Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Sketches from NGV visit


Shiro Kuramata & Campana Brothers





















Shiro Kuramata
Furniture + Interior Designer (1934-1991)

Kuramata’s designs reflect the confidence and creativity of postwar Japan, retaining a strong identity based on traditional Japanese aesthetics while breaking new ground through the use of innovative materials. He combined the Japanese concept of the unity of the arts with his fascination with contemporary western culture. Kuramata reassessed the relationship between form and function, imposing his own vision of the surreal and of minimalist ideals on everyday objects.






















Fernando + Humberto Campana
Furniture Designer (1967- + 1953- )

Drawing inspiration from Brazilian street life and carnival culture, the brothers combine found objects – such as scraps of wood and fabric off-cuts – with advanced technologies to create a vibrant, energetic and definitively Brazilian approach to design. Taking their cue from everyday scenarios and using unexpected combinations of found materials such as rubber hose, tissue paper, string or furry toys, Fernando and Humberto transform modest materials into objects that instilled with the spirit of contemporary Brazil that they describe as “zest for life”.

Charles + Ray Eames & Verner Panton





















Charles + Ray Eames
Product Designers (1907–1978 + 1912-1988)

Early in their careers together, Charles and Ray identified the need for affordable, yet high-quality furniture for the average consumer. For 40 years the Eames experimented with ways to meet this challenge, designing flexibility into their compact storage units and collapsible sofas for the home; seating for stadiums, airports, and schools; and chairs for virtually anywhere.

Like in the earlier moulded plywood work, the Eames pioneered innovative technologies, such as the fiberglass, plastic resin chairs and the wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller.























Verner Panton
Architect + Furniture Designer (1926-1998)

Verner Panton introduced a series of modern chairs, environments and lighting with personalities. With a remarkable faith in the unlimited possibilities of traditional forms, he worked successfully to create a new set of theories about how a chair should look and how it should seat someone as well as how vibrant colours could find their way into corporate and residential environments.

He was first to create inflatable furniture, pioneered with the much acclaimed single moulded plastic chair and refused to accept gravity by creating the Flying Chair.

Eileen Gray & Hans J Weger





















Eileen Gray
Architect + Furniture Designer (1878 – 1976)

Eileen Gray is now regarded as one of the most important furniture designers and architects of the early 20th century and the most influential woman in those fields. Her work inspired both modernism and Art Deco.

She was to “stand alone” throughout her career first as a lacquer artist, then a furniture designer and finally as an architect. At a time when other leading designers were almost all male and mostly members of one movement or another, but she remained stalwartly independent.

Her design style was as distinctive as her way of working, and Gray developed an opulent, luxuriant take on the geometric forms and industrially produced materials used by International Style designers.






















Hans J Wegner
Architect + Furniture Designer (1914 – 2007)

With his love of natural materials and his deep understanding of the need for furniture to be functional as well as beautiful, Hans J Wegner made mid-century Danish design popular on an international scale.


The real beauty of Wegner’s genius must be seen in context with his collaboration with master cabinetmaker Johannes Hansen.

Wegner works with many different materials, old and modern. Yet, as no one else he understands the nature of wood and the possibilities and limitations which this family of materials represents.