Forms In Nature: Product and Brand Development 2016 • Research on metal production of 3D works;

• Research on plants;
• First Design Fair;
• UK PR campaign;
2008 • Research on arts in the Romantic period throughout • First drawings and ideas for future works
Germany, and the first sketches of the work.
• Research on new production methods;
Production Price
2009 • Research in the prototype industry, visiting the Frankfurt • First vacuum casting sample;
Evolution
mould and manufacturing fair; the first test attempt. • 3D scanning research for future development (price too high);
• Research on how to make new drawings;
2011 • Start drawing with a 3D professional;
2011 • Web Adds & social media campaigns.
• First production partner;
• First electrical components research and development; Production price: 21.000 DKK
• First suspension system. Selling price: 80.000 DKK 2017 • First big commissioned work: 1.000.000 DKK
• Production price: 21.000 DKK • First scanning of plants and trees: 70.000 DKK
• Selling price: 80.000 DKK • Drawing team: 60.000 DKK
2012 • First research on cheep 3D printing methods;
2012 • World Media exposure;
Production price: 14.000 DKK
• Production price renegotiation: 14.000 DKK • Web Adds & social media campaigns.
Selling price: 28.000 DKK
• Selling price per work: 28.000 DKK + shipping;
• First shipping box development;
2018 • Focus on transferring works on metal lamps;

• First American audience; • Digitalization of the vacuum casting envelop;

• Final electrical component development 2013 • Development and testing;
• Further development of the suspension system Production price: 11.000 DKK • Creation of an on-line team of 3D assistants;
Selling price: 22.000 DKK • 10.000 DKK to 20.000 DKK for a finalized new work;
2013 • First constant orders gradually picking up
• 3D scanning development for 10.000 DKK for a 3D scan;
• Production price: 11.000 DKK
• Looking for partners to re-brand the idea and create a
• Test price market – decided on: 22.000 DKK
2014 new brand;
• Formation of communication team and production
Production price: 6.000 DKK
team to build and ship the works; • Business Market research.
Selling price: 22.000 DKK
• Further development of the shipping box;
• Final suspension system development. 2019 • Searching for partners (expansion & new products);
• Learning about surface finishings;
2014 • Production price lowered to 6000 DKK 2019 • Learning about light systems;
• Selling price: 22.000 DKK Production price: 1.000 DKK
• Development of 3D parts for better processing; • Developing an in-house production: new 3D printing;
Selling price: researching
• Development of 3D for optimization of the laser sintering box; • Production price: 1000 DKK per lamp;
• Research on light bulbs to get the best bulb for the works; • Research on selling price.
• Development of electrical components;
• Final 1005 rugged shipping box; 2020 - • Build a company that has both products, and create
• Better world shipping prices. comissioned works.

2015 • Team expansion;

• Research of plants and trees for Forms in Nature with
a team of botanic students;
• First PR relationship with a UK-based firm;
• Regularly traveling to UK.
 New York

Texas

Miami

US California
ZONE 3
ZONE 2

ZONE 1 Mexico Tulum ZONE I ZONE 4

ZONE 5

Norway Oslo

Denmark Copenhagen

ZONE 2 France Paris

Hungary Bucharest

Germany Berlin
PHASE 1
Expected Results:
Target Selection Process • A market insertion
• Re-activate international sales & projects
ZONE 3 Russia Moscow
• Expand Network

St.Petersburg Interior Project Agents Interior Design Projects

& Developers

ZONE 4 China Shanghai Selected Galleries Art collectors

ZONE 5 UAE Dubai

Business Model Status and Milestones

Product Commercialisation
Forms in Nature • Direct online sales
New 3D printed model: 1000 USD • Social media
• Instalments
• Direct online sales
• Retail
Projection
• Regions can adsorb 2000
units/year: rapid growth ex-
pectation;
• After years of working with
exorbitant production prices,
we are able to sell massively;
Achievements up to Date
As an artist, Pio is working on developing the skill to introduce artworks interna-
tionally. He can attract a considerable number of viewers to his projects, using a
variety of media, such as newspapers, television and on-line.
• 300 Light Sculptures sold (approximately);
• Worldwide product recognition;
• Stable and well priced production partners;

• By keeping the exclusivity
we keep the extraordinary
creativity, and we keep a
profitable price.
• A novel and exclusive production development that will shrink the production
price in half, transforming the 3D printed plastic lamps into metal artworks;
• A 90% lower price in the production of the 3D printed plastic lamps.

