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STRAW
STRAW – To interpret means to explain and clarify. The City of Berlin approached
young German designers there with the mission of interpreting BAUHAUS in small
separate exhibitions during the 90th anniversary of BAUHAUS in 2009. For decades,
interpreting BAUHAUS was a task that many people have been given or taken
on themselves; one that often – or always, to be perfectly honest – is merely a
manifestation of bent, curved steel tubes.
Osko+Deichmann chose a completely different approach. They wondered how a
world of steel tube furniture would have looked had BAUHAUS, Mart Stam and
Marcel Breuer not seen how, in order to improve weight and aerodynamics, the
German aeronautical industry had discovered how to slowly bend sand-flled tubes to
exact patterns and to obtain perfectly curved tubes. Until then, tubes had simply been
kinked into shape as per instructions. Osko+Deichmann began by making copies of a
number of known BAUHAUS models, but with kinks instead of the familiar curves.
As an invitation to an exhibition in Milan in 2009, they sent out a postcard with an
image of Mart Stam’s classic Cantilever chair, but made in their “kinked” version.
With the postcard clutched frmly in the hand, we rang Osko+Deichmann and the
frst thing we said was, “we want to do this”. Their immediate, straightforward answer
was, “It can’t be done for any amount of money. The steel tube industry is structured
and arranged around the bending of tubes – not kinking them”.
But where there’s a will, there’s also a way and the energy to fnd a solution.
Design: Osko+Deichmann
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