Designblog

Like with a thread, it’s hard to find its top, it was hard to discover the beginning of this story.

A thread unravels itself on the ground
Its top is hard to find
Persistently strings are being pulled
Hooked on a state of mind
Fingers move on a virtuous trance
And yet no end is found

The thread starts to move around virtual spaces
Auctions and images
Prices and selling strategies
Long, thin and flexible form of material
Draws a series of messages
And sequence of connections

Flashes of images across my mind
From Hitchcock’s Rope dinner masterpiece
To Ernesto Neto’s suspended organisms
And Bjork’s Unravel portrait of decease
Besides, Garth Knight and Andrea Davies bondage motif

All these threads hold our existence together
Link memories to one another
Sprout canons of aesthetics
Create a language of composition
A fine line around the subject
Threads,
Filaments,
Fiber,
String,
Ropes
………..

Words like
Height 53’’
Width 41’’
Depth 43’’
Seat height 15.75’’
Starts to seem familiar

Slowly the string unravels into a ball of yarn
A triangular shape collects its pieces
Like a home for sailors ropes
A bow of Vikings boats
A tribute to a freezing place
And heroic seaman’s stories

Scandinavian blood runs through its veins
From 1935 to 2005
Award winning and acclaimed
Under the enchanting songs of the mermaids
Changed its powerful Viking name
To a meticulous fragile Harp sound

Depicted countless times
Spread out on different hands
Has long lost its original traces
Varies from site to site
Bleach, oak, ash, maple or walnut
As colours come and go
As the costumer pleases

Preserved under the sacred power of museums
Or kept among the noble houses
Once a piece of art
Now a  prototype

Yet far from being familiar
To a southern soul
Where wild oceans and fishing ropes
Scatter along the coast

Hammock nets, swing along the breeze
Fill the air with pine-wood trees
With Hollywood glamour mixed along
A slightly pear shaped frame is born

Taking the name of the place on the globe
Anonymously design,
Acapulco becomes
With its recycled PVC woven cords
Tropical colours and metal structures
Gain its place has percussionist
The southern orchestra member of the Northern Harp

Memories of gardens and beach
Come along……
White smooth sand, teaching you
How to sit in first hand

Or at the times you had
that white, blue, red, hand painted flowers
in the back of a tiny little chair
The size of half adult leg

With its straws and braided seat
Filled with the popular themes
Of a country of craftsman and traditions
Where you learn how to play hide and seek
At that moment you realize you can sit
Without anyone holding your seat
Unless you’re in a room filled with valuable chairs
And cameras everywhere

The Harp chants
Hypnotize my senses
That Viking treasure
That lays now among other chairs
In such a confined pointless room

I wonder how does it feel to sit on that chair
That same one that JØRGEN HØVELSKOV
Designed

Perhaps its transparency blends in
With my pale skinned shoulders
Perhaps my body will
Submerge into those strings
And stripes will be carved along my skin

Like that first chair
marked my silk buttocks
and drawn moving patterns
when I was a restless two years old child

I imagine how my back will melt
Into a flexible wave of relaxation
Like if I was made of clay
And my body shapes would assume the negative forms of that chair

Then those legs, spread out on the floor
like spiders using their glands to shape their web
Would invite me to cross my long legs
And play its imaginable pedals

The chair becomes wood
The ropes become thread
The thread becomes ………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………..unraveled

Harp Chair by JØRGEN HØVELSKOV
[x]

ARNE JACOBSEN (11 February 1902 – 24 march 1971) is a danish architect and designer. He was first able working as an architect, then mostly influenced by the modernist ideas. Typically, modernists reject decorative motifs, to emphasize more on materials, pure geometrical forms, function and adaptation to the industry.
Following the modernist philosophy, Jacobsen concieved buildings such as the Stelling House on Gammeltorv (left picture), or the SAS Royal Hotel (right picture), both in Copenhaguen.

He went to design products because of his interest for the Gesamtkunstwerk concept. It concerned the preoccupation of building a place as a whole, every objects matter, one place (architecture, furniture’s, light…) is driven by one full concept, vision.
Jacobsen’s design products are therefore influenced by modernist ideals, but are more precisely a part of the organic modernist movement. This movement gave to Denmark and Scandinavian countries a particular place in modern design. Jacobsen played an important contribution to that.
The philosophy of organic modernism’s main concept is to emphasize on the harmony between human living and the world of nature, so that they are combined in an united, interrelated composition for a better living. Actually, it brings to modernism a humane element to its rationnalism. It’s to create clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research into materials, proportions and the requirements of the human body.

The Kokfelt House (1957) by Arne Jacobsen is a representation of what organic modernism can be in architecture.

Jacobsen uses craft and “natural” materials to build his design works. Jacobsen combines aesthetic for a better living and adaptation to industrial production (social matter); which made his works a critical and economic success in the 50’s.

            The Egg is a chair designed in 1958 for the Radisson SAS hotel in Copenhagen. It is manufactured by Republic of Fritz Hansen.
The chair answers to the project Jacobsen was commissioned for : designing the whole hotel. He could therefore fully following his interest on the Gesamtkunstwerk concept.
The Egg is considered as a triumph concerning Jacobsen’s design : the organic form of the chair constrats with  the building’s almost exclusively vertical and horizontal surfaces. Jacobsen searched for the perfect shape by first sculpting clay in his own garage. This shape offers to the user a bit of privacy in a public space such as the hall of the hotel. It also can be used in a private place such a home to lounge. The Egg is available in a wide variety of fabric upholstery as well as leather, always combined with a star shaped base in satin polished aluminium.
By combining pure organic form, industrial adaptation, craft (strong foam inner shell underneath the upholstery technique), and conception as a part for a whole; the Egg is an excellent representation of how was design conceived in Scandinavian countries in the 50’s.

        This piece shows a particular vision on human living. A better living combining functionnalism (research of materials), human proportions (requirements of the body) and aesthetic (part of a whole, pure forms). It allows the user to take distance from the flows going through public spaces or even in a private one; to find again a bit of intimacy. In a world where we are constantly solicitated, this chair offers with a cleaned form the possibility to manage to deal with those requests. That doesn’t mean to disconnect, but to get better relation to our environment.

         I wonder if the search for better living through the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, which was the main preoccupation of Jacobsen, can be found in our daily lives. What happens to interior spaces when they are not conceived by professionals, but by individuals. Can we find the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk in vernacular spaces ? Do the objects, the planning of the space allow the user to enter one full vision of it ?

IS GESAMTKUNSTWERK UNCONSCIOUSLY PRESENT AROUND US ?