Forms In Nature
Metal products: full collection,
from wall lamps to standing
lamps, a variety of chande-
liers
Large commissioned works
• Online retail stores
• Shop Retails
• Projects
• Fairs
• Galleries and agencies;
• Hotels and public spaces;
• Private home projects &
private spaces.
• Similar companies have a Near Future Milestones
turn over of 8.000.000€ / year; • Reaching out to the 35.000 emails and possible costumers that could not afford
• High quality luxury projects the previous price with our new and cheaper produced work;
based on our fame
• Creating the in-house metal production, and start selling our first samples;
• Developing the full production line and expanding our machinery.
• Market under research; in
Denmark: 5000 projects / year;
Our Ambitions
• 1 work sold for 1 million DKK;
• To operate in the market with the same production volume as our competitors;
• Through the years we have
• To produce an extra cash-flow with our main product, besides our operation as
been asked about 9 times for
exclusivity; a regular company;
• Outstanding projects sold with • To create a fascinating effect, and generate more iconic works.
a minimum budget of 500.000
DKK, for over 20 years;
Forms In Nature world sales
• With a proper organization
24 projects a year (and more) 45% 34% 21 %
can be achieved.
USA 130 units sold EU 100 units sold Rest of the world 60 units sold
 Forms In Nature by Pio Diaz
Key Product Differences
Artwork
Competitive Analysis Light Sculpture
Jewelery-Making
Chandelier
Product
Art has a considerably higher value over the value of design. Free from mould shapes / no shapes rules
Large thick parts
Functional Art is performed by artists like Olafur Eliasson, and any other thoughtful 0.8 mm thickness
artist in their creative processes. 0.4 mm details
8 years of experience
In our competitive analysis we have focused on two firms that has organic forms Digital precision to under 0.4 mm
at the center of their business: No experience in surface finishings
Production
• Serip Organic Lightning
Outsource (in the future: in-house)
• and Brand Van Egmont
3D print (low man-hour required)
3D print (more affordable and greater detail)
There are hundreds of players with focus in the Pendant and Chandelier business,
Metal casting: up to 7 pieces/hour (1 person)
having similar, or larger size of revenue and distribution on the market.
More castings: lower production cost
Easy assemble
Limitless scale-up production
PR and Market Presence
World-renowned Light Sculptures
Potential to increase exposure of the artworks
No experience in the industry
Limited presence on the market
6
No partners on the market
Competition
Free Fantasy (le art per le art)
Luxury
Blacksmith and Foundry
Chandelier
Restricted mould & handmade shapes
Large thick parts
1 cm thickness
5 mm details
Over 20 years experience
Free-hand, relative precision
Extraordinary surface finishing
In-house
Manually produced (high man-hour required)
Higher cost per man-hour
Manually produced (1 or more persons)
More production: same cost
Easy assemble
Limited set-up (high man-hour required)
Targeted known brands
Products known within the target group
Over 20 years experience in the industry
High presence on the market
Top partners on the market
Product Differentiation Serip Organic Lighting found an American partner, and 70% of their operations
comes from profits out from the American market. Their American partners are

1. Brand Van Egmond well skilled in the contract market, and also in the home interior channel. The
partner has a very professional and well attended brand, serving as a solution for

Brand Van Egmond is a Dutch design label and an international producer of their creative outlook.

