Kueng Caputo

Awarded

Kueng Caputo: Sarah Kueng / Lovis Caputo

'Copy by Kueng Caputo' (diploma work) and 'Five Stars Cardboard'

Product and Industrial Design

Delightful until Dismantled
Sarah Kueng and Lovis Ca­puto, aka Kueng Ca­puto, have been awarded a Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Grant for their de­gree piece 'Copy by Kueng Ca­puto' and for their 'Five Stars Card­board' de­sign.
The fa­mous up­mar­ket de­sign ob­jects im­i­tated in 'Copy by Kueng Ca­puto' make no bones about being fakes, for they are clearly dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nals. Hence, this is not an in­stance of copy­ing for the sake of reach­ing a broader mar­ket or mak­ing de­sign prod­ucts more ac­ces­si­ble. In­stead, Kueng Ca­puto are in­ter­ested in ex­plor­ing and analysing the very essence of the ob­ject it­self. They quite lit­er­ally dis­sect the orig­i­nal. Once they have dis­tilled its essence, they take what they have found to be the sig­ni­fy­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the ob­ject and heighten it in their re­make, often with a touch of wit and irony. The re­sult­ing new ob­jects can thus be seen as trib­utes to the re­spec­tive au­thors and as well-in­formed com­men­taries on the orig­i­nal de­signs. What is par­tic­u­larly re­fresh­ing about them is that all the works ap­pear to have a whim­si­cal lev­ity and light-heart­ed­ness; they con­vey a sense of the process in­volved.
'Five Stars Card­board' was de­vel­oped in 2007 for the Sa­lone­Satel­lite Mi­lano - a sec­tion of the Milan Trade Fair that show­cases the work of young de­sign­ers. Kueng Ca­puto touched on the dream, or rather the night­mare, of many a vis­i­tor to such events: end­less hours and days of trail­ing around the trade fair with­out any op­por­tu­nity of find­ing a place to sit down, let alone lie down. And sud­denly, like a mi­rage, the 'Five Stars Card­board' hotel hoves into view. Four in­di­vid­ual suites are avail­able, all made of card­board: the 'Clas­sico Ro­man­tico', the 'Sogni dei bam­bini', the 'Ital­ian Lover' and the 'Bosco in Hawaii'. In­side each one, a whole new world opens up like a pop-up book. There are trees grow­ing along­side won­der­ful, with finely wrought leaves and plants and flow­ers me­an­der­ing over the walls. There is a com­fort­able pil­low and a lit­tle lamp that can be switched on and off for sub­tle am­bi­ent light­ing. For a mo­ment, hap­pily im­mersed in an oasis of calm and pri­vacy, trade fair vis­i­tors can for­get the hus­tle and bus­tle all around them. Each suite can be con­structed in sec­onds; an in­stant prod­uct that is dis­man­tled as quickly as it is set up. Ephemeral and quite sim­ply ex­quis­ite.
Pa­trizia Criv­elli  

Lovis Caputo
Born in
1979
Education
Industrial Design
Group name
Kueng Caputo

Sarah Kueng
Born in
1981
Education
Product designer
Group name
Kueng Caputo