BOOK TOWER STUDIO

S.M.A.K., Ghent

May 2012 – September 2013

Part of a group show, TRACK, curated by Philippe van Cauteren and Mirjam Varadinis. The project was then presented in the museum for another year after the show.

Book Tower Studio is a set of transformable objects, whose design has been inspired by Van der Velde’s furniture made in 1926 for Book Tower Library in Ghent, Belgium. Following Van de Velde, an ornament is always reduced to its essence, dissolved into the form and structure itself. The functional redundancy manifests itself in the form as a “line force”, expressing the tension between the object and the body interacting with it. Book Tower Studio re-designs Van de Velde’s library chairs and tables. The lobby of S.M.A.K. museum was equipped with furniture that users could reconfigure: parts could be disconnected, inserted one into another. The tension and relationship between the object and the user’s body was the direct result of interactivity. The furniture’s functionality could be negotiated by the user and range from purely sculptural compositions to fully functional elements.

Courtesy of Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin; photography by Dirk Pauwels.