handcrafted lighting and interior objects. The company was founded by William
Brand and Annet van Egmond. Their creations are developed using the blacksmith Both Brand Van Egmont and Serip Organic Lightening have a clear vision on

forging metal techniques, where glass and crystals are added to their works. where their customers are, and how to communicate to them. Firstly, they have a
solid online presence, using outstanding visual communication to promote their

Brand Van Egmont master their knowledge and production methods, being able products, creating partnerships with magazines, using the reviews to increase their

to have a very focused development based on creativity. They are building on small brand value, and inspiring interior designers and architects with their product

and solid steps on convention by improving their skills, visible in their designs, placement in spaces. Secondly, they promote and sell their products in physical

with a clear path through time. stores in various locations around the world, and they participate in design fairs
and events, using these platforms to promote their products.

The profile of this company is inspiring, and it has a strong brand, building a
renowned presence on the market. The company appears successful, with good On the downside, their brands don’t appear in the search results when searching

commissioned works for private and public spaces. Their yearly revenue is approx- for lighting products, having a weak SEO (search engine optimization). One needs

imately 8 million €. to be already familiar with their brand and products to find them on-line.

2. Serip Organic Lighting To resume, both companies have outstanding products, one having more control in
their process and forms, and the other incorporating more fantasy and creativity.

Serip Organic Lighting company is based in Portugal, operating like a foundry,

having strong skills in the lost wax methods. They are developing glass work
as well. Their products are hand crafted, using nature-inspired organic shapes.
Having a diverse line of products, there is a tendency to appear incoherent in their
collections; however, this offers a wide range of choices.
Forms In Nature by Pio Diaz
Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Forms in Nature is an art studio inspired by the
forms found in nature, producing decorative and functional works of art.
The artist behind the art and design concepts is Pio Diaz, who collaborates with
professionals from various creative and industrial disciplines, developing a unique
production methodology for creating functional lighting artworks and nature-in-
spired chandeliers.
The production methods include digital manufacture, 3D printing, and hand-as-
semblage. Subsequently, Pio and his team have developed their own production
methods and new skills unknown to the industry. Moreover, they have learned to
digitalize vacuum casting envelops, and now they are moving to metal parts.
Currently, part of the production is realized externally, aiming to have the in-house
assembling, giving the possibility to control the level of quality in terms of the
design and the production process. The 3D parts are printed for a competitive
price in Denmark, and vacuum-casted in the UK. After a year of development,
they are capable of 3D print their own parts for a 10% of their production cost,
and looking to metal vacuum cast all the artworks for half the price of the current
production.
For the future development, Pio Diaz will use bronze, gold, silver and various other
materials suitable for the production process. The goal is to create their own fully
hand-free digitalized production and processing of parts.
Production Process
The process of creating a Forms in Nature Chandelier starts with collecting flowers
and plants from natural environments and the local flower shops. Afterwards, these
are 3D scanned, followed by a 3D drawing phase, enabling creative freedom and
precision in executing any structure and shape; this offers the technical possibility
to repeat the shape, to mirror it, to scale it up and down, creating a novel structure,
but remaining familiar due to its natural source. Finally, the 3D drawings are used
for the vacuum-casting, allowing for a high level of detail to be casted, up to half
of a millimeter.
Having 20 years of dedication to the creative process, Pio Diaz is a trained artist,
with notions of visual history, with a high understanding of what defines a line of
work, what improves it and how to break it.
The Forms in Nature Light Sculptures use the light to spread shadows and
reflections on the wall, creating a fantastic atmosphere, gaining a lot of recognition
world-wide.
The ambition of Forms in Nature is to become a strong and recognizable brand,
and develop outstanding functional art products. The mission is to develop a
presence on the market, create new partnerships, and develop new and innovative
production techniques, which require the minimum man-hour, by automatizing
and digitalizing the production process.
 Fire
The Danish-Argentinean artist couple Thyra
Hilden & Pio Diaz set the monuments of
western cultural history on fire in their joint
and ongoing video project “City on Fire.”
With their seductive and spectacular artistic
gesture, they reveal the fragile and transitory
nature of these man-made constructions, and
thereby destabilize prevailing order.
The old monuments serve as weighty
expressions for western culture and identity,
and have to a certain extent functioned as
templates for later constructions in cultural
history. As such they constitute a physical
foundation for western self-understanding,
which the two artists unpack and recast in
their edgy work. The artist couple chose
these historical monuments and institutions
with great care, only to then consign them to
the flames in their large-scale and dramat-
ically staged work. These ephemeral works
tend to release equal parts of anger and
joy from the audience; the illusion is so
convincing, and our instinctive reaction to
fire so deeply engrained, that we immediately
place ourselves on guard when we see such
cherished buildings drowning in flame.
Fire is one of the four elements. It is made
of incandescent gas and other combustible
materials, such as carbon. It is ignited by
a spark or through another fire (such as
explosions, fire in the oven or in the fireplace),
it is summoned forth with a lighter, a match,
or a cigarette, – or it can be created when the
rays of the sun are caught in a mirror. It arises
when a combustible material is supplied
with oxygen and exposure to sufficient heat.
In nature, forests burn as a part of natural
ARoS on Fire
Video installation, 2007, HildenDiaz
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark

