End of page

Back to overview

Moritz Schmid

Awarded

Moritz Schmid

Furniture collection for Atelier Pfister

Product and Industrial Design

Jury report

Room Divider and Wardrobe
How do you help peo­ple put away and store their cloth­ing? De­signer Moritz Schmid con­ducted a kind of field re­search be­fore he started de­sign­ing ob­jects. Trained at the Hochschule für Gestal­tung und Kunst in Basel (FHNW), this in­dus­trial de­signer found com­pelling replies in two ob­jects: a wardrobe and a clothes valet. The wardrobe, 'Aris', is sculp­tural in ap­pear­ance and ful­fils a sec­ond func­tion as a room di­vider. Schmid took in­spi­ra­tion from geo­met­ri­cally cut hedges, ob­jects that he trans­lated into his own idio­syn­cratic de­sign. 'Aris' has no front and no back and is ac­ces­si­ble from both sides. It is more like an ab­stract sculp­ture than a wardrobe; being slightly ta­pered to­wards the top makes it look even more el­e­gant, lighter and float­ing. With a load­bear­ing struc­ture of ash wood and alu­minium joints, the wardrobe's dis­tinc­tive fea­ture is its tex­tile shell made of bal­loon silk and wadding. The ver­ti­cal quilt­ing seams, set off in a dif­fer­ent colour, are not only an at­trac­tive fea­ture but also func­tional, since they fold when the wall of the wardrobe is pushed aside. In 2010, 'Aris' will be launched as a se­r­ial prod­uct by a major Swiss fur­ni­ture maker. Schmid has de­signed 'Ligerz', a clothes valet, for the same col­lec­tion. Spe­cial, or­gan­i­cally shaped ears top off the struc­ture, made of sim­ple squared tim­bers. The char­ac­ter of the ob­ject is de­rived from the milled shape of the ash wood. The de­signer's con­cept for a se­ries of chairs is sim­i­larly cre­ative and sur­pris­ing. The lower sec­tion of 'Eriz', made of solid wood, con­sists of a stool, out of which the back of the chair 'sprouts', as Schmid puts it. The back is screwed to the rear legs and avail­able in a range of colours so that the bot­tom and top of the chair can be of dif­fer­ent colours. This is an apt ex­am­ple of Moritz Schmid's idio­syn­cratic and in­no­v­a­tive de­sign.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Moritz Schmid
Born in
1976
Education
Product designer

Web

www.moritz-schmid.com

also in

2011

2013

Back to overview

Top of page