Apparatus Studio Shares Their Inspirations While Presenting Their 2017 Collection at Salone del Mobile
Apparatus Studio has been on our top designers' list for a while now and founders Jeremy Anderson and Gabriel Hendifar kept wowing audiences ever since. While their New York studio already allows one to immerse into a multi-sensorial experience, the exhibition they were able to pull in Milan simply strenghtened their emotionnaly-driven approach to design.
When asked about their inspiration for their 2017 collection of lighting, furnitures and objects, this is what they answered:
Defining the particular inspiration for a group of pieces has always been a little elusive – we often find that the inspiration finds the piece after if has been made. However, the creative process of the studio is informed by the numerous references and conversations that are floating around as collections start to take shape; conversations that are mostly aesthetic, but also address the larger cultural moment in which we participate.
As we began thinking about new pieces I found myself being drawn to the first thirty years of the twentieth century, a period with a striking progression of ideas about modernity. Vienna at the turn of the Century, Weimar Germany, Art Deco, Bauhaus , all propose ideas that feel enduringly relevant. We looked to the work of Josef Hoffmann and the Weiner Werkstätte Adolf Loos, Jean Dunand, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Pierre Chareau, and Eileen Grey. The aesthetic references are varied, but the connecting principles are a superior level of craftsmanship, an eager exploration of new ideas, and a strong faith in social and technological progress. Almost a century later, this idea about the inevitable momentum of progress feels particularly timely.
For me, one of the essential parts of designing new collections is imagining the context in which we will present them - the color and mood of the rooms, how those rooms should make us feel, who lives in them, what they collect, what they wear. In this way, our studio practice has always been intimately tied to an exploration of space. The references inform a larger story we are telling, and the collections are the most tangible piece of that story. This is why I find exhibitions, Salone, Collective, and even more so what has become the yearly redesign of our showroom, to be so exciting. They are opportunities to create immersive, emotionally resonant experiences that breath life into the work. This is an approach very much aligned with the aims of the Weiner Werkstätte and its ideal of a “total artwork” - an environment in which every detail has been consciously considered as an integral part of the whole.
Images Courtesy of Apparatus Studio