ARoS on Fire
Video installation, 2007, HildenDiaz
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark
6
cycles, so that new trunks can spout and new
life can emerge. Carbonized wood can be
used as a fuel, and the charcoal can be used
as a medium to draw or as makeup.
All these associations, along with our
instinctive fear of fire, are at play both
consciously and unconsciously in the story
that Hilden & Diaz put forth in their project
“City on Fire.” The monuments are instilled
with new life – in a sea of fire, they rise
again like a phoenix in all their splendor
and monumental glory. They appear as
flamboyant, illuminated objects of beauty in
the fire’s glowing waves. White marble and
shimmering, fallen walls turn into gold in
ARoS on Fire
Video installation, 2007, HildenDiaz
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark
the darkness of night. The experience is so
realistic, so hyper-real, that only one sensory
impression is still needed to complete the
experience: heat. The video flames have
no all-consuming appetite like real flames,
and they won’t make sweat beads on the
foreheads of viewer, who might be standing
comfortably under rain-soaked umbrellas
until the video cannons are silenced and the
monumental buildings come forth again with
their enormous mass wholly intact in the
blackness of night.
Fire holds two contrary properties: it can cause
severe damage and destroy essential natural
and cultural values when encountered in the
St. Catherine’s Church on Fire
Video Installation, 2008, HildenDiaz
St. Catherine’s Church (Sankt Katharinenkirche), Frankfurt
form of an all-consuming fire that arises on
its own. It is this kind of fire that humans and
animals have feared for as long as they have
walked the planet. That’s the fire that’s at play
here – searing and destructive. But its tamer
version, when held in check by fireproof
materials such as stone or metal, has been our
invaluable friend, ever since Homo Erectus
emerged from apes some 700-800,000 years
ago and ground two sticks together. Then
we’re speaking about cold fire- the word
“bonfire” being a direct translation of “good
fire…” this is the fire that, when kept under
control (such as in a fire pit), people have
gathered around for hundreds of thousands
of years. Throughout all of our cultural
history, controlled fire has acted as a fuel for
cultural and technological development. It
provides us with light and heat and has been
an indispensable tool in our households as
part of our cooking, and has also been able to
destroy pathogens, aiding our well-being still
further. Several millennia ago, fire played the
all-important role in our transformation from
hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural
society when we first burned down the forests
in order to sow our fields. Fire has also made
it possible for people to move to colder parts
of the globe.
The Louvre on Fire
Video Installation, 2007, HildenDiaz
The Louvre Museum, Paris
But human hands have also exploited
controlled fire for destructive purposes, as
a weapon of war. In ancient times and the
Middle Ages, burning arrows were shot at
the towns and homes of enemies, and from
ancient Greece we know the story of the
Trojan horse filled with Greek soldiers who
then shot burning arrows into Troy, which
was then reduced to ashes. If we take an
enormous step forward to our own time,
we observe the Germans burning the earth
during their retreat from northern Finland
during the Second World War. They set fire
to large areas of land, towns, and factories
in order to starve and humiliate the victor.
From the 20th century onwards we have
crowned our enemies with bombs that then
explode and set buildings ablaze – with the
atomic bomb standing as the most severe
form of weaponised fire, which contam-
inates everything for kilometers around.
During the Vietnam War, the Americans
used napalm bombs against North Vietnam.
These bombs burned everything. And today,
USA holds neutron smart bombs that burn
everything alive. A bit more primitive is the
Molotov cocktail, used in street riots and
guerrilla warfare, thrown at the opponent
to set smaller areas on fire. It’s a bottle
filled with a combustible fluid– such as
alcohol or gasoline. The bottleneck serves
as a wick, and then the bottle strikes its
