Yet another project which Japanese design studio Nendo exhibited in Milan during the Salone last month are these 'Growing Vases'.

Designed for Czech glass and lighting company Lasvit, the vases formed part of an exhibition of three designs by three designers including Mathieu Lehanneur and Nendo, created under the art direction of designer Fabio Novembre.

"We were assigned the abstract theme 'cocoon', and asked to create work that would directly convey the quixotic appeal of glass as something that is impractical and incomplete, but provides a breath of fresh air, opening up new possibilities." say Nendo.

"We decided to take the brief in a playful direction, and to suggest both breathing and the incomplete by displaying the metal pipes used by glassblowers, still attached to the glass objects that they were used to make."

By turning the pipes into flowers and branches and the glass into a vase, Nendo literally turned convention on its head, making flowers blooming in vases into vases blooming from flowers to represent the flower bulbs that draw nutrients from plants through photosynthesis and store new life.

Photography Daici Ano.