Picnic by Junya Ishigami

Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has created an installation of chairs wearing crocheted clothes at Interieur 2010 in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Called Picnic, the project features furniture Ishigami designed for Italian brand Living Divani.

Ishigami is the guest of honour at this year’s Interieur 2010, which continues until 24 October.

The information that follows is from Interieur 2010:

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‘A number of different chairs with various kinds of upholstery and dressing, create a background for people, friends or family to come together and celebrate. Chairs embrace or turn away from each other, or form a line and hold hands. They may even form a circle around the garden. Distorted chairs around the table look like a family talking to each other and enjoying the table… Table and chairs are installed in the space as if to create a scene of nature, or crowds of people.

Usually, furniture is considered a tool for people, and it can become no more than a background within the space. Here, I want to propose celebratory furniture that blends in with the activity of people and into the surrounding environment. It will be joyful furniture picnic.’

There is a debate going on nowadays in the design press about design conservatism vs. more progressive and playful approaches. Because Interieur is not defensive in its attitude about design, it has opted for an open vision about the broad themes of the new world of design and architecture.

The young architect Junya Ishigami is a good fit within this vision. He is the best pupil of architect Kazuyo Sejima (Sanaa) who was invited to INTERIEUR 04. During the past few years, Ishigami has begun a search for the limits of lightness and whiteness, where form and technology, architecture and engineering meet and reinforce each other. His architectural creativity borders on the wonderful and his engineering inventiveness means that each new project is bound to be unusual and surprising.

Our Japanese Guest of Honour Junya Ishigami will introduce his new, light and white world at INTERIEUR 2010, where dream and reality will meet. His PICNIC project, an installation for the Design Biennale INTERIEUR 2010, is especially different, beautiful and fascinating. With its Japanese Guest of Honour, INTERIEUR 2010 dips its toes in a new world of architecture and design, a world where there is room for poetry, precision, technology and art.