By Jeanne Tan / 27-04-2009

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's the Slow Car, an office chair/vehicle/mobile office designed by Studio Makkink & Bey. Jurgen Bey took five minutes out at the Prooff stand to tell us more....

So tell us a bit about Prooff and what you're showing in Milan...
Prooff is a new brand that we're starting, which is called Progressive Office. It's about finding a new way of working. I find it strange with the office that we talk about the economics and profits. Instead we should look at it more as a place where knowledge can be shared. A place where you should be happy to work on your main goal, and that is getting knowledge shared.

What's the main aim?
With Progressive Office, our main goal is the Campus. The Campus as a topic comes from the university, so it expresses knowledge.

We want to create it so that you're coming to a new landscape. Imagine the situation, what would happen if you had a rampless city. You could develop new transportation, no pavements or kerbs. You could work with a new collective. In the campus there's a new ruling: make just one level - a rampless city. And then it becomes easier for developing new transportation.

Instead of a car, you start with the office chair. Its already on wheels, but now, you can only move around table. If you give it fuel or charge it, it could move from one end of the building to another. With electricity and a battery, it can go from inside to outside. Transportation becomes your office that will move. In this way, you could also develop the outside space as part of the office.

So it's a robotic office chair..
The Slow Car could be your private space that you travel in. The chair/car has a limited view so that it allows you to be able to concentrate. In this way, the city will also be viewed differently. You see details and not the overview. This kind of viewing is the same as in computer games where you have to pan to look left or right and it also works with a joystick. So there's already a familiarity there.

It has all the qualities that we're not competing with cars but more competing with office chairs. Then it's the best office chair and not the slowest car and that's why we're so interested in these kind of projects.

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