Milan Expo 2015: Nendo has played with the viewpoint of a dining table and chairs to current a range of tableware within the Japanese pavilion at the Milan Expo .
Tokyo-primarily based studio Nendo – led by designer Oki Sato – was accountable for making a single of the gallery spaces within Japan’s Kengo Kuma-made pavilion.
Following the Expo’s theme of Feeding the Planet, Vitality for Life, the studio turned the 11- by three-metre space into a dining space.
A lengthy black table runs down the centre of the white-walled room, surrounded by 24 black chairs.
Distinct sets of tableware made by Nendo and produced by Japanese artisans are laid out on its surface, which is angled from front to back to allow guests to see the spread from the entrance.
The chairs along both side are extended to match the ascending height of the tabletop, making an optical illusion when viewed from right in front.
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“The table and chairs gradually increase in height the further into the room one particular goes, taking part in with the spectator’s sense of point of view as well as allowing him/her to search more than all the items on show from the gallery entrance,” stated Nendo.
Towards the back of the area, the stretched chairs can be used as stepladders for much better views of the goods.
“Although resembling an ordinary dinner table, by experimenting with the practical relationship amongst tables and chairs, the finish outcome is a uniquely conceptual exhibition room that permits the spectator to see all of the items from different angles and distances,” Nendo mentioned.
Every of the sixteen sets of tableware was designed specifically for the exhibition, which is titled Colourful Shadows. All the pieces are coloured black so the details of their shapes and finishes can be better appreciated, in accordance to the studio.
“In the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows, there is a passage about eating a yokan (a standard sweet manufactured from black bean paste) in the dark in order to develop a keener palette,” mentioned Nendo.
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“Just as in this exhibition, all info pertaining to colour has been eliminated to encourage the spectator to focus on other much more essential facets of the exhibited pieces.”
Merchandise on display contain a set of minimum cutlery, a collection of intricately carved chopsticks and a selection of ceramic cups and bowls with different patterned surfaces.
The set up will remain in area for the duration of the Expo, which opened final month and continues until finally 31 October 2015. The tableware was also displayed at the Nendo Works 2014-2015 exhibition throughout Milan’s Salone del Mobile furnishings honest in April, along with above a hundred items produced by the prolific style studio above the past 12 months.
