The Family of Form

The most exciting exhibitions at the Salone del Mobile are usually the ones set up by the design schools. Design Academy Eindhoven being a big favourite, not just because of the works displayed but because the Academy PR people just make my life so much easier. They provide the press with pictures and a clear text presentation of each piece in italian, english and dutch. Immediately. No "write your name on this bit of paper and we'll send you some images next term." Actually i'd rather write about another school's show but there was no press material available. So i'll have to wait before blogging it. And i bet that when i get the press kit, i won't be in the mood for it anymore.

To celebrate its 60th anniversary this year, the DAE exhibition, called The Family of Form, presents the work of 3 generations of graduates who have investigated the identity of design.

The title refers to Edward Steichen's photo book The Family of Man. Published in the '50s, the book was the first to give an overall image of the peoples of the world, the uniqueness of their characteristics and the universality of their experience.

There are dozens of works in the exhibition. Just a selection:

Nacho Carbonell Ivars's Pump It Up is an air-filled chair that connects with a family of parasites, two dogs and two cats that gently inflates when you sit down on the chair (images.)

In A Hunt for High Tech, Bart Hess seeks to harness both nature and technology and create armoured skin and fur for a new human archetype incorporating animalistic and fetichistic instincts (images from Bright.)

Inspired by Darwinism and the theory of Human Evolution (all creations are named after a human ancestor), Yoad David Luxembourg's The Volution is a critique about fashion's serial tendencies through a family of garments derived from archaic postures and simplified silhouettes.

Simone van den Boom's project Kitchen Help Becomes Body Healer are glass containers shaped to resemble the organs benefiting from their contents of medicinal plants; the packaging indicates thus the healing powers of the herbs they contain.

Sander Lucas's Distilling Machine for distilling your own liquor. The instrument was created by shopping for spare parts in the building market.

Willem Derks' My Archetypes reduces household electronics to very simple and utterly alluring archetypal forms.

Image on the top is from Christoph Brach's project A Second Nature that depicts our inner anatomy with balloons.

Most of the images on the post comes from the press kit (name of the photographers was missing). All the images. More projects from DAE: Dutch ideas, Follow the Flocks, Post Mortem, Vehicle of the day.