Woodlands

2002
Bloomberg Headquarters, London, Uk
With Rainer Spehl & åbäke

Four Degrees of Together-ness by Karl-Johan Dykinte, 2004

Don’t you always believe graphic designers, especially if they tell you ‘We even make furniture’—double emphasis on the even, to stress there is more. In these days of Breaking the Boundaries of Not only Multi-disciplinary But Plurally Talented/Can sing Too-ness, these words are easily pronounced. I can predict the return of special skills, the hyper narrow savoir faire as a reaction to those who pretend being able to cabinet-make while designing typography. Please allow me to study the case of Woodlands, a joint project between furniture designers Martino Gamper, Rainer Spehl and graphic designers Åbäke. Woodlands is a series of semi-public furniture commissioned by design curators Scarlet Projects in the summer of 2002. The place is the Bloomberg UK
headquarters, in London. In this fancy building, there is no escape. The employees have four screens each and are informed in the staircases and in the toilets by invisible speakers. The nature of what they do —a mystery to me— necessitates it. The information is too important to miss any of it. There is a space, tho’, on each of the four floors to display functional design: a place to sit on ‘experimental’ furniture. Why this interests me is because the four sub-projects, developed for each of the four spaces constitute different examples of collaborations; an all-too democratic and genteel word used to define what is very often the best way to get cheap labour by unscrupulous people.

Floor one, the Tape Woods.
A few years back, Martino had started his Amalgam series by going to the then trendy A.P.C. shop where he bought some camouflage tape to amalgamate pieces of furniture. After a while, he opted to make his own ‘fake wood’ tape of which were rolls and rolls left when the Scarlet/Bloomberg commission happened. It might be worth mentioning the overall idea was to loosely bring nature into an artificial space. So they went scavenging to try and transform the broken & ugly into the new & pretty. Although it seems that in this instance, Martino set the rules while others executed, the varying results, from Flash Gordon the Movie props to decent 3 digit priced pieces showed they all might have had fun. Here, there can be some satisfaction in playing by someone elses rules.

Floor two, the Skulk of Foxes.
A few months back, Åbäke had started their Fox-objects series by printing fox-fur stickers to ‘cover’ objects. So they went scavenging to try and transform the broken & ugly into the new & pretty. Although it seems that in this instance, Åbäke set the rules while others executed, the varying results, from kids toys made by kids to tables I could swear were alive showed they all might have had fun. Here again, there can be some satisfaction in playing by someone elses rules.

Floor three, the Log.
For this one, nobody seems to remember who said ‘log’ in a meeting –or did someone say tree trunk? For the sake of demonstration and because it matters little, I decide Rainer said it. By then the 6 had already shifted most of the budget to this floor and the next because the foxes and the tape woods had minimal cost. They could allow themselves with something a bit more expensive. Once the L-word was agreed on, Rainer and Martino set off drawing it and involved ‘Clive the upholsterer’ to make the leather finish. In this collaboration, an idea is thrown in the middle of the committee and it gets naturally executed by a skilled craftsman. Because of its furniture-like nature, one could quite rightly assume that it is more of a Rainer and Martino piece.

Floor four, the Rabbit.
As all the other floor are featuring seats, this one did too. The Rabbit, which is four by three meters long has been sewn on a small machine which luckily didn’t break. It might have been a reaction to the hard log but this huge beanbag was surely soft. The fabric was hand drawn and featured a few animal faces mixed with furry surfaces. In principle, one could make animals with different body shapes. It worked as long as there was an eye or a beak where the head should be on the toy. The fact this piece of furniture is a flabby bean bag and print oriented makes it the perfect candidate for graphic designer to try out some ‘furniture design’. This being possible, of course, under the guidance of Royal College of Art-trained guys like Martino and Rainer. I am not saying it is easier but ok, it is.

All opinions expressed are mine.

www.rainerspehl.com www.abake.fr