Western Living Magazine
7 More Swoon-worthy Staircases
Great Spaces: Vancouver’s El Gato Gab Gab Cocktail Bar
One to Watch: Sfossils
Recipe: Gingery Citrusy Sangria
Composed Winter Beet and Citrus Salad
Recipe: Meyer Lemon Scones
Local Getaway Idea: Kingfisher’s Healing Caves Redefine Wellness and Escape
Editors’ Picks: Our Favourite Western Living Travel Stories of 2024
Winter Getaway Guide 2024: Wine, Bavarian Charm and Luxe Lodging Without the Skis
New and Noteworthy: 11 Homeware Picks to Refresh Your Space in 2025
Protected: The Secret Ingredient to Creating the Perfect Kitchen: Bosch
The Best Home Accessories Our Editors Bought This Year
Over 50% Sold! Grab Your Tickets to Our Western Living Design 25 Party Now
Join Us for Our First Western Living Design 25 Party!
Announcing the Finalists for the 2025 Western Living Design 25 Awards
Omer Arbel helps us rethink 21st-century life.
If Vancouver’s Omer Arbel has managed to upend the design world’s expectations, it’s because he had no expectations himself. The 34-year-old creative director of the design and manufacturing house Bocci is focused on process, rather than product. So, when he asked a team of glassblowers to inhale rather than blow, the result was a mesmerizing pendant light series, released last year, with miniature interior bubbles created via vacuum. When he asked metalsmiths engaged in sand casting to save the crackling overspill that everyone else slices off, he ended up with gorgeous brass art pieces that are trimmed with an almost volcanic-looking lace. “Most protagonists in the design world are obsessed with form,” he explains. “It creates a vocabulary of shapes—Frank Gehry is the obvious example. We’re trying to develop a new way of working where it’s process and material properties that are our focus. What we’re designing is the procedure—and then that yields form.”It’s that kind of clear-headed thinking that prompted judge Geoff Lilge to say, “Omer’s projects are refined to perfection. He’s raised the profile of Canadian design internationally. He’s a truly unique design mind.”Arbel’s pendant lights are de rigueur in modern homes, and now he’s expanded into architecture—he trained with luminaries John and Patricia Patkau. (Don’t miss the stunning shots of his first house, which appear in next month’s Western Living.) The mind is fertile; the products, groundbreaking. Arbel has positioned himself as more than an industrial designer—he’s a designer of 21st-century life. The latest pendant lights from Bocci, Arbel’s design house.
Are you over 18 years of age?