Luxury phone maker Vertu celebrated the release of its Constellation T touchscreen phone with an installation at the Palazzo Serbelloni in Milan, Italy that opened on October 18. To create a pavilion for the space, where the phones are exhibited the company hired an established Chinese architect Ma Yansong of MAD architects.

Photo: www.designboom.com

The exhibit features special videos and touchscreen demonstrations. The new Constellation series touchscreen model offers a 3.5-inch HD sapphire crystal AMOLED screen and 8-megapixel camera with ruby shutter key. It is produced in satin brown, polished black or pink, red gold with mixed metals, and black or white alligator with diamond. Each phone is hand-assembled at the Vertu headquarters in England.

The Vertu Constellation pavilion is situated in the courtyard of the Milan’s most admired neoclassical building. The transportable but still sophisticated pavilion is designed to be installed for the inauguration of the Constellation T at cities across the globe including London and Dubai.

The pavilion is constructed of seven to eight tons of steel, all of which comes disassembled to easily be  shipped to the next place of the exhibition.

The concept of the installation is a meteor crashing to earth, bringing with it new energy as it engages in conversation with the existing space, says designboom. The idea of Vertu is to to combine the traditions of luxurious artisan craftsmanship with the high-end possibilities of modern technology.

Ma Yansong commented: “we choose a place that is very symbolic, very representative of different cultures. for example in shanghai, we chose a location that used to be industrial, which I found interesting, because if something crashed to the land, it can land anywhere. So [the choice of location should be] something that feels a bit accidental. Also when you look at the pavilion design, it has these randomly organized spikes—they’re all different shapes, different lengths and organized in a very random way—so you can feel the energy as something organic.”

Photo: www.designboom.com