L’artiste norvégienne Lene Kilde cherche son inspiration dans les émotions des enfants et cela se ressent dans l’aboutissement de ses oeuvres. Ses sculptures minimalistes et figuratives en maille métallique, se concentrent sur les pieds et les mains des sujets laissant dans l’imaginaire le reste du corps.
Mehdi Bouabbane a parcouru l’Inde en quête de ses couleurs. Un hommage sensible et rempli d’optimisme mettant en lumière les visages et les ambiances d’une terre aux multiples facettes. À l’occasion de l’approcher de la fête des couleurs, le Holi Festival, un aperçu des nuances de ce grand pays. Plus de travaux de Mehdi Bouabbane ici.
Our job of the day from Dezeen Jobs is for a Netherlands-based product designer at Studio Piet Boon, whose recent projects include a villa in the French Alps (pictured) and a restaurant in a converted Belgian chapel. More ›
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The Shakers are on the verge of extinction following the recent death of one of the sect’s three surviving members. So why is their austere style having yet another revival?
“We call them the first minimalists,” said Wonhee Arndt from Studio Gorm, who curated an exhibition of Shaker-influenced design at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last month.
“They are this weird religious group who had very unique and sometimes strange practices, but those things translated into this really interesting material culture,” added John Arndt, also of Studio Gorm.
The exhibition, called Furnishing Utopia, travelled to Stockholm after a successful premiere in New York last year.
A second exhibition of Shaker design also took place in Toronto last month, while a number of designers have released products referencing the group’s work.
This revival of interest in the Shakers coincides with the death of one of its last surviving members, Sister Frances Carr, who passed away aged 89 at the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake in Maine, USA, in January. Her death leaves the community – the world’s only remaining Shaker group – with just two members.
Founded in England in the 18th century, the religion was never huge, numbering some 6,000 believers at its peak in pre-Civil War America. And yet the Shakers have always drawn interest – for their lifelong vows of celibacy (which partly explains their diminishing numbers), for their simple lifestyles, for their female religious leadership, and especially for their furniture design.
John Arndt, who visited the preserved Shaker sites at the Hancock Shaker Village and the Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum as part of his research for the Furnishing Utopia exhibition, describes their catalogue as broad and surprising.
“People, when they think of Shakers, they think of rocking chairs and wicker boxes and baskets,” he told Dezeen, “but we were amazed at the breadth of all the objects they built, from daily life to commercial products.”
The aesthetic has had multiple revivals over the years, and Shaker staples such as ladder-back rocking chairs, oval wooden boxes and rustic kitchens have never gone entirely out of fashion. But recently there has been a particular frenzy of activity around the Shakers.
As well as from the 14 different designers involved in the two exhibitions, Shaker-inspired products have come from Pinch, which released a coffee table that makes a feature of one of the sect’s favoured styles of join, as well as Jin Kuramoto and Neri&Hu.
What is it about the movement that has today’s designers so in their thrall? It may be a combination between their ingenuity and our nostalgia.
They were modern before the modernists
From chairs to clothes pegs, Shaker designs show the clean lines and absence of adornment favoured by the modernists of the mid-20th century. In fact, they directly inspired furniture by modernists Kaare Klint, Borge Mogensen and Gio Ponti.
John Baker, co-founder of the shop and gallery Mjölk, which hosted the That Is Best Which Works Best exhibition during trade fair IDS Toronto, said interest in Shaker design is high right now because so is interest in modernism.
“We’re talking about modern ideas: function first, reduction,” Baker told Dezeen. “This was happening a hundred years before the modern movement.”
“It’s a natural progression of learning about design,” he continued. “You start to look at these Danish pieces and you end up going down the rabbit hole. I think it’s a natural conclusion to reach the Shakers.”
Wonhee Arndt explains that the Shakers viewed work as a form of prayer, and that informed their minimalist bent.
“The aesthetics, the unnecessary decoration, things like that represent the outside world, so they tried to really simplify and think about the utilitarian approach as a prayer to God,” she said.
Our nostalgia for the simple life
While the modernist spirit may involve pushing forward, there is no doubt that, in the present day, many people are pushing back.
In the West, desire to carve out space away from screens, technology and mass-production has driven a revival in traditional crafts, such as those practiced by the Shakers. Members of the sect often crafted their own possessions, and did so with the kind of care that might today be termed “mindfulness”.
“A lot of Shakers were making the objects themselves, and I think for a lot of people today, you get enamoured by that kind of slowing down of life,” said John Arndt. “You could just tell there was a care, detail and appreciation for the things of everyday life.”
It helps that the Shakers material of choice – wood – is back in vogue. For some designers and decorators, the very presence of wood in the home, particularly in simple and unadorned form, represents a kind of antidote to the intemperance of our present societies.
Jin Kuramoto, who designed Arflex’s Shaker-influenced Root chair, described minimalism as a contemporary moral virtue.
“I designed the Root chair by removing the decoration to the limit, therefore enhancing the beauty of the framework,” he told Dezeen. “I believe that the philosophy of the Shakers, that removes decoration from life, fits in our modern way of thinking by making our daily lives more virtuous.”
They were innovators rather than Luddites
Because of their ascetic lifestyles and wooden domestic designs, it’s often assumed the Shakers were conservative in their attitudes – not so, according to Studio Gorm.
“They’re actually innovators – they believed in technology; they believed in racial equality,” said Wonhee Arndt. “No social hierarchy between ages. They even made chairs for all different sizes, for children.”
“People find it hard to get over the celibacy, but beyond that they had a lot of really amazing ideas.”
