Celebrating it’s fifth year in Milan, DMY Berlin presented Instant Stories, showing the work of eleven designers and creative studios from Berlin. The Designers were Werner Aisslinger, Mark Braun, Heike Buchfelder, Coordination, Fabien Dumas, e27, ett la benn, Oskar Fabian, David Hanauer, Studio Hausen, Hermann August Weizenegger.
Emphasizing the narrative quality of design, the exhibition‘s setting enabled the designers to seize on different aspects, attributes and concepts of their designs and to enhance these in a specific scenery.
Produced and presented as a traveling exhibition, the individual works were shown in “stage-cases” that felt like elevated dioramas—giving each piece a sense of theater.
In large wooden crates, the designers created still life sceneries as contextual environments for their objects. The format of the crate-stages corresponds to the 4:3 proportion of digital images
These stage-crates emphasized the narrative aspect of design and allowed each designer to create their own context, identify visual cues as inspiration and, like any good piece of fiction, invite the viewer to participate or reject the premise.
Overlite
via Privata Oslavia 8
Ventura Lambrate
DMY Berlin Exhibiting Designers
Werner Aisslinger
Chair Farm
The latest project chair farm by Berlin-based designer and curator Werner Aisslinger showcases an improvised laboratory as a new production vision, based on recent urban experiments and agricultural utopias. In detail, the chair farm consists of a reusable frame-kit to shape local plants into objects such as chairs. The farm questions the fact of decentralized production methods of foodstuff and common goods by shipping them thousands of kilometers around the globe. The farm rather underlines the pleasure of local sourcing and local productions of societies focused on their surroundings and qualities of life. The accumulation of material possession becomes less and less important for these people.
Heike Buchfelder
Pluma cubic – lighting
Pluma cubic is a symbiosis of natural goose and rooster feathers and clear, geometric forms combined to create illuminated objects. With the new editions Heike Buchfelder makes a departure from its classic line. The feathers take on a less abstract expression, playing with viewer associations even as they recall their former owner, the bird.
Fabien Dumas
The War of the Lights
Fabien Dumas presents the lighting installation, „The War Of The Lights“ featuring Yokozuna and for the very first time Atamé. Yokozuna is a suspension lamp, part of the new collection of Belgium based manufacturer DARK. Atamé is a freshly designed collection of suspension, table and floor lamps.
Mark Braun
Fortune –drinking set no.283
2011 ett la benn discovered and presented the characteristics of natural cellulose within the kami project. Using the same biodegradable material, this year‘s project kami spin transmits this process into an industrialised rotation moulding suggesting new applications of the objects.
Parts
Inspired by their own kami collection from 2011 ett la benn designed 19 asymmetric ceramic pieces for Australian homewares distributor Maxwell & Williams which enter the worldwide market in June 2012.
Rakso Naibaf
Parapluie table
The small parapluie table enriches the interior with its love for detail. Its design grapples with the tension between object-nature and context-expectation, the sublime ‚releasement‘ of the trick. The impression of the fragile handle, like it could collapse every second, reminds us of the transience of the objects we know -the objects that made the modern world work. Playing with these impressions, the table is simple but full of character in the role it fulfills for the interior. In its role within the domestic space, the table is an homage to the absurdity of the everyday. The table is 100% designed and manufactured in Berlin.
E27
A7 Berliner Pendel
The shape of this pendant has its origins in the old Berlin gas lighting. It has been developed in the 1950s as part of the modernization of Berlin‘s gas lighting following models designed in the 30s. Since the beginning of 1970 Hahn Licht has been produced these lamps in both gas and electric versions. The production method is the same: aluminum is spinned by hand on the original forms. In their design process, e27 has discovered the shade in the manufacture. It was actually the top of the gas lamp. The shade was opened up in the middle and the top and transformed into a pendant.
Louis Chair
Louis Chair uses the possibilities of stretching to transform a simple metal sheet into a three dimensional furniture. Stretching the laser cut steel sheet up to maximal strain creates a static equilibrium. With this simple but ingenious technique, a metal sheet just 3 mm thick has been turned into a rest chair, resembling baroque louis XIV seat.
Light drop
Formal is a series of objects made of deep drawn perforated metal plate, mostly used as facade material in architecture, and natural or painted wood. The Formal family consists of objects that illuminate the room or can be used as storage. The formal shape is a simple cylinder, but with its use of two divergent materials Light Drop becomes a big suspense. Industrial and cool meets warm and soft.
