Olafur Eliasson digitizes his Dieter Rams chairs
The Berlin-based artist has great taste in interior design, and the IT skills to replicate this in the virtual realm
Olafur Eliasson is a deeply sensual artist. His work is inspired by simple, almost unnoticeable experiences, such how it feels to truly inhabit a certain place. He even called his educational research project Institut für Raumexperimente, or Institute for Spatial Experiments.
Eliasson is also a technically advanced artist, willing to employ LEDs, architectural software and elegant hydro-engineering techniques in order to create his art.
So, it shouldn't surprise us to see that Studio Olafur Eliasson is using the latest three-dimensional scanning techniques to advance its artistic practice. However, it is heartening to see the objects Olafur and co. have chosen to have a go at scanning, when trying out the application.
The studio has a beautiful collection of classic 620 Programme chairs by the esteemed German designer Dieter Rams. Originally designed in 1962 and reissued in 2013, each of the items in the range “is an attractive, stand-alone item of furniture,” we explain in our Dieter Rams book, “yet still manages to be part of a system without looking like it belongs in a conference centre or airport lounge.”
That can certainly be said for Olafur’s 620 chairs, which look great in his studio, beside a fresh copy of his new cookbook, Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen, and on-screen in the digital realm, once scanned by his team. Watch the clip above to see what we mean.
For greater insight into Olafur Ealiasson’s art buy our Contemporary Artist Series monograph; for more on the kind of food that keeps Olafur and co going get Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen, and for more on the creator of the 620, get Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible.