MARTINO GAMPER: 100 Chairs in 100 Days
by Ariana Mouyiaris, 11/15/07
Martino Gamper has a penchant for furniture: to be specific, chairs. In his project 100 Chairs in 100 Days, he takes apart a mix of discarded and systematically collected pieces found on London’s street corners (or sympathetic friends’ lounges and living rooms) over a period of two years, disassembles and then reworks them, creating unique, functional chairs that blend the “stylistic and structural elements of the found ones.”
Educated first in Vienna where he studied sculpture and product design under Ron Arad, and then at the Royal College of Art, Martino Gamper has made London his home and workshop for the last ten years.
From dining sets and plastic garden furniture to cult classics, the juxtaposition of the basic with the highbrow makes for a quirky and lip turning contemporary aesthetic. Mixing traditional styles and materials, the results are playful and imaginative pieces that walk the line between irony and ornament. His humor, as much as his love of detail, makes us curious what he’ll think up next.
i Diggity DIG it!