Monday, April 30, 2012

MILAN: Furniture Fair Ventura Lambrate - RCA


Ventura Lambrate: Royal College of Art – Paradise. The Paradise exhibition was part of the Royal College of Art’s 175th anniversary celebrations  that showed the breadth of creativity coming from the world’s most influential postgraduate university of art and design. Paradise contemplates the discovery of something or somewhere wondrous. Rallied by the desire for change and compelled by dissatisfaction with the present, RCA students authored their own atlases of paradise, landscaped by different paths in the quest for a better future.  The work exhibited addressed three subjects: the exploration of personal dreams and desires; questioning the fabric of the everyday; and speculation on the direction of our future. Product and furniture design were evident as well as conceptual pieces in a variety of media. The exhibition content was been selected by Professor Tord Boontje, head of Design Products at the RCA and curated by designer and RCA tutor Onkar Kular.
Above: Yuen by Hideki Yoshimoto in collaboration with Moto Takabatake. Yuen is an installation composed of several pieces of floor lamps, each of which has light sensors and muscle-like actuators.  Each lamp moves its head, seeking the darkest direction around it.  One lamp’s movement affects another’s by changing the light and shadow field in the environment, which results in indirectly connecting all lamps and creating a system within space.  People who enter the environment can also be involved in the system by introducing their shadow.
 
RCA.  Lasso by Gaspard Tine-Beres.  “These slippers are constructed from a single piece of natural wool felt, their 3D form being created by complex 2D geometry of pattern.  The shapes are die-cut from sheets of five millimeters thick felt with minimal, simple and affordable tooling, making this product very suitable for small scale, local production.  I am producing a range in ten standard sizes and selling them directly via the dedicated Lasso website.”

RCA. Fan Table by Mauricio Affonso.  Fan Table explores the role of tables as the infrastructure for social interaction.   Created from over four hundred slats, the table can be quickly transformed into an array of different shapes and sizes to suit its context or use.  The surface can freely expand, contract and revolve in an effortless fan like movement of the hand.


RCA.  A Dreams of Taxonomy by Lina Patsiou.  “I wished I could fulfill my dreams simply by means of grasping them.  I imagined a world where dreams are real and live around us like every other natural, or, in fact, supernatural creature.   I went on to study dream creatures, to imagine what they are like, how they live, and why it is that they make us name them after our deepest wishes, ambitions, aspirations and for that matter; fantasies.   A Dreams Taxonomy is based on rigorous study, bibliographic research and ample improvisation on the field of supernatural beings in general and fabulous dreams in particular.”



RCA.  Skywalk by Marjan van Aubel.   “Wearing these mirror glasses is a weird sensation; your field of vision is completely directed towards the sky.   You can see nothing but clouds; it almost re-creates the disorientating experience of flying!  You are literally with your head in the clouds but your feet are still on the ground.”

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