The Design Center (TDC) at Philadelphia University will host An Evening With Tord Boontje, a discussion with the prominent European designer, exploring his artistic inspiration and creative techniques. Boontje’s work was commissioned by The Design Center and is currently featured in their groundbreaking exhibition Lace in Translation, which is on view now through April 3, 2010. The lecture, free and open to the public, will be held at Philadelphia University’s Tuttleman Auditorium.
For Lace in Translation, Boontje has created a multi-sensory, three-gallery installation featuring furniture, lighting, and laser-cut fabrics in themes of black, gold, and white. As part of this site-specific installation, a team of Philadelphia University students, faculty, and staff worked with Boontje’s designs, hand-weaving raffia into pieces for a large lace curtain which hangs in the gallery windows. Boontje says the vocabulary of lace in his work emerged through “cutting away rather than building up. It was through direct translations of nature, looking up to the sky through the layers of sunlit foliage – these kinds of things remind me of lace. Like the natural world, where foliage is spatial and formed in three dimensions, I started to look at a layered image and three-dimensional lace-like structures to invoke this intricacy that is so fascinating to me.”
Boontje’s work is featured in many permanent museum collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, MoMA, and the Groninger Museum. He has developed designs and products for Target, Alexander McQueen, Swarovski, Moroso, Swatch, and Perrier Jouët, among many others. His latest creation is a lacy laptop from HP, complete with a 3D lid cover featuring his signature silhouette design including endangered animals. The laptop’s eco-friendly features include a 100% recyclable box, manual, and packaging as well as an organic cotton protective sleeve.
The Design Center at Philadelphia University unveiled Lace In Translation in September 2009. The exhibition explores the crossroads of traditional lace and modern industrial manufacturing techniques. Internationally-recognized artists and designers Cal Lane, Tord Boontje, and Demakersvan have created site-specific installations located throughout the Center's grounds and galleries, on the campus of Philadelphia University. Their work fuses classic hand craftsmanship with modern-day production techniques. The Design Center’s historic Quaker Lace Company collection is the inspiration for the artists’ present-day reinventions of lace.
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