DIS summer design exhibition 2009

I've already posted with my thoughts on leaving Copenhagen, so I won't go through all that again. Suffice to say that despite the heat and my jetlag, i am glad to be home, although I already do miss Scandinavia very very much, and I know I will continue to want to return there for a very long time.



Instead I'm going to dedicate this post to the final work of the DIS summer 2009 arch. & design kids, a very talented group, many of whom I will miss very much when we won't get to spend every waking minute of every day together in the studio or out on the town or on a coach bus in the Danish countryside. At the right you can see my chair, in the show space.


Here's a glimpse of the overall space the show was in, with the textiles hanging, architecture models on tables, and chairs grouped on the floor. (The furniture kids blew the rest of 'em out of the water, if I do say so myself. The textiles were fantastic as well, although there were less than 10 of them, and the arch kids needed descriptions of their projects to be more engaging. But after all, scandinavia is all about the furniture!)




Here are a couple of other snapshots from the opening. This is Kim's chair, to the right, and below are Dobie and Natalie, who is sitting in my chair, with her print hanging in the background.






With a lot of the chairs it's pretty evident how the study time in Scandinavia has impacted it's design (if you know what to look for), but with a lot of them it's not so evident, and I think mine could be included in the latter category. If you look at the details, though, you'll see how the (custom-fabricated) steel stretcher bars were made not to hide the chair's weakness, which is that it wants to splay out when you sit in it, hence the steel bars, but to showcase how it all works.




The fact that the washers on the ends have holes in them, visible to show how it was screwed together, and the way they are straight, and not curved, in order to leave the spotlight on the veneer shapes are indicative of scandinavian design. I know I'm not a scandinavian designer, but I have learned so much about chairs, of course, and scandinavian lifestyles in general that I like to think I have a solid idea of not only how people think here, but also why it has been (and will be) a foundation and a leader of design in many different areas.