It’s hard to beat the feeling of walking into a gallery. The sense of quiet and reflection immediately transports you to another world, where you are able to slow down and focus on objects and work that push your mind and inspires your creativity. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, our access to these kinds of spaces is massively diminished, as art and design spaces work to support efforts to ensure public safety. Through all of this, creativity and ingenuity in the gallery world has still managed to flourish, reframing the way we think about sharing and displaying design.
Movimento Club, a project launched by Artefatto Design Studio “to encourage and support young designers and emerging brands,” is using virtual reality to bring the gallery experience to our summer quarantine quarters. On June 30, the studio launched “The Lost Place,” a VR exhibition you can access from your computer or smartphone.
One room of the exhibit displays a range of soft-edge designs, including Federica Elmo's Onda Coffee Table and Onda Side Table, Jackrabbit Studio's Pillar Sofa, the Anthurium Lamp by Kristina Ziegenhagel, and Kalokagathos Table by Jiri Krejcirik.
Upon visiting the exhibition, you find yourself within the Artefatto-designed futuristic tunnel space that evokes the work of designers and architects that they admire such as John Pawson, Claudio Silvestrin, Ettore Sottsass, Tadao Ando, Étienne-Louis Boullée, Carlo Scarpa, and even Stanley Kubrick. Using your keyboard or touchscreen, you can then travel through the cavernous gallery space, visiting seven different rooms in which 40 different pieces by upcoming designers from around the world are staged.
From left to right: One Curve Chair by Objects with Narratives, La Redonda Chair by Bodegon Cabinet, and Crooked Lounge Chair by Nazara Lazaro.
Although it’s challenging to imitate the feeling of being in a physical environment, the atmosphere of the gallery is surprisingly lifelike and satisfying. Light pours in through cutouts in the roof above, and the thoughtful architecture complements the work within. By clicking on each piece, you can learn more about the story behind a specific design and access the designer’s personal site and social media.
Clockwise from left: Tateyama Sofa by Secolo, Wave Lamp on Sticks by Hot Wire Extensions, B15-z chair by Secolo, Crossroads Table by Danielle Brustman.
One of our favorite parts of the exhibition was the way in which working within VR allowed the gallery’s designers to create spaces that not only were pleasing to the eye, but also were far more expansive and radical than what typical whitewall galleries usually stage. In one room undulating, deep orange walls curve to frame each vignette, while in another, a massive pink cylinder surrounding the design pieces reaches several stories high toward the open sky at the top of the chamber. As you pass through the gallery, you catch small glimpses of an extraterrestrial landscape just outside the walls, suggesting that there is something otherworldly about the whole experience.
Room for irregularities Chair by walac., Crux Desk by Sofía Campos Delgado/Estudio SCD, Kit Christo Mirror by Asata.
With a somewhat uncertain future, virtual reality exhibitions may offer the promise of a new normal for design spaces, especially for young designers who are just beginning to share their work with a larger audience. “We see so many benefits with creating virtual exhibitions,” shared Artefatto, “if you consider the cost and environmental impact of flying hundreds of pieces of art, or furniture in this case, to one location followed by thousands of people from around the world. [This,] paired also with the exclusivity involved in only being able to visit an exhibition if you can afford to get to wherever it is being put on, be that for opportunity or money.”
A closer look at the Room for Irregularities Chair by Glasgow-based Studio walac.. shows the hand-blackened and waxed steel design is intended to promote irregularities within the final product.
The La Redonda Chair by Bodegon Cabinet makes use of a familiar shape, bending and reconstructing the circle to make a simple yet elegant chair.
It’s undeniable that creating virtual exhibitions widens the audience for upcoming designers, especially in the current climate, but Movimento believes, rather than working as a replacement, that virtual exhibitions should be created as complements to traditional physical shows. “We do, however, share the opinion that nothing virtual can ever truly replace the feeling of seeing art firsthand, so we don’t expect that virtual exhibitions will replace physical exhibitions but perhaps will work side by side, for some events, to offer something extremely interesting,” the studio told Clever.
The Wave Lamp on Sticks by Hot Wire Extensions was created using an innovative recycling-conscious manufacturing process in which a wire shape is filled with a unique formula of nylon powder and sand. When a current is sent through the wire, it melts the nylon to form the shape of the lamp.
H.R.ROHRER-FOTOGRAF
We are excited to see Artefatto and others like them creating imaginative workarounds to sharing new and exciting design, and look forward to watching these ideas grow and expand. “Movimento was created to give these individuals visibility by coming together as a singular collective,” the team shared. “Movimento has a strong belief that together we can achieve more.”
- 转载自:Architectural Digest
- 语言:English
- 阅读原文
|