Designblog

Shapes contain shapes.

This pipe is a monument.

The company designed the pipe to be feminine. An infinite triangle, with an elitist and delicate exterior shape, but at the same time graphic and geometric. Frail but strong.

A woman.

The pipe contains more shapes in the shape. Pipoo 8 has three shapes. The lower dark trapezium made of briar, the transparent upper part made of acrylic and a black plastic cylinder.

We can admire her. How two different materials become unified shapes that contain inside the black cylinder, making a unity of one strict object. There is no possibility to change it, I must accept how it is.

About 15 cm long, it can become part of your body but you can also compare it to a Bic, looking like something alien.

It’s gorgeous.

This is not a vase. It is Carnival.

The vase contains more shapes in a shape. It has three shapes. A wooden rectangular with sharp edges leaning 8 degrees towards the right. A fluorescent green rectangular with rounded corners made out of cardboard, whereas its centre has a phallic transparent glass.

Mike Kelley once said: “With my work I not only want to reach the most educated viewer, but the most lazy viewer as well”.

About 44 centimeters high. Screaming for attention. One cannot avoid the sight of this illuminating green situation.

It’s a glossy disaster.

At the beginning of the 20th century Josef Hoffmann, Kolo Moser and the industrialist Fritz Werndorfer founded the ‘Wiener Werkstätte’. In order to protect traditional handicraft from mass-production they designed exclusive handmade everyday objects and gave them the aura of art. At the same time they tried to find an alternative to old representative art forms favored by the rulers of Austria which shaped the picture of Vienna at this time. When they started to design architecture which they filled with their handmade furniture and their handmade objects their work became a concept that led to an idea of a different society based on pure aesthetics: they tried to create a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’.

Under which circumstances could such a concept develop? The design of the ‘Wiener Werkstätte’ is still very modern and popular while the concept of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ is not relevant anymore. But why? Do we need a similar utopia today? If one wants to get an idea ‘why’ one has to take a closer look at the development of the concept ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ in relation to its historic background.

Wiener_Werkstätte