Chair One by Konstantin Grcic.
Design Miami’s 2010 Designer of the Year is Konstantin Grcic, a “designer’s designer” who has worked with the likes of Vitra, Magis, Classicon, Flos, and Established & Sons. On view at the fair are two commissioned projects. The first, Netscape, is in the outdoor entrance to the fair. It’s a group of hammock-like seats that were designed in response to Aranda/Lasch’s tent design for visitors to enjoy, rest, and socialize. The second project is an exhibition of Grcic’s favorite designs like Chair One for Magis, Chaos Chair for ClassiCon, Myto for Plank, and Mayday for Flos. Whitewall spoke with the Designer of the Year while hanging in Netscape outside the Design Miami.
WHITEWALL: Congratulations on your Desinger of the Year award from Design Miami.
KONSTANTIN GRCIC: Thank you, this is actually my first time in Miami.
WW: Really? How do you find it compared to the other design fairs like Salone in Milan?
KG: You can’t really compare as Salone is really about the industry. Here there is beautiful work; there are the vintage pieces which are extraordinary and very beautiful to see in reality. Some of the new work, the contemporary collectibles of design, some of it is interesting when it uses this world as a free space to experiment. The negative side is work that is motivated by the market, making something elaborate and expensive so you can sell one and you get a lot of money at once. That, to me, has very little relevance in design.
WW: How much of your work is split between industry and limited-edition pieces?
KG: I mainly work for the industry, so say maybe not even 10% is for this…and that’s by choice. I have one gallery, Galerie Kreo in Paris, and its work that means a lot to me but its very small, just a few projects that we do together. And for the rest, my world and my passion is for the industry. That means we have to produce products that really work in an anonymous market. We work with technology and those aspects of serial production.
WW: Chair One that you designed for Magis is an outdoor chair that’s quite geometric. You explained that the reason for its shape was to use as little surface areas as possible to control temperature, damage by the elements, and cleanliness. Would you say you approach a piece with an interest in function over pure aesthetic?
KG: I think industrial production and that kind of function in a way creates a beauty, form, and logic of how we do things. I was always interested in that. As a creative person I think it’s the constraints that make me creative and not the carte blanche where you do what you want. Do what I want? I wouldn’t do anything.
WW: Were you given carte blanche for the Designer of the Year commission?
KG: Yeah. So sometimes you have to create the constraints yourself. Some of the constraints were pragmatic: this is the space, we had a budget, a timeline, Miami is a context, Design Miami is another kind of context. I thought is would do something for the event, something that people coming to the event could use. Then we had a very short period of time. I’m in Europe and I had to find a way to do something that is very simple, something we can control, in a short time frame. Working with these simple nets and string we could buy the material, we had a sewing machine in the studio, and we made the mockups in studio. They were produced by a sail maker in Munich. Then [because of their material] they could fold up small, put it into a small box, and sent it to Miami. That’s also an aspect of function, the consideration of economy.
WW: Netscape goes well with the design of the tent’s overhang.
KG: I had seen a rendering of the design of the tent. They offered me space inside and I said I wanted to be outside.
WW: For the exhibition inside, how did you go about choosing the pieces?
KG: That was very easy. There are some favorites and I also had to think about what could get here in time. It was more the question of how I would want to present it. I felt it shouldn’t look like a gallery booth, because I’m not selling these things. They are there to tell the story of who I am and what I’ve done. So we put them on these modeling stands that you can buy at art supply stores. It’s my interpretation that it makes the piece look like it’s almost in progress, still being worked on, and then there is the wallpaper of my studio in the background. By elevating them, it takes it out of its real context but sometimes its nice to look at a chair as a form, as a piece of work.
Grcic's exhibition of work at Design Miami.
Myto Cantilever Chair for Plank.
Missing Object for Galerie Kreo.
Netscape by Grcic.
