DESIGN MIAMI/ BASEL, the most prominent and substantive global forum for historic and contemporary limited-edition design, has named Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram as its 2008 DESIGNERS OF THE FUTURE. On this occasion a comissioned piece of work will be exhibited at DESIGN MIAMI/ BASEL, which will take place in Basel, Switzerland from June 3 — 5, 2008.
Titled VENDÔME this body of work takes a precondition of endless transformation as its point of departure. According to the jury’s specification to employ the materials concrete and wool, the question arose how to reconcile the conflict between dynamism and stasis, between the transience of software and permanence of concrete, and how to intertwine it with the contrasting wool.
The idea of VENDÔME is to parametrically generate a family of concrete objects with diverse typologies including stools, pedestals and tables of varying heights. The design is developed within and documented by a piece of software programmed by Kram and Weisshaar that generates an infinite number of proposals while flexibly reacting to changing parameters (as e.g. the height, width or depth of the object). The proposals are then singled out and fine-tuned by the designers using the software. At the press of a button a selected geometry is processed and the 3D CAD drawings for the casting mould are generated and passed on to numerically controlled machines.
The installation for DESIGN MIAMI/ BASEL includes six selected pieces from the VENDÔME series highlighting the variety of potential forms and furniture typologies. The functional assignment of the concrete objects themselves is kept left open for interpretation. Each of the forms allows for a wealth of potential uses, be it as: stool, stand, bench, table, or sculptural object. The software construction surfaces ofprocess behind the creation of the VENDÔME objects are is exemplified using woollen stringsrevealed in the installation through the sculptural placement of wool strings. Spanning from ceiling to floor, these strings serve as physical renderings of the digital wire frames — pinpointing the formal complexity of the VENDÔME project.
