Sunday, June 28, 2009

Coil

[Image: From OnSite.12, Bed Supperclub, Bangkok (2009) by Sebastien Wierinck].

Sebastien Wierinck's public furniture projects seem to lend themselves to some interesting misinterpretations. For instance, when I first saw the two projects pictured here I thought not only that they were one project, but that they were the black tentacles of some kind of furniture-laying machine.

[Image: From OnSite.12, Bed Supperclub, Bangkok (2009) by Sebastien Wierinck].

In other words, I thought, a tangle of black tubes suspended from the ceiling would, when needed, come coiling down to take the shape of whatever furniture you desired at the time: a bench, a table, a love seat, perhaps even a rug.
When you no longer need that particular chair, bench, or nightstand anymore, the coils would simply rewind upward into a canopy of tubes (or perhaps even be withdraw themselves into a machine somewhere in the center of the room, like what's pictured in the first image, above).

[Image: From OnSite.14, Transmediale, Berlin (2009), by Sebastien Wierinck].

After a long day at work, then, you would walk into your house – which has no permanent furniture – and you'd see a shimmering mass of black tubes swaying in a slight evening breeze above your head.
You'd push several buttons, and the system would begin to move, drooping down in long loops and turning back and forth in tight corners and curves, all laying out the forms of temporary furniture – bed, table – as you get ready for a quiet night at home.

[Image: From OnSite.14, Transmediale, Berlin (2009), by Sebastien Wierinck].

Of course, this admittedly somewhat willful misinterpretation of the evidence at hand is not entirely wrong: after all, though Wierinck's pieces don't uncoil from the ceilings in ad hoc patterns, forming zones of temporary furniture throughout empty interiors, they are meant to be (literally) flexible, (somewhat) mobile, and easy enough to reprogram for other spaces.
But what a beautiful thought: that you could walk into an empty room, hit a few buttons, and then watch as custom, temporary furniture is 3D-printed into the space all around you.
Like a strange rain coming down from the ceiling, or the materialization of a dream, usable shapes gradually form – and then you sit, book in hand.
On demand, from above.

(Spotted on SpaceInvading).

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