Hasta La Ideas

Japanese designer Ryuji Nakamura used crayons to draw thin lines of colour along the rods of these gridded benches (+ slideshow).

The Water Lily benches by Ryuji Nakamura began as oblong grids of powder-coated stainless steel rods.

The designer then used coloured pencils to draw four thin lines along each rod, and sealed the colour with clear lacquer.

Seen from a distance, the colours blur together to create a single soft colour, a technique that Nakamura says was inspired by Impressionist painters.

The bench was part of Mark-ing London, an exhibition of work by British and Japanese designers organised by the British Council at Gallery Libby Sellers earlier this month.

During last year’s London Design Festival, nine benches by designers including Jasper Morrison and BarberOsgerby were placed in the garden of the V&A museum.

We’ve also featured include a bench system based on the iconic Barcelona chair and benches upholstered with bare foam mats – see all benches on Dezeen.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

This is the bench whose structure is grid constructed with stainless steel round rods. It is painted in six different colours with coloured pencil, and if you walk around it, the outward appearance of the overall colour changes according to the point of the view.

The outward form is a rectangular parallelepiped that has six surfaces, and a different colour is given to every surface. Since the grid is made with the fine round rods, the surface of each one of the round rods is painted in four different colours.

This grid has 1080 segments, so the numbers of the surfaces to be painted in different colours is 4320 – that is, quadruple of 1080. Since the area of each colour is very small, their colours are mixed and are recognised as one colour.

Although the numbers of colours used is only six, since the ratio of colours mixed changes with angles continuously, infinite colour will appear. I made this bench as if I drew a picture, inspired by the thought of the pictures by Impressionists where many subdivided colours make the overall appearance.

Title: Water Lily
Function: Bench for exhibition Neoreal in the Forest
Date of manufacture: 2012
Size: W 1600mm / D 400mm / H 400mm
Material: 2.6mm stainless rod, coloured pencil

Finish: Powder coating + coloured pencil + clear lacquer
Client: Canon
Producer: TRUNK
Design: Ryuji Nakamura & Associates (Ryuji Nakamura, Makiko Wakaki, Ran Tanaka)
Fabrication: Otti design works, Ryuji Nakamura & Associates

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Ryuji Nakamura appeared first on Dezeen.