Similar to France's Nouvelle Vague exhibition at WantedDesign, DMY Berlin curated "BER-JFK" at 22 Bond as part of Noho Design District. The exhibition featured work by sixteen designers living and working in Berlin. Whereas most designers are either marketable or experimental, the showing from Berlin bridged both categories with products that are functional, often beautiful and play with form in exciting new ways.
Llotllov's Earl light is made of twenty wooden balls strung on a cable that you can adjust the height and angle of depending on your needs. The strand is capped off by a big wooden bead embedded with an LED light and covered with a silicone shade that you can rotate to direct the light stream.
Hermann August Weizenegger presented the Botanica light, inspired by striated forms in nature. The shade is both spooky and beautiful, resembling, perhaps, a floating marine organism, a strange rock formation or a curtain frozen mid-rise. You can't tell from the picture, but each layer is a sheer strip of fabric so that when it's illuminated in a dark room it gives off a warm glow.
Werner Aisslinger's Hemp Chair is a concept for a monobloc chair made by compressing natural fibers, in this case hemp and kenaf, with Acrodur, a water-based acrylic resin. Unlike other reactive resins, this method releases no phenol or formaldehyde during the cross-linking process. The only by-product of the curing procedure is water. "Design history is driven by new technologies and material innovation," said Aisslinger. "For us designers, the advent of these technologies has always been the starting point for new objects and typologies in design."
My favorite chair in the exhibition is David Geckeler's Fragment Side Chair, a powder-coated steel chair with a unique three-legged orientation. The two front legs have feet that are turned inwards and are balanced by a third tripod leg that extends directly from the chair back. Geckeler plays with form even more with the slightly angled seat and the notches cut in the lower back. Shown here in a sumptuous, light mossy green, Fragment is even more gorgeous in person.
Lastly, Aylin Kayser's show-stopping Schrank 11 is a cabinet inspired by Russian Matryoshka dolls. Made up of eleven cupboards, one placed inside the other, each piece can be taken out and used individually, stacked or hung on the wall. "The trans-generational, open-ended and participatory concept offers users an array of choices and ways of intervening in the system," said Kayser.
After leaving New York, the exhibition takes a break before heading to Buenos Aires Design Festival, Sao Paolo and Design Miami. See more of the work on the exhibition website.
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