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Moritz Schlatter

Awarded

Moritz Schlatter

Furniture 'untitled'

Product and Industrial Design

Jury report

Furniture 'Ohne Titel' (untitled)
Prod­uct de­signer Moritz Schlat­ter has handed in an un­usual pro­ject: vi­su­al­i­sa­tions, pre­ciously framed ren­der­ings of his not yet re­alised drafts for the 12-piece fur­ni­ture col­lec­tion '_Ohne_ Ti­tel_' (un­ti­tled). The prod­uct de­signer and part­ner of Zurich com­pany 'Bob_De­sign', trained at the Hochschule für Gestal­tung und Kunst Zürich, pre­sents a very con­cep­tual and sur­pris­ingly re­fresh­ing piece of work. It plays with shapes of known small fur­nish­ings meant to jazz up our house­holds: side-table, bench, coat rack, lamp. The fur­ni­ture pro­duced out of steel pan­els and steel pipes act out a kind of ty­pol­ogy. Cer­tain sur­faces and radii are al­ways re­peated. The young Zurich de­signer asked him­self how he could com­bine sev­eral func­tion lev­els. His re­search led to a mul­ti­plic­ity of seat­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties with di­verse char­ac­ter­is­tics: the de­signs have a com­bi­na­tion of seat­ing or table sur­faces with an in­di­vid­u­ally de­signed part pro­trud­ing from it. First it is, more con­ven­tion­ally, a coat rack for hang­ing up clothes, then a kind of tray to de­posit things and, even­tu­ally, a lamp. More­over, there is also a de­sign for a sim­ple bench with a hole that can be used to put a broom in­side it with its han­dle fac­ing down. The young de­signer ap­proaches things in a witty ex­per­i­men­tal way. His fur­ni­ture is ir­ri­tat­ing and touch­ing, as he says. Two staged pho­tographs 'schuh­stuhl' (shoe chair), a shoe rack with a pos­si­ble seat, are called '_Mek­ka_'. The de­signer shows no reser­va­tions here. A ques­tion arises: is the blue­print for the piece of fur­ni­ture per­haps more im­por­tant than the re­al­i­sa­tion? Should the fur­ni­ture never be pro­duced be­cause it is prob­a­bly more at­trac­tive as a pro­ject draft? Moritz Schlat­ter cer­tainly se­duces the be­holder with his per­fect vi­su­al­i­sa­tions. On in­quiry he fi­nally says: 'The drafts are the com­pleted work.' The title '_Ohne_Ti­tel_' (un­ti­tled) is prob­a­bly to be un­der­stood as a ref­er­ence to nam­ing prac­tice for works of art.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Moritz Schlatter
Born in
1976
Education
Industrial Designer

Web

www.moritzschlatter.com

also in

2005

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