CABINETS IN A HEAP

2011-06-17

Often when products of design are created a certain idea appears. Sometimes it is strange and attracts attention. Authors of furniture start to cultivate it – simultaneously and for several years. Thus, a certain element stands out, and it can be defined as an ACCENT.

The cabinet usually is thought for as a huge box with massive, heavy volume. When the modules are closed they fill up the space and look heavy. Books usually stand on shelves. All these types of furniture are on presumption more or less boring.
Often the concept is they to be neutral elements in the interior. But not all the time.

One can hardly say to whom and when occurred the idea (probably in the middle of moving out, stuff all packed up in boxes), that cabinets and cupboards can look like orderless, piled up volumes. That way the cabinet turns into an accent. If pieces of furniture which look like piles, where not so carefully arranged we could have thought that this is a giant children’s cube-game.

One can hardly say who first developed one idea or another. It is so, in this case too. Maybe exactly young talented designers as Tomas Alonso or Mаthieu Lehanneur are people who suggested such direction of thoughts, while showing their products in different galleries in Paris. After them come the brands and their versions.

Italian brand Casamania, which products are usually original and with sense of humor, are consistently working on the idea. It all starts two years ago with a prototype of a wardrobe, which looks like a pile of suitcases. This year the new suggestions on the topic are four. Vertical and horizontal, stepped on the floor or hung on the wall, put in frame or piled on a platform with small legs – concepts are various.

Spaniards from BD Barcelona in the beginning of the year showed at the Paris fair a suggestion which obviously evolved until spring, in Milano. Now their “pile” acquired more sophisticated appearance and looks more like a sculpture than like furniture. Because it has four faces, it can stand free in space.

MOROSO is an Italian factory known as one of the brave experimenters in the field of furniture design. For three years now they offer at the market a furniture collection, created from the designers of the fashion brand DIESEL. Among this year’s suggestions we find a cabinet which consist of, on the first look, chaotic little cabinets. Their “pile” is refined as on every volume different image is printed.

But surprisingly, in the new collections of factories famous for their classical line similar concepts can be found. The Italians are again brave and creative - Luciano Zonta and Dilma Brown refresh otherwise strict and classical line with one product - cabinet or library, which looks like volumes in a heap.