We have often remarked on how the convergence between real and digital is redesigning the aesthetics of products. In the design of furnishings, in particular, this convergence often takes the form of the adoption, in the body of the object, of a soft, minimal sign derived from the visual layout of graphic interfaces.

The strategy activated by one of the most recent developments is partially different from this main line of reasoning, pursuing the encounter between visual and material not through the harmonious fusion of the parts, but through their ‘brutal’ collision, brash but still elegant.

This is the case of the led lamp A Greater Scale by David Taylor for Berg Gallery in Stockholm, or the Axis lamp and its balancing act by Mercury Bureau of Toronto, sophisticated ‘concretions’ of materic and chromatic blocks in which fragments of things and images mingle in a sort of calm chaos, poised between rest and instability.

In effect, unlike what many critics seemed to fear until a short time ago, the evolution of design languages is not moving in the direction of a total dematerialization of things. Instead, what we are seeing is the progressive implementation of a new digital quality of the resurrected body of objects: a quality that enhances, rather than replacing, the more traditional qualities of form and function.

On closer examination, this makes perfect sense: as long as human beings have bodies, the system of objects will have to take them into account, checking, articulating, gathering, reviving human physical presence in the world of life. This seems to be the path suggested by works like White Axe with Brass Ring and Boulders by the American designer and multimedia artist Aleksandra Pollner, or the By Hands series of the French designers Caroline Ziegler and Pierre Brichet (Studio BrichetZiegler), who have drawn the pieces freehand.

In these objects, the encounter between visual plates and materic blocks does not have the homogenous tone of harmonious merger, but the rugged tone of an authentic ‘ontological’ juxtaposition between two and three-dimensional things – between force of gravity and viral circulation, consistency of being and evanescence of appearance, arrayed in formal devices in which the visual presentation is an integral part of the extended aesthetic of the project.

Nor is it by chance, then, that the same trend can be seen in works of visual communication, like the ‘visual recipes’ of Mikkel Jul Hvilshøj for Eva Solo, obtained by aligning foods and utensils, something like the icons on the screen of a smartphone, or the shapely, clean, delicate shots of ‘things you can manipulate’ by Peechaya Burroughs, a young photographer from Bangkok who lives and works in Sydney, Australia.

Getting back to furnishings, a subtly disquieting refinement is expressed by the Black Sea project of Damien Gernay, presented by Galerie Gosserez of Paris, a table with an authentic artistic depth that reminds us of Descension by Anish Kapoor (a whirlpool of water, 5 meters in diameter), where the sculptural grafting of sea-like ripples on the top alludes to mysterious, deep turbulence.

Confirming, with the force of poetry that becomes object, what has already been seen in the cases examined here, namely that the present evolution of languages seems to suggest that the immateriality of information will not replace, but will integrate the physical persistence of the object, requiring companies and designers not to abandon the ‘anatomical’ legacy of design, but to ‘augment’ it with new project layers, breathing original digital life into the solid body of human and material things.

Text by Stefano Caggiano 

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In her work the American artist Aleksandra Pollner combines graphic sensibility with a taste for materials, as in the porcelain sculptures entitled Boulders.
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The works of Peechaya Burroughs, a young photographer based in Sydney, perfect blend interests in graphics and painting.
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Porridge, visual recipes, a campaign for Eva Solo. Photos by Mikkel Jul Hvilshøj, art director Olga Bastian/Liquidminds. Ingredients and utensil on a two-dimensional plane perpendicular to the observer, like the icons on a smartphone.
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Without symmetries and a linear volumetric order, the Axis lamp by the studio Mercury Bureau changes its appearance, depending on the vantage point (photo: Mercury Bureau).
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The Black Sea table by Damien Gernay, presented by Galerie Gosserez in Paris (photo: Bruno Timmermans).
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Feuilles Volantes wooden shelves from the By Hands series by Caroline Ziegler and Pierre Brichet (studio BrichetZiegler). All the pieces in the collection are based on freehand drawings. Photo: Baptiste Heller.
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The LED lamp from the series A Greater Scale, made by David Taylor for BERG Gallery in Stockholm, combines exact two-dimensional elements like geometric figures with rugged, bodily materic blocks.