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As fashion companies morph into lifestyle brands, they apply their vision to disciplines near and far. At Milan this year, Diesel, Maison Martin Margiela and Fendi expanded their reach with forays into furnishings, resulting in products dramatically different in appearance and aim.   MORE >>

As fashion companies morph into lifestyle brands, they apply their vision to disciplines near and far. At Milan this year, Diesel, Maison Martin Margiela and Fendi expanded their reach with forays into furnishings, resulting in products dramatically different in appearance and aim.
 
Although Diesel was founded on denim, its ambitions have always extended beyond the closet, from motorcycle helmets to cars. It was only a matter of time before the clothier took on the home market, drawing upon nature and rock’n’roll themes for a 16-piece lighting collection with Foscarini and 10-item furniture line with Moroso. Products range from the hanging Ego Stud mirror and cloud-like Nebula Nine sofa in stonewashed-linen to the inky-blue Xraydio 2 Disc coffee table, decorated with an X-ray of turntables. Founder Renzo Rosso says the real challenge was “to find the right partners to work with, in terms of know-how and innovation,” as the Italian label oversaw the design, but the collaborators presided over production.
 
The desire to highlight recent art and architectural projects prompted Maison Martin Margiela to recreate its interior design workshop in Paris in an industrial space in Zona Tortona. The temporary tableau featured sofas draped in white slipcovers, armchairs suspended from the ceiling and trompe l’oeil rugs. The installation heralds a new direction for the Maison, which the team describes as “serving as commissioned architects and decorators for public or private spaces.” And in another first, five of the exhibit’s items—including an embroidered cotton calendar, a giant snow globe and a lamp with a wine bottle as its base—will be sold in some of its stores.
 
By comparison, Craft Punk, organized by Design Miami and Fendi, had no commercial agenda. “It was an opportunity for designers to experiment outside market constraints,” says Wava Carpenter, Design Miami’s associate director, of the four-day performance. For the event, 10 artists created handmade objects with leather, exotic skins, fabrics and decorative elements left over from Fendi’s manufacturing process, all while an audience watched. Pieces such as Simon Hasan’s boiled leather vases and Nacho Carbonell’s Beasts—leather straps transformed into fantastic creatures—showed that “the best designers find something useful and interesting in any material presented to them,” explains Carpenter. No matter the medium in which it’s expressed, creativity transcends definitions of design.
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If you can’t make it good, make it big. Or so the art-school saying goes. Dutch designer Bauke Knottnerus does both. Built from a collection of giant foam-filled threads, his Phat Knits are woven into furniture-like items. Chunky rugs appear ripped from a swatch of a giant’s sweater, while his unconventional seating resembles noodles from that same giant’s dinner plate. “I’ve always been interested in scale, using basic stylistic ideas but with new proportions,” says Knottnerus. The tubes themselves are made industrially, but the large-scale knitting process can take up to four people—and though it might sound like a joke—Knottnerus actually uses PVC needles up to 13 feet long and the same techniques one uses to weave garments.   MORE >>

If you can’t make it good, make it big. Or so the art-school saying goes. Dutch designer Bauke Knottnerus does both. Built from a collection of giant foam-filled threads, his Phat Knits are woven into furniture-like items. Chunky rugs appear ripped from a swatch of a giant’s sweater, while his unconventional seating resembles noodles from that same giant’s dinner plate. “I’ve always been interested in scale, using basic stylistic ideas but with new proportions,” says Knottnerus. The tubes themselves are made industrially, but the large-scale knitting process can take up to four people—and though it might sound like a joke—Knottnerus actually uses PVC needles up to 13 feet long and the same techniques one uses to weave garments. Acknowledging the influence of Pop Art and Surrealists such as Magritte on his work, Knottnerus admits he enjoys the reactions his humorous pieces elicit. “I don’t really see myself as a furniture designer. I’m more like a material designer,” he explains, citing his next project—creating multi-layered textiles for a fashion designer. “These things I make could end up as furniture or as textiles,” he explains. “It’s more like creating media that can be used to construct a coat or a carpet or a curtain.” So it follows that Knottnerus’ shapes are intentionally ambiguous. “I like that unfinished part. It starts with a joke, but after that, it could be anything.” baukeknottnerus.nl   << LESS

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Keeping creative integrity does not necessarily mean sacrificing commercial success. Or vice versa. Just ask Gary Freedman and Jonathan Kneebone of Glue Society. With 10 members in New York and Sydney, the collective injects its work with a signature wit, whether the pieces are tactile or digital, commissioned or for their own amusement. “We set up as a group of creatives, and that has freed us from the delineation between art and commercial work,” explains Kneebone.   MORE >>

Keeping creative integrity does not necessarily mean sacrificing commercial success. Or vice versa. Just ask Gary Freedman and Jonathan Kneebone of Glue Society. With 10 members in New York and Sydney, the collective injects its work with a signature wit, whether the pieces are tactile or digital, commissioned or for their own amusement. “We set up as a group of creatives, and that has freed us from the delineation between art and commercial work,” explains Kneebone.

Projects for clients such as Axe de-oderant (2009) and French channel Canal+ (2006) take Internet-style comedy and up the production values. Take their spoof of the nature doc March of the Penguins, which follows hundreds of human emperors through the Arctic, or their 2008 spot for 42 Below vodka in which explorers climb a snow-topped mountain to erect a rainbow of plastic chairs. The seating against the icy backdrop is more performance art than advertisement.

Now more than a decade old, they experiment in the romper room of pop cul-ture and digital technology. A TV pilot for Star Flat takes celebrity look-alikes such as “Prince” and “Tom Hanks” and imagines them sharing an apartment, while an Australian public service satire reveals the dangers of the country’s murder rates. Both capitalize on the YouTube-spawned desire to screen video art outside gallery walls.
The cadre’s newest venture, “God’s Eye View,” manipulates Google Earth photography to recreate Biblical moments from satellite views, including Noah’s ark and the parting of the Red Sea. The photos are then printed, back-lit and displayed flat to be viewed from above. For Kneebone, flexibility is key. “We aren’t good at defining ourselves. It’s not deliberate; it’s just served us well to be open-minded.” Treating both TV promos and exhibitions as serious—and seriously clever—endeavors make each medium worth watching. gluesociety.com

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