural interiors practice, Purcell Rodrigues was first driven to launch a furniture and lighting collection to share the bespoke designs he had created for projects. “The ability to refine and iterate design ideas more rapidly brings a playfulness to creating furniture — the constraints of architectural construction don’t apply,” he said.
One such design, Purcell Rodrigues’ monolithic Seismic cocktail table pairs antique granite and cutting-edge CNC marble fabrication. The Horta console’s sinuous legs marry bronze investment casting with generative design and 3D printing. “We pair cutting-edge technology with ancient handcraft techniques to define a new language of form,” he said.
The son of a graphic designer and a businessman, Purcell Rodrigues says he can remember disassembling his toys as a child to “get to the bottom of how things were made, what was inside them, and how they worked.” From the start, he says, “It was about the process of creation, the making.”
He studied architecture at Cambridge and worked for the iconic Richard Rogers Partnership. He founded his own firm in 2009, becoming known for stylish residences and hotels, and expanded into furniture design, collaborating on products with Holly Hunt, Promemoria, Link Outdoor, De Castelli, and other luxury brands.
He recently launched Atelier Purcell to give form to his personal vision and to experiment with innovative technologies with the aspiration to create heirlooms of the future.
Phalanx sofa and trays from Atelier Purcell
“A furniture concept can come from an architectural project — which is a more extended dialogue, trying to navigate a narrative as you move through a space — or can be sparked by the negative shapes in a shadow cast across the floor,” Purcell Rodrigues said. “Inspiration comes from many sources but what I really enjoy is the reciprocity that can be achieved between the spaces we create and the objects we craft.”
Atelier Purcell products are available in the U.S. through Dennis Miller N.Y.C., De Sousa Hughes S.F. and Thomas Lavin L.A. & Laguna Beach and throughout the U.K. and Europe available online at atelierpurcell.com.
Jennifer Burton is the managing editor of Home Accents Today, where she does a little writing, a lot of editing and much of the organizing to keep everything running smoothly. With more than 18 years of copy editing experience, Jennifer has conquered deadlines at daily newspapers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Connecticut and edited magazines mailed to millions of homes. A native of Hickory, N.C., she graduated from Winthrop University with a degree in journalism. When she’s not fixing typos or crafting headlines, she’s probably practicing her rowing stroke or flying somewhere for a $100 hamburger with her pilot husband and young son.