If only making furniture can be a performance, Maarten Baas is pushing the boundary to the next level. The ‘Smoke’ collection sees him light up a torch and burn down a chair and chandelier. Nendo, more tender compare to Maarten, inserts a slash inside folded sugar paper before peeling the layers open one by one. Like this, quietly and delicately, ‘Cabbage Chair’ is born. In fact, the amount of focus and care put into its process make it not unlike performance art.
Designing furniture, of course, is not a performance. The bottom line for furniture design is that functionality is always to be taken account of no matter what. When Nendo created Cabbage Chair, all sugar paper is treated with resin in advance so the end product is durable enough without compromising the natural texture of paper.
Cabbage owes its birth to Issey Miyaki. Using left over fabric found in Miyaki’s factory, he resurrected them in the form of furniture pieces. And Miyaki is just too happy to see his by-product given a second life. Cabbage Chair is now showing at the ‘XX 1st Century Man’ exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo.