Since the Shakers believed that even the smallest daily activities were worthy of the same consideration you would afford the biggest, they found ways to innovate them. Shaker are credited with inventing some of the earliest washing machines, as well as the circular saw, flat broom and clothespin.
They also paved the way for today’s space-saving furniture design. Much of what the Shakers made was designed to be hung on the walls when not in use, in order to make more room for the dancing that sometimes overtook them during worship.
Their ultimately experimental attitude might be part of what draws successive generations of designers to their work. With each revival, there is a chance to ask: what would the Shakers do?
Said John Arndt of the works in Finding Utopia, “We were asking ourselves, what would a Shaker’s telephone look like? Or a computer?”
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Architect Jon Danielsen Aarhus designed this pine-clad cabin in rural Norway for his own family, creating a large glazed living area with mountain and lake views.
Located between Oslo and Bergen, the cabin named Hytte Ustaoset is situated 1,066 metres above sea level at the foot of Hardangervidda – one of the largest mountain plateaus of its kind in Europe.
Oslo-based Aarhus, wanted to make the most out of views from the house towards a lake in the plateau, as well as ensuring that the structure sits well within its natural environment.
Concrete pillar foundations raise the timber structure above the sloping bedrock and vegetation, while pine-wood cladding on the walls and roof are designed to grey over time and mimic hues found in the surrounding trees, rocks and greenery.
“We wanted to build the cabin around the view, so to speak – the view is the principal theme of the building,” Aarhus told Dezeen.
“At the same time we wanted it to sit well in to the landscape, using natural materials that would blend in,” he continued.
A large window provides the open-plan living, kitchen and dining area with a grand vista. Inside, an angled ceiling is intended to emphasise the view.
“With this view in mind; the idea for the main room was to create the experience of being outside – exposed to the shifting scenery,” Aarhus explained.
“To achieve this, the entire view-facing wall is made of glass. The ceiling is tilted, attempting to ‘explode’ the room even more.”
The tilted ceiling, in combination with the glazed wall, is also a reference to the gapahuk – a type of improvised shelter used when hiking in Norway. The traditional structure features two posts with a horizontal log on top, and a layer of branches leaning on it, making a makeshift roof and leaving one side of the structure open.
A bench is built into one side of the space with storage cabinets on top. Next to this, a walkway leads through to the bedrooms and the bathrooms, while an attic provides storage space.
Inside, light-toned pine wood is used to cover the walls, ceilings and floors, and polycarbonate panels in the doors let light seep through. Due to the rural locations, all of the materials were brought in by helicopter.
To ensure his family can use the cabin all year round, the architect designed the residence to withstand Norway’s harsh winters.
The pitched roof of the cabin is slightly wider than the main volume of the house below to provide shelter at both the rear and the front.
“The eaves are generous to keep frost, falling from the sky at night, away from the windows – which can be a problem with insulating glass at certain temperatures,” explained the architect. “As no windows open, the eaves also conceal openings for ventilation.”
The roof also covers the main entrance, which the architects placed toward the dominant wind-direction to keep it clear of snow. This will accumulate on the opposite side of the building instead so the windows here are placed high up.
A previously existing cabin of 29-square-metre cabin now functions as an annex, and together with the new cabin creates a sheltered outside space.
Other rural cabins in Norway include a blackened timber cabin Lund Hagem designed to withstand harsh winters and a holiday cabin by Rever & Drage’s holiday residence that frames views of a Norwegian fjord.
Photography is by Knut Bry.
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Lund University student Lisa Merk has designed a series of small urns that can be held during funeral ceremonies to reduce the anxieties of bereavement.
Exhibited at this years Stockholm Furniture Fair, the Tactile Perception urns are an attempt to reimagine contemporary burial rites.
Merk’s wooden pebble-shaped urns, filled with the ashes of the deceased, provide relatives and friends with comfort during the service. Afterwards, they have the option to keep the urn for ongoing consolation, or return it to a larger urn for burial.
Made from untreated ash, beech and walnut, the smooth urns are designed to fit in the palm of the user’s hand, in a similar way to anxiety-easing worry stones.
“I had the vision that such a soft, hand-sized mini-urn with a symbolic part of ashes inside could serve as a substitute for the deceased person,” Merk told Dezeen.
“Since funerals are very emotional and stressful events I wanted to provide something for the mourners that they could hold onto or even share their sadness with, at least for the moment of the service.”
Once the smaller urns have been filled with ashes, they are designed to not be opened again.
Tactile Perception is one of 24 projects from Lund University exhibited in the Greenhouse young designers section of the Stockholm Furniture Fair. The industrial design masters students were given the brief to explore the origin of modern-day products and their environmental impact.
As well as changing our burial habits, Merk’s design attempts to be a sustainable alternative to funeral rituals.
As the urns are made from untreated wood, they will readily decompose if relatives and friends choose to bury the urn.
“The main aim is to show a concept that deals with making funerals healthier for our planet,” said Merk. “I did research on conventional funeral methods and processes. Here I found some inconsistencies in terms of environmental friendliness of coffins and urns as well as the passiveness of the relatives.”
“I want to show that rethinking in the burial sector is possible,” she added.
Merk is not the only designer to have rethought funeral rituals through the creation of alternative urns. Gerard Moliné’s biodegradable urn combines the ashes of the deceased with a seed which will grow into a tree, while Wolfgang Natlace’s egg-shaped urn which rocks back and forth like a Weeble toy to offer an alternative to the “grey and sad conformism of death”.
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