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

also in

2011

2013