Bench 01 —
Designed and produced by me in collaboration with Vladimír Sailer. Development and production lasted nine months from January 2010 till September 2010 and the bench was delivered as a privately commissioned one-off in late September 2010. Bench 01 was part of my nomination for CzechGrandDesign awards in the category Newcomer of the year for 2010.
This project started as a complex commission for a functional sculpture. This concept is something very appealing to me on many levels and is very gratifying to work on. The image my clients had in mind was a functional bench that carries certain chaos and disorder in it perhaps similar to a deformation of a crashed car. I usually look for some inner logic of an object and therefore we started with an inspiringly contrasting complex brief.
My previous work on Chair 01 has been based on researching ways to make flat sheet structurally strong based on the properties of the material while keeping the whole object relatively graphical and without usual furniture structural features. It was a way to achieve certain unreal lightness and this was inspiring to me for this bench.
Together with Vladimír we came up with a production sequence that conceptually involved a balanced mix of order and chaos. A simple sheet of steel was perforated with a precisely symmetrical pattern of tri-star openings which enable a sheet of metal to be bent in all directions. It is primarily a technical choice and not really an aesthetic one in first place. We got to discover and understand the complex aesthetics of the bench much later in the process. We have then shaped this sheet using simple tools in combination with blacksmith and metallurgy techniques to recreate the form that I previously developed through scale models. —
The most gratifying aspect of the bench is that it did not work structurally until the very last profile was in place and the oil forging was complete. Suddenly it could easily carry three people and this was a proof to me that the bench is close to a certain structural limit. This makes an object very exciting because you experience both its strength and security but together with that you can feel it flex slightly. You experience the object much more when it responds to your weight, your movement and speed of your sit-down. The bench actually behaves like a spring sofa, giving about 30mm of local vertical flex in the sitting areas which feels very unusual for a metal object.
The surface is brushed with a flame-melted brass brush giving it a warm gold or bronze tonality. Over it is a thick layer of clear semi-glossy electrostatic powder coating which rounds all sharp edges and creates a smooth safe surface. The coating also insulates the metal making the bench warm very quickly once you sit. Five adjustable feet with replaceable rubber pads protect the floor and give the bench a safe stance. They are also the only real furniture elements on the object and hint to the more careful guests that they can sit alright. — M Ch
Vladimír Sailer is an expert blacksmith and locksmith. More at www.kovarna.net.
1 — The shadows of the bench are a variably focused projection of the moire effects that you see when looking through two layers of the perforation.
2 — The sitting surface features a higher concave shape on the left and a more generous convex shape on the right side. These are two very different sitting experiences, one for quick on-the-go sitting and the other for more comfort. In the centre is an honest structural rib where you cannot really sit very well. I find that an essential expression of the sovereignty of the object, it does not want to be entirely practical and has its own rules.
3 — In the original laser cut sheet the tri-star openings were all identical, but the shaping of the object has resulted in varied changes to the shape of the openings. Larger curvatures feature an unchanged regular pattern and more vigorously shaped parts carry deformations in the pattern. This way the material communicates how it was handled and what was done to it during production which is a form of honesty that I appreciate in an object.
4 — Optically the bench is a fluent mixture of moire effects, transparency, surface reflections, tri-stars and triangles inbetween. All these effects animate in an unpredictable manner as you move around in perspective.
Object details —
5 — Even though the tri-star openings are regularly arranged on the surface looking through the openings optically reveals a rich array of various deformed shapes.
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7 — In certain light situations you can see the positive and the negative of the surface at the same time: the tri-star openings and the triangles that are revealed whenever there is a light reflection. The angled triangles almost give a pixelated kind of feel to an otherwise smooth and organic object.
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