I just loved the work Piet Hein Eek exhibited during Salone Internazionale del mobile at Spazio Rossana Orlandi. It’s not just his intellegent use of material, the work is incredibly tactile and the mixture of colours beautiful.
Piet has spent his career working with reclaimed materials. A graduate of the Design School in Eindhoven, in 1990 he produced his first work made entirely from recycled wood and has built his career around the concept of reusing, adapting and recycling. Its not just his desire to be ecological its more a thought process beginning with the material around him.
Pictured above is detail from a lamp he produced for Spazio Rossana Orlandi. Formally a tie factory the store had rolls of unused tie fabric in the loft. Piet has used the fabric to create lampshades over a simple wire frame. Shown here are the two sizes of lamp base and a large pendant shade.
Also displayed were the 99% cabinets. Continuing on a philosophy of the most efficient use of material and labour, the production of the cabinets leaves less than 1% wastage from the original sheet of metal. The cabinet is available in white coated aluminium, copper or the brass version pictured below.
The plank chair was a personal favourite of mine. Born out of an irritation at mediocre design sold at a ridiculous price, Piet decided at Salone 2008 to create an inexpensive high quality product. Not only that, you can actually produce this chair yourself, plans and instructions were provided. I nabbed a copy but my photo of them is a little too small to be of use – the plans will be available from his website in the future.
It does look incredibly simple to do (certainly compared to a dress pattern!) but unfortunately the instructions are in Dutch so I’m getting a friend of mine to translate before I attempt it.
Also shown was a collection based on his work with scrap pieces of wood. The Dark coffee table, bench and chairs were all made using doors and wood panelling found in an old watermill. The pictures here are taken from his website, I’m afraid I got distracted by his book and forgot to take the pics myself!
Shown here is a close up of how the scrap collection is put together and lacquered. Ten layers of high gloss lacquer are applied to the pieces giving a beautiful water effect, and an amazing silky feel.
For more information on his work (and better pictures) here’s the link to his website
Here are couple of interviews Peit did for Dwell and also Design.nl giving a more detailed insight into the production of this collection.
http://design.nl/item/five_minutes_in_milan___piet_hein_eek
http://www.dwell.com/articles/interview-piet-hein-eek.html
Here’
s a link for the book by Max Fraser covering the first 15 years of his work – sorry its amazon- other book stores are available! just use the isbn no.
http://www.amazon.com/Boek-Piet-Hein-Max-Fraser/dp/9063691483
Or, even better, if you email here apparently you can get a signed copy Well it says so on his website!
http://www.pietheineek.nl/en/book