target; it explodes and sets fire to a targeted,
localized area. In Denmark’s 1993 Nørrebro
riots, demonstrators overturned containers
and cars, setting them on fire in the streets
around the black square. Fire conveys chaos
and destruction and threatens sudden death.
Fire is also a part of most religious rites in
the form of sacrifices, i.e., burning of crops
or slaughtered animals for the gods. When
the smoke reaches heaven – where most
religions imagine that their god or gods
reside –the sacrificial smoke becomes theirs.
In the Old Testament we know the story of
Moses, who saw God in the form of a burning
thorn bush, smouldering without flames. God
told a frightened Moses that He had chosen
him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to the
Promised Land, Israel, which flowed with
milk and honey. And Greek mythology tells
us of Prometheus as a Titan who stole fire
from Olympia and gave it to humankind.
Prometheus has thus become a symbol of
humankind’s struggle with the gods, and the
term “promethean” refers to a lively person,
who rebels against a given order. The North
American Indians also made use of fire –
but in a very special way, as they used it to
communicate with subtle smoke signals that
could be spotted over long distances on the
American plains, and in South America, in
the Inca culture; people revered the Sun God,
who represented a life-giving fire.
As stated above, fire has its own cultural
history. At the same time, it operates
metaphorically on many levels. It is said
that an old home can catch on fire when the
desires of its elderly inhabitants suddenly
come ablaze. Desire as a whole often appears
metaphorically as fire – we say “you light my
fire;” those who demonstrate a “glowing”
enthusiasm have a “fire in the soul.” There is
no smoke without fire, says an old proverb,
suggesting that everything has a cause. “He
had a spark,” we say – the spark being fire
–when thoughts suddenly spring to mind.
In his story “The Temperaments,” H.C.
Andersen describes the four elements as
equivalent of the four temperaments. The
Choleric is as such the “Fire king,” a self-ig-
niting lantern man, who is called forth with
a lighter. “Chemistry!” he shouts, knowing
what he and the entire world is made of,
knowing what parts went together and what
parts did not. “I know chemistry! And I know
myself, where I come from, where I am going,
all of it!” This short-tempered fellow had a
violent temperament that burst out into the
open, and wherever he went, he laid waste
with his tongue of fire. Fire has an innate fury
that builds and grows faster when given the
right fuel. Fire is not satisfied until everything
is turned to ashes and the world is turned
back to a barren and carbonized state.
Fire will always be burning one place or
another in the world, and so long as it exists,
we can reap its benefit. Wherever human
activity is to flourish, we tear down in order to
build up. Fire is an irrational, ambiguous, and
immaterial phenomenon rich in contrasts
that can both reap destruction and wrap itself
warmly and lovingly around humankind.
It can make our cultural roots vanish in the
course of a few minutes, and all of our entire
modern life incessantly burns away for new
technology and new forms of life to be able
to constantly grow forth. This fear of fire’s
all-consuming power helps intensify the
tension experienced in “City on Fire.” Here
we see modern technology – namely digital
video media –confronted with classic works
of architecture – and in this connection there
arises a meeting full of contract between
orders new and old. These burning scenes by
Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz call the world’s
continued existence into question. Through
their international-based and monumental
approach and enormous statement, the
couple’s work is reminiscent of Christo
and Jeanne-Claude’s massive installation
projects.
Lisbeth Bonde is an art columnist for the
Danish paper Weekendavisen. She is the
author of several books, including ’Kunstnere
på tale’ (2001), ’Atelier – kunstnerens
værksted’ (2003), SOLO – en monografi om
Peter Martensen (2006) and (with Mette
Sandbye) ’Manual til dansk samtidskunst’
(2006).
 Colosseum on Fire
Video Installation, 2010, HildenDiaz
Colosseum, Rome

