By Gabrielle Kennedy / 13-08-2009

Young Dutch designer, Joris Laarman will open up his new Amsterdam studio to the public during Dutch Design Double.  Laarman, who hired his own team and opened his own studio on Rotterdam harbour in 2004, moved to Amsterdam and into the modernist glass and industrial building, Studio Oh3 with a host of other creatives.

This will be the first time the public gets to see Laarman, plus Studio Oh3’s other design tenants in their own work environments.

The exhibition is an attempt to demystify the design process and reveal to the public exactly what goes on behind the scenes of an end product.  “In galleries and in Milan people only ever see perfect pieces,” says Laarman.  “We wanted to focus more on how it really is.  What actually happens to make the perfection possible.  Why and how it is made.”

Laarman shot to fame after graduating cum laude from the Eindhoven Design Academy with his radiator “Reinventing Functionality” in 2003, which was bought by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.  Since then, his reputation has strengthened with the Bone Furniture range, which he exhibited in The Friedman Benda Gallery in New York.  It is a limited edition series made from marble, porcelain and resin.
 
For the bone series, Laarman worked with car manufacturer Opel using software to design a range based on the organic way bones form.  In the same way car parts can be designed with the help of prediction technology to increase strength and maximize the efficient use of materials, furniture can be “grown” by adding and removing material to maximize its strength and functionality.

It is processes like these that the public will witness first-hand during Dutch Design Double. Not only will the experimentation associated with Laarman’s success stories be on show, but the many projects that never saw the light of day.  “I don’t think people realize just what a laboratory a design studio is,” says Laaraman.  

To communicate some of that Laarman has selected studies he has conducted about materials, experiments he has done with various theories and will also present insights into why some projects were abandoned midway.  For those objects that do make it into production, revealing installations will show prototypes, models, moulds and how the pieces are made using anecdotes and sketches that speak volumes about the decision making process.

Ottho Heldringstraat 3,
Amsterdam
19 – 27 September 2009

from 11.00 to 18.00 hours

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