living in motion

At last, the traveling exhibit of the Vitra Design Museum, Living in Motion - Design and Architecture for Flexible Living will arrive in Boston from the 31.01.2006 to 07.05.2006 at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art). Mark your calendar(S)!!!

Excerpts from the Vitra website:

“However, any portrayal of the subject needs to take into account that the kind of mobile, adaptable dwellings proposed by architects, designers and engineers cannot often be divided up into such categories. Consequently, alongside an Asian houseboat and the transportable “NhEW” house by the OpenOffice/COPENHAGEN Office Group, which indissolubly melds the house with its furnishings, our exhibition “Living in Motion” shows a multitude of amazing hybrids, which appear to be neither furniture nor architecture, but some kind of furnitecture.”

“Neither an historical survey nor a geographical one nor dividing the exhibition up into up architecture, furniture and miscellaneous objects seemed appropriate methods of structuring the subject in a meaningful and stimulating way. Instead, the exhibition divides up its exhibits according to their function or what they are capable of, i.e., into Transporting, Adapting, Combining, Assembling and Disassembling, Folding and Unfolding and finally Wearing and Carrying. Particularly suitable for saving space when storing large or heavy objects, especially for transportation purposes, the principle of assembly and disassembly investigates an Asian yurt, Kare Klint’s “Colonial Chair” and Tony O’Neill’s “Nesting Storage Unit”. By contrast, modular buildings such as Wes Jones’ “Package Housing System” or furniture such as Werner Aisslinger’s shelving system for Magis tend to demonstrate the possibilities offered by collapsible living objects for flexible and creative use. Not least, the function of many of the works presented is to save space. Folding also saves space, but functions in a completely different way from disassembling. Parasols, umbrellas and partition screens from the Far East demonstrate how, without using tools and with comparatively little effort, unfolding can transform simple shapes into complex structures. Objects that can be rolled up or blown up follow a similar principle.”