This is something brand new! A team of designers, including myself, have just founded a new exclusive club for Norwegian designers. Look out for our exhibitions, someday one might be close to you! The launch party/exhibition will happen in December. Dates will be announced.
If YOU are interested in being a part of the show, check this site: www.odl.no
I designed this chair because I wanted fame and cash, but I got nothing and it probably serves me well. Still I discovered a great deal about my own visions about design by making this one. It kind of showed me what I was thinking, but could not explain. It made me realise that design is expression and that some things just needs to be made and then you can talk later…
CLM chair by Øyvind Wyller
Can designers do scenography? Yeah! I did this studio 60’s style!! Directed and filmed by Filmfaktisk AS (www.filmfaktisk.no)
Filed under: Walking the walk
I am currently working as a photographer at Domaine de Boisbuchet documenting the workshops which take place on this marvelous site. Here are some of the pictures. Read more about the workshops and the place at www.boisbuchet.org
More pictures will follow…
I was at a flea market this weekend. They sold, among other things,”krimskrams”. Krimskrams is a Norwegian slang for stuff that is totally useless but probably cool to own; stuff that you can fill up your window sill with. It can also be used about decoration and “decorative items”. This poster wasn’t lying, I went inside and it was truly a lot of krimskrams there.
Flea markets are surely the greatest thing since bread came sliced! I looked through some old LPs of Rod Stewart, Tina Turner and guys like that, but I only bought a couple of books… The best thing about flea markets is that people can for example change their furniture without buying new stuff all the time. You can get good quality for a very low price and as a bonus you feel that it’s more special than buying some standard crap at IKEA.
PLUS! – you support the kids in your local marching band!
My pilot project is about communication through form, and how to nail a certain expression to create the desired mood for a given setting. I want to master this skill to be able to create objects which makes a scene and includes visual poetry to products for everyday use. In the case of my pilot project, which resulted in the “Unit One”, I decided that the message should be “hands off”, the expression: serious, and the mood: reliable and strong. The “Unit One” is a personal container which is ment to keep diaries, secret treasures and the likes. The goal of the whole “nailing-the-expression-mission” is to make a longer lasting, more personal relationship between consumers and products. It was exhibited in Stockholm in february, but got little attention from the crowd; nobody dared to open it..
To see the rest of the Academy’s stand in Stockholm follow this link: http://www.underconstruction.khio.org/ (It’s sweet stuff…)
I have discovered the pleasure of baking my own bread! My God! It’s delicious. I didn’t make the eggs myself though, but I did boil them. What a feeling of achievement! I am totally a new man! Everybody should try to bake their own bread, it’s like killing your own food. Now that hunting is kind of passé, this is a perfect substitute. If you think this is a job for women, try baking out a 2 kg. dough, that was a real workout… The best thing is that it is totally possible to do it without any recipe or measuring the ingredients. Just mix tha shit together it’s gonna get tasty almost no matter what! Try walnuts and raisins. Oh Lord, I’m excited!
1: Art has lost!
In the Academy in Oslo the art students learn a language that I don’t understand to feel clever. Then they make stuff that seems very confusing and claim to be geniuses. Sex is popular because it’s really provocative, and the amount of provoked people measures the success in art. To me the a-word is an invective you can use about any object (or anything) that makes you ask yourself: “What is this?”. So if something is somewhere it doesn’t belong (or belongs extraordinarily well) or somebody is doing something unusual (or incredibly usual), its probably art. Art is now a word you can use for everything and is therefore nothing.
2: Design now contains art!
“Design is the art of the 21st. century”, those words belonged to Ross Lovegrove, who is probably a little too famous for his own good, but still: It’s true! I wouldn’t use the a-word about design, but rather the expression: “The craft formerly known as art”. When art is reduced to be something vague that allows everyone to put their own meaning into it, it lost it’s sole purpose: To contain meaning. A telephone is just as suited to create a mood, or a scene in a bigger whole as an installation of trash spread on the floor, or empty cardboard boxes. The bonus, however, about the phone is that you can talk to people who is wery far away with it! WOW!
That’s all for now folks! Enjoy this illustration made with windows’ paint:
Filed under: Talking the talk, Walking the walk | Tags: design, furniture
This is a cute little story about me and my office chair, a love story. It all began this summer when I found it in the trash, the base was ripped right off the seat and it looked rather sad. But I thought to myself: “this just ain’t no piece of trash man!” so I took it home in my friend, Christian’s car.
This chair is made of solid polished aluminium and leather, the shape is so fine tuned that even though the joints were ripped right off, it would be worth fixing. Later I found out that it wasn’t actually an “authentic” Vitra or Herman Miller, it was made by Italian manufacturer ICF . I found myself thinking if I should care to go through with this, the chair being a “fake” and all.. Maybe it wouldn’t fall apart in the first place if it was a “real” one.
Then I decided that I was not such a shallow person and that the aluminium, leather and shapes were real enough for me. The mending was easy enough (Being a furnituredesigner and all..) and now it works fine, as a matter of fact, I’m sitting on it right now! And, oh yes! It feels great!
This got me thinking that if the impression of the product leaves such an impact, even a “fake” broken sample in the trash, it is indeed good design.
Finally back in Oslo and wrapping up this year’s 100% design. There was a lot of nice design and designers, but few who I felt really stood out as something wery special. I think actually I never had this WOW-feeling, and that kind of disappointed me a little. But still there were a couple of things that I liked a lot. This lamp that i rushed by at Designers Block I found appealing, it might have helped that the background matched so well. Now I have been incredibly unproffesional and forgotten to take notes of the names of the designers, but I guess that’s how it’s like to be a selfcentered designer who actually only care about his own work…
Lamp from the Designers Block exhibition in London 2008
Then there was this amazing installation of diodes that moved on some advanced mechanism to imitate water: ‘Waterdrop’ from Studio Hector Serrano (www.hectorserrano.com)
‘Waterdrop’ from Studio Hector Serrano (www.hectorserrano.com)
As most of the stands at the 100% design show had pieces of furniture that you’d basically seen before, there were more fresh stuff at the Tent exhibition in Brick Lane. But then there were these guys who think recycling is crunching materials together to make a useless piece of furniture like on the picture below.
From the Tent exhibition in London
Still at the Tent exhibition, Nobody & co (below) had a kind of nice stand with their kind of famous “bookshelf-chair” and the table that you can roll on a new tabletop with the handle. A little too novelty-ish solutions for my taste, but still it’s fun and works well as an exhibition. I could probably say that about the “recycled-plastic-crap-chairs” too, but no, they just annoy me..
Nobody&co at Tent, London
