Bamboo-steel chair by Nendo for Yii
Milan 2011: Japanese designers Nendo present this tubular steel chair made with techniques traditionally used for bamboo furniture in Milan this week.
Cuts in the tubes allow corners to be bent for the backrest, junctions are formed by wrapping one tube round another and the seat is woven from thin strips of the material.
Called Bamboo-steel chair, the piece was made as part of a project entitled Yii to develop Taiwan's traditional crafts, art-directed by Droog co-founder Gijs Bakker and commissioned by the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute.
The chair will be on show at the La Triennale di Milano from 12-17 April as part of an exhibition designed by Nendo to showcase the Yii project. See all our stories about Milan 2011 »
Photographs are by Masayuki Hayashi.
The text below is from Nendo:
New chair “bamboo-steel chair” for Yii will be exhibited at La Triennale di Milano
Nendo also designs the exhibition space
The National Taiwan Craft Research Institute is concerned with the revitalization and development of Taiwan’s traditional crafts skills and industries. We designed this chair as part of the Institute’s Yii series, a new project with art direction by Gijs Bakker, co-founder of Droog Design.
Our task was to discover sources for new designs through research into Taiwan’s traditional bamboo handicrafts and furniture. We were fascinated by bamboo-working techniques, and decided to draw our inspiration from these, rather than to work with the material itself. We applied bamboo-working techniques to tubular steel pipes, which can be easily mass-produced with standard levels of quality.
Borrowing bamboo handicraft techniques like weaving together thinly sliced sections and joining parts by wrapping them around each other allowed us to give the hard metal a sense of pliancy. The bamboo artisans visited the metal workshop regularly, and we had many conversations about the project and its capacities. The bamboo-steel chair is the fruit of these conversations: a symbol of new futures for traditional crafts through the cross-fertilization of different techniques and materials.
Click above for larger image
Place: La Triennale di Milano
Address: Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6 Milano 20121 Italy
Open: April 12th – 17th 10:30-22:00
See also:
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| Thin Black Lines by Nendo |
Wire-chair by Nendo |
Cord-Chair by Nendo |