Designersblock 2010
Jenny Brewer idfx
Designersblock took over an impressive five floors of the Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf last week, filling each floor with the freshest new ideas and products from over 100 exciting up-and-coming designers. Here are a few of our favourites from the show.
Designersblock veteran Matthew Plummer Fernandez exhibited a conceptual new lighting piece with his latest collaborative venture Lunchtime Cinema; the pendant is made from discarded plastic objects including McDonalds toys, jelly molds, lemon squeezers, soap containers, a walkman, toy guns, speakers, a toy train, hair dryers, mobile phones, computer mice and even Bob the Builder’s helmet. Stemmed from Plummer Fernandez’s eco-ideals, the idea re-appropriates almost entirely waste products to make something new, drawing attention to the amount of old material available to designers and makers. His favourite project from the show Made In Peckham by Hendzel and Hunt (see below) was an idea cut from the same cloth. ‘I like the idea that they used bits and pieces they found locally to them in the city. Apparently slums are very green areas because all the materials are used up – I definitely stand on this side of the ecological furniture debate.’
Hendzel and Hunt’s watch cabinet was designed as a bespoke piece for the dressing room of a London penthouse apartment. A branch seemingly grows from the top of the beautifully carved wooden piece, acting as a display for jewellery pieces. The duo also debuted their uber-topical Made In Peckham collection of furniture, made using reclaimed wood from the local area.
Charlotte Kingsnorth’s Hybreed collection transforms reclaimed chairs, adding upholstered bulges and rolls to evoke a more human aspect to the furniture, making the chairs obese. The collection is ‘inspired by the relationship between a sofa and the voluptuous flesh of its obese occupier’.
Knitted textiles are very on-trend at the moment, and Claire Anne O’Brien’s Form pieces certainly celebrate that. My favourites were the semi-circular stools in a spectrum of warm citrus tones, perfect for the autumn.
Elaine Ng Yan Ling’s stunning textile surfaces drew lots of attention, mainly for the sheer detail involved in her pieces. The Techno-Naturology surfaces combine etched wood patterns and intricate three-dimensional woven textiles for a truly unique result.
FuruHaelvetica showed the What If Pine project, showcasing work by a group of nine designers exploring the natural properties of traditional Norwegian pine. The products and prototypes on show included the Log chair by Signe Solberg, who cut down the pine tree himself to create the piece, and aimed to draw attention to the natural patterns and texture of the material by keeping it as raw as possible.
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