Over 100 years ago, in 1895 to be exact, the inventor Daniel Swarovski moved to Tyrol in Austria, where he installed his new machine to cut and polish crystal glass. From these early beginnings, his sparkling crystals revolutionized the world of fashion and transformed the family business into a global market leader for crystal in fashion, jewelry and, since a few years ago, increasingly in the fields of lighting, architecture and interior design as well.

Swarovski, still loyal to its place of origin, Wattens in Tyrol, and now headed by the fourth and fifth family generations, has evolved into a global player with 20,000 employees and sales in the billions in over 120 countries. Nowadays Swarovski is active in four different divisions ranging from the production of optical instruments and reflectors to accessories and jewelry. However, for years now it has been impossible to imagine the international design scene in particular without Swarovski crystals. And this has not just been the case since Nadja Swarovski brought the Crystal Palace Collection into being. This collection has been causing an annual stir since 2002, when the company asked renowned designers for their interpretation of a chandelier. The complete freedom to bring innovative ideas to life with technology, light and, of course, with the material qualities of the crystal, results time and again in impressive designs, which have even been displayed in Miami as part of Art Basel.

This year, the new Crystal Palace Collection was on show during Euroluce and Salone del Mobile in Milan for the first time, from where it embarks on a world tour.. This time, new interpretations of chandeliers by Jurgen Bey, Laurene & Constantin Boym, Hussein Chalayan, Naoto Fukasawa, Ineke Hans, Ross Lovegrove and Gaetano Pesce. Gaetano Pesce added not only dynamic, interplaying colors, but also interplaying scents to his traditional chandelier, while Ross Lovegrove threw decorative tradition aside and, using the extraordinary symbiosis of Sharp solar cells and Swarovski crystals, presented the Crystal Aerospace vehicle concept.