David Hanauer
The living structure
What is our relationship to objects (as furniture) in space? The organisation and positioning of self, which our environment demands from us as active human beings is expressed in ‘the living structure‘. Shifting between a sculptural object and a piece of furniture, this design of a table and a chair shows how social interaction can develop in space, and how it depends on a conscious decision for or against it.
Red black and black gold
‘red black‘ and ‘black gold‘ are lamps which consist of tennis racket bags that were stitched together: it is an everyday object that was formed out of recycled consumer goods. Both aspects, conversion and the ability for a different use are subject of its form. It is the observation of the fine line between art, product design and consumer behaviour that the designer puts up for negotiation.
Hermann August Weizenegger
Tecto
With his work group ‘Digital Couture‘ Hermann Weizenegger translated traditional crafts to modern technologies and experimented with spatial layers and torsion. Based on this concept he developed a wide range of objects. The latest objects are the two bowls Tecto. They were developed in cooperation with the young table Auerberg. Like a topographical landscape model, its body is built, layer by layer and plays with the tension between 2D and 3D surface respectively space.
Aerostat
Inspired by the shape of an airship, the lamp Aerostat floats in space. Like marionettes, the layers made of synthetic Japanese paper YUPO are brought into position by metal strings causing the ship to move. Aerostat follows the principles of ‘Digital Couture‘ by HAW, joining a generative design-process with accurate craftsmanship.
Coordination Berlin
Thread Stool – high stool and bistro table
This family of objects features upscale hand-cut wooden threads connected to intrinsically detailed lathed tops. The top structures are supported by well crafted steel bases. Matte oil finished walnut wood emphasizes the precision of the engineering and the natural preciousness of the material. An opaque matte lacquer finish for the bases was chosen for durability and creates the right contrast according to the assigned function. The reduced design of the Thread object family pronounces the beauty of craftsmanship. By using a minimal selection of materials with subtle surface treatments, the clear structure is enhanced. The outcome is a distinctive look of a well thought out yet humble luxury object. Thread is timeless, light & highly flexible in use.
Studio Hausen
Pipe Party
Studio Hausen is celebrating the tube and invites to the presentation of two new products. Both, the GOLIATH cutlery and the UDO chair are made from pressed steel tube. In a simple pressing process clear shapes with a somewhat naive aesthetics were created and form the character of these products. Forge pressure forms the sharp bladed knife and the smooth shaped spoon of the GOLIATH cutlery but also the floating connections of the UDO chair. Besides this aesthetic benefit the pressing procedure offers manifold functional potential. All pieces of the stackable UDO chair can be fast and easily connected with the help of blind rivets. Therefore, no additional expensive tools or procedures like welding, sanding or polishing are needed. To emphasize the modular character of the UDO chair all four elements can be coloured in a customized colour range. In this project the use of the tube in design was squeezed and stretched and leads to two playful, charming products.
Installation preparations
About DMY Berlin
DMY Berlin is an international platform for contemporary product design. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, DMY will present 12 international exhibitions this year including showcases at Ventura Lambrate (during Salone del Mobile), Noho Design District (during ICFF New York), at Designtide Tokyo, Design Miami and Buenos Aires’ Mes de Diseño.
Serving as a genuine hub for designers, manufacturers and journalists, DMY Berlin annually presents its very own DMY International Design Festival in Berlin, the largest festival for contemporary product design in Germany.
This year‘s jubilee edition will take place at former city airport Berlin Tempelhof from June 06-10, 2012.
Over 700 designers and brands will showcase their latest works, including serial products, limited editions and prototypes. The exhibition will especially shed light upon the processes and concepts that led to the final designs reflecting design as a holistic system of interlocking development stages. The showcases will be supplemented by a versatile programme of symposia, designer-talks, workshops and evening events reflecting current topics and crucial developments in design.
In 2012, DMY Berlin will also host the official German Design Award “Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“ for the first time. The prize is awarded by the Ministry of Economics and Technology since 1969 honouring excellence in product and communication design. It is considered as the country’s most prestigious design award.
As an international platform for contemporary design, DMY Berlin encourages experimental and innovative approaches in design and nurtures an interdisciplinary dialogue to identify necessary future tasks in design.