36 37
 Church on Fire
Gdańsk Cathedral
Video installation, 2007,
on Fire HildenDiaz
Video installation, 2009, Church of Our Lady
HildenDiaz (Vor Frue Kirke),
Saint Trinity Cathedral, Gdańsk Copenhagen
 Bubble
40 41

Bubble
A bubble is a form with many references, be
it from childhood memories of playing with
the soap bubble, to art historical symbols
such as vanitas. For us, however, it is the
potential of the frozen moment when the
bubble is not bursting, that captures our
interest the most.
42
In a brief moment, your idea can appear
complete and tangible. Then you start to
concretize the idea, attempting to word it or
build it, but this very act of realization will
inevitably distort it.
We wish to freeze that very moment, in which
an idea appears complete and tangible in all
its simplicity. Bubble embodies this very wish
of freezing the brief moment. A moment is
such a short and abstract period in time, and
because it lacks the substance to be defined, a
moment is fragile.
The act of freezing the moment is then for us
related to preserving the fragile.
And what is more fragile than a bubble? A
bubble is a thin film of water floating in the
air. Its visual appearance is a transparent and
light form covered with fluctuating colors that
never quite settle. Only defined by a tenuous
membrane, the bubble is easily broken, and
often, it lasts only for a few seconds before it
bursts and disappears.
Bubble will be a bubble that will float freely in
space. It is set to create the friction between the
anxious expectation that it may burst any second,
as bubbles usually do, and the realization that it
will not. In freezing the moment, Bubble thus
embodies the potential of capturing the dream
of the idea, complete and tangible. And it lasts.
For many years it has been of interest for us
to question the structures of society through
destructive forces such as fire. This year, our
interest has shifted to its radical pole, that
is, how to construct something as fragile as
possible, and to make it last. This interest has
now developed into being our new art project
named Bubble.
Bubble is a site-specific installation presenting
a free-floating bubble of around 2 – 5 meters
in diameter, which will be hanging in the air
above the spectators, displaying a pattern
of fluctuating rainbow colors known from
regular soap bubbles.
Bubble is based on the production of a large
soap bubble that is modified to last, potentially
eternally. The construction is made possible
through collaboration with professors from
the Department of Physics and Nanotech-
nology, at Aalborg University. For the project,
we have created a strengthened molecular
binding in the bubble membrane to ensure
that it will not burst.
Bubble needs certain installation conditions,
to ensure that it will stay a float and not
vaporize, humidity levels, air circulation
and temperature stability. This conditions
are provided by Hilden & Diaz to be
installed when exhibiting Bubble. We are
now working on improving the molecular
binding to make the bubble less dependent
on these environment factors, and hence to
ensure that it can be installed under already
existing exhibition spaces. We expect these
improvements realized at the end of 2011.
46 47
 Shadows

Viewed from outside, the work is a great circle

located in the ceiling from which white light
is spreading in to the room. The moment the
viewer enters the circle, the white light will
be broken as in a prism, and 52 contrast-
colored shadows will be thrown into a star
shape around the viewer. This makes all the
colors, which previously have been present in
the white light, visible to the viewer as a color
palette on the floor.

48
6 51