Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/641424
"There's a paradox to Mathias Bengtsson's method." CULTURED 173 #CULTUREDMAG R A N D O M I N T E R N AT I O N A L @RANDOMINTERNATIONAL BY THE NUMBERS The London-based experimental lab, co-founded by Florian Ortkrass, Hannes Koch and Stuart Wood, engineers works of art and design that play with their audience. The immersive Rain Room, which invites viewers beneath a field of water and yet leaves everyone dry, was nothing short of a blockbuster: It drew 12-hour waits at the Barbican Centre in London and an average of 1,000 visitors a day at Museum of Modern Art in New York. EARLY ADOPTER The Victoria & Albert Museum was quick to acquire work from the designers. Both the 2009 Study for a Mirror, which prints ephemeral portraits of its viewer on light-reactive glass, and the 2011 Swarm Study/III, which casts a roving light on its passerby, were inducted into the museum's permanent design collection. Another early fan was Carpenters Workshop Gallery's Loïc Le Gaillard: "Straight away we were fascinated by the great mix between design and kinetic art." M AT H I A S B E N G T S S O N @BENGTSSON.MATHIAS DIGITAL PIONEER There's a paradox to Mathias Bengtsson's method. The Danish-born, London-based furniture designer employs digital processes—filament winding, additive manufacturing and various other types of robotics—to sculpt furniture into organic forms. The ornate legs of his new Big Growth Table, for example, achieve the intricacy of a tree's root system through 3D printing. BY THE NUMBERS His 1999 plywood Slice Chair was an early, somewhat complicated experiment involving 254 laser-cut layers of three-millimeter plywood. "The 2D layers were then assembled by hand into a 3D solid form of various shapes," he explains, "and a complexity which would otherwise not have been possible." S I T U @SITUSTUDIO WHEN IT CLICKED Before they graduated from Cooper Union, friends and designers Basar Girit, Aleksey Lukyanov-Chemy, Wes Rozen and Brad Samuels decided to band to- gether and work under the same collective moniker. When they got their diplomas, Situ was hatched. Not based on any previous models, their vertically integrated design firm is almost com- pletely unique in its ability to research, prototype and produce in-house. "It was organic. We weren't looking to copy anyone; we just wanted to create our own thing." BY THE NUMBERS While Situ has been open for 10 years, the CNC fabrication specialists didn't get their first patent until last year for their equipment and methods for serial sec- tioning and imaging. • • COURTESY CARPENTERS WORKSHOP GALLERY; MATHIAS BENGTSSON; LIZA HAUSMAN; PATRICK MANDEVILLE DESIGN Meet the makers and the tools of their choice Swarm Light, 2010 By Kat Herriman and Janelle Zara