 What's in a Name? Welcome to the MOD Newsletter. MOD editors are traveling the world to find the best design, designers and events to keep you up to date and informed. We are always looking for new products, stories and environments to write about; so please feel free to contact us with your ideas, events or comments. We welcome your input!
This month we feature some of the new designers that MOD has found in our travels. The names may be a little different, but so are the concepts, in a really good way. After all "Good design is good design" according to the iconic American designer George Nelson. The great thing is that MOD will be bringing these designs to the US market in the coming year. "One of the most fulfilling aspects of the MOD concept is finding and promoting the best talent in the world" says MOD President Anavel Martinez.
VUJJ - Swedish by Nature, Global by Design
Vujj is a young company dedicated to producing fine quality designs for the international market. It is a company well versed in, but unshackled by, the traditions of Scandinavian design, that seek to add a little provocation to the story.
Artur Moustafa and Jonas Nordgren, who design collectively under the title Artur & Jonas, joined forces with Grupo Selther in order to set up Vujj in early 2006.
Vujj has its roots firmly linked with the Skåne region of southern Sweden where the pair grew up; it is close to the border of Denmark and has a notable history of furniture craftmanship.
Vujj has recently a new showroom located in the heart of Malmö City half a minute walk from the central station in an old beautiful building at the corner of Mäster Nilsgatan and Östergatan. The facility holds a showroom, office, workshop and storage. The showroom is set to open in the middle of November when fall is in its most beautiful state with shifting colours in the foliage and soft autumn breezes.
Besides all the beautiful Vujj furniture and objects on display, you will be able to find other treats from Vujj's friends such as PMKFA's t-shirt brand, It's our thing, silver design from Jox Silver, design magazines & books and much more.
Look for Vujj to bring their concept to New York at MOD in the coming year.. The names may be unique, but the design is timeless and MOD is at the forefront of bringing the best design available in the world to the US market.
www.vujj.se |
QUODES - A Multi-cultural Experience
There was a time that furniture lasted for generations. It was appealingly shaped and made with love, and children lovingly inherited cupboards, chairs and tables from their parents. QUODES wishes to restore that tradition, and focuses on distinctive, functional furniture that has its own character, but is not overbearing.
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN by MARCEL WANDERS signals the return of a type of furniture that has all but disappeared. The dressing table consists of a mirror with a richly decorated frame and a glass planchet, a small dresser, in two variations, and a storage stool. The sober dresser features a sunken top and cast brass handles in the shape of an apple and a snake, a reference to the first woman. The more baroque cabinet features a spherical, massive wooden foot on which a top has been fitted. The stool, with its graphic design and round forms, refers to the 1960s. The series is a post-modern ensemble intended as a tribute to womankind.
More practical, but no less refined, are the PATTERN and EMPIRE cabinets by ALFREDO HÄBERLI of Zurich. This Argentine-born designer – who is also this year’s guest of honour at the Kortrijk furniture biennale – chose basic geometric shapes and piled them one on top of the other to create interesting patterns. Both the variation and the contours give the furniture a fascinating and visual shape. Furniture sculptures, suitable for storing books and exhibiting objects.
The SATELLITE programme was designed by young British designers BARBER OSGERBY. Drawing their inspiration from the Modernist Movement, they drew minimalist cabinet modules onto K-shaped metals sleds. The doors and drawers feature subtly sunken handles and the series evokes something of the feel of the Scandinavian furniture classics from after the Second World War. The SATELLITE programme, like the designs described above, is available in a range of models and colours.
Look for some of MOD's favorite designers to be designing for Quodes soon! Also look for Quodes to be making an appearance at MOD in the new year... A Happy New Year Indeed!
www.quodes.com |
AMAZING ANTIPODEAN OBJECTS
korban/flaubert is a design and production partnership between Janos Korban (b.1961), a metalwork specialist with a background in psychology and genetics, and architect Stefanie Flaubert (b.1965). They established korban/flaubert in 1993, focusing on collaborative investigations into materials, structure and spatial relationships. They now produce furniture, lighting, interiors and experimental works for clients in Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia.
In 2001 Korban and Flaubert set up their current studio/workshop/showroom in the industrial suburb of Alexandria. They describe the workshop as ‘a laboratory of form’, in which they playfully explore the cross-over between geometry and nature.
They describe their organic approach to design as a ‘process of discovery’. The function is not predetermined. Through experimenting with materials, volume and action an end product might emerge as a seat, a light or some sculptural fantasy. The application is found in the form itself, ‘the idea falls out of life, the form falls out of the idea’.
For example the work called Tetrafive, where korban/flaubert aim to evoke dormant sensations and new responses by introducing elements - massive objects much larger than average furniture in this case - that subvert conventional experience. In addition, an installation concept that expresses the way neon tubes and steel tubes transform into a complex structure connected in space intends to shake up your awareness of the distance between objects that changes as you move.
“Repetition/rhythm/complexity/reconfigurability are for us the important elements that prompt this adventure of perception. This kind of thinking is also at the root of the design for our Weblight, which is formed of acrylic covered with stainless steel and LEDs. Emitting a zigzag line of light, Weblight can be used singly or in a series as a partition or complex light sculpture - linking the modules in a chain generates surprising levels of complexity. We hope to impart surprise and discovery through these kinds of transformations”.
www.korbanflaubert.com.au |
Thanks for visiting - please check out our website: www.modobjects.net |
