A new body of work by Dutch designer Joris Laarman was unveiled at Friedman Benda. Laarman’s unique aesthetic merges cutting-edge technology and the life-sciences to create work of unexpected beauty. In 2008, Laarman’s Bone Chair and Bone Chaise, his first two works since graduating from Eindhoven, were displayed in MoMA’s exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind. This marked a major milestone in his career and the chair subsequently was added to the museum’s permanent collection.
In 2006, Laarman’s Bone Chair revolutionized the design process by using an algorithm to translate the complexity, proportion and functionality of human bone and tree growth into a chair form. The algorithm, originally used by the German car industry, enabled him to reduce and strengthen his designs by optimizing material allocation, weight and stability, while minimizing material input. In his own words, he sculpted “using mother nature’s underlying codes.
The exhibition is the culmination of five years of trial and error, exploratory material research and his continuous quest to translate science into functional objects of beauty, now on a monumental scale. His new body of work expands on his core investigations; it includes Skyline Storage, Fractal Bookshelf, Stair Cabinet, Leaf Table and Half Life Lamp, a sustainable lamp made from living cells.
Joris Laarman was born in the Netherlands in 1979, and graduated cum laude from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003. While still in school he created the “heatwave radiator,” a design widely-lauded and incorporated into museum collections such as the Cooper-Hewitt and Fond national d’art contemporain, Puteaux, France, and has been produced by Droog. In 2004, he received Wallpaper’s “Young Designer of the Year” award, and in the same year established his studio and laboratory. He has since received the Red Dot design award (2006), the Woon award (2007), and the international Elle deco award (2008). He has collaborated with Flos, Vitra, Swarovskki, and Droog.
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