DESIGN NAME: High Grass
PRIMARY FUNCTION: Bookshelf
INSPIRATION: The inspiration for the bookshelf is the movements created by a swirl of wind in the high grass in a meadow or on a roadside. The idea was to pick this single, beautifully organic shape and create furniture out of it. Thus, inviting the dynamic of nature to enter the interiors of our homes and offices. The aim is to fight the conservative straight lines and 90-degree angles that traditionally pervade in book shelves and let the shelves be as diverse and full of fantasy as the books they store.
UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: High Grass is a bookcase in which no two shelves are similar. It aims to confront the omnipresence of square cubes in the world of bookcases and transform how we understand storage.
With High Grass, storage becomes motion. The bookshelf is a living organism designed to interact with the objects it stores. When filled with books, music, and other personal items, the bookcase acquires a sculpture-like quality. Instead of just storing things, High Grass becomes a swaying, almost dancing, sculpture.
OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: High Grass impels creative interaction. Filling a High Grass is not like filling a conventional bookshelf. Rather it is a bit like co-creating a sculpture. The diversity of the rooms ensures that all formats of books and odd sized items fit in, but the varied rooms also encourage to experiment with piling and stacking things in different ways.
PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: The idea first evolved on a piece of paper some ten years ago, but the concentrated work with drawing and developing the High Grass bookshelf started in spring 2013 in Denmark in cooperation with the new design company Bjast. The project travelled to the Czech Republic in autumn 2013, where we have setup production and realized the first prototype.
FITS BEST INTO CATEGORY: Furniture Design
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PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: It is a self-supporting construction made of plywood. It consists of a base into which vertical plates are inserted. The vertical plates are bound in the production process and their shape is fixed and firm. The shelves are mounted in between the vertical plates with a pivot/pin and a screw (perpendicular to each other). Shelves and plates are made of 12 mm thick plywood plates, spray-painted (green, red, blue, black) or lacquered (wood).
The High Grass bookshelf is easy to put together and take apart. All you need is two screwdrivers.
SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: Width: 196 cm, Height: 250 cm, Depth: 32 cm.
Five different versions (colours): wood (beech), green, red, blue, black.
TAGS: Grass, Bookshelf, Motion, Organic Shape, Fluid, Sculpture, Lightness, Movement
RESEARCH ABSTRACT: -
CHALLENGE: How to achieve the bend shape of the vertical plates? And how to construct the bookcase in such a way that it can be put together and taken apart whenever needed? Our final choice of material became plywood. It is bendable but at the same time it is possible to fix it once bent. Also, with plywood the shelves can be comparably thin though still strong with adequate volume capacity. Fixing the shelves by the means of a pin and a screw makes immediate mounting and dismantling possible.
ADDED DATE: 2014-03-25 03:42:00
TEAM MEMBERS (4) : Jiri Pliestik, Brit Jensen, Sita Hessenbruch and Timothy Cooke
IMAGE CREDITS: Bjast Design, 2013
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