Year: 2012
Commissioner: Vienna Design Week
Curators: Lilli Hollein and Tulga Beyerle
Location: Kohlmaier, Vienna, Austria
Materials: Wood, 3D polyester textile, wool, cotton, coco fibers, stainless steel
Project assistant: Sarah Laaroussi
Nacelle is an experiment produced in collaboration with traditional upholsterer Kohlmaier Wien. This project was made as part of the Passionswege program of the Vienna Design Week.
The starting point of the project was to reveal the inner qualities of upholstery through drawing a parallel between this traditional craft and architecture.
Just like a building, an upholstered piece of furniture is generally composed of a supportive structure that holds various functional layers together and gets covered by a skin. It is this cover, and more specifically this tendency to hide the various elements it is composed of, that distinguishes upholstery from other crafts. Indeed, upholstery does not show its quality through the mastership of one single material but through the way various mediums and techniques are associated together. Therefore, for the sake of authenticity, the design of the visible inner structure of Nacelle was left to the expertise of Kohlmaier Wien. In addition, the three dimensional stretchable skin, in opposition to traditional uphostery fabrics, is no longer used as a purely aesthetic element that aims to conceal the complex organism of the piece. The impressive mix between the several materials and know-hows involved is left visible and the fabric finds a new function in the creation of an intimate space for retreat.
