Konstantin Grcic: Panorama
Konstantin Grcic is known as one of the most influential industrial designers of our time, avant-garde and artistic in his ideas but always creating products that are truly functional.
Since opening his Munich studio in 1991, he has developed furniture, products and lighting for some of the world´s leading design companies such as Vitra, Magis and Flos, and has collaborated with some of the world’s most iconic consumer brands.
Grcic’s largest solo exhibition, Panorama, has just made its way to Asia, opening at the Hong Kong Design Institute with a special lecture by the designer himself, and was hosted by Mateo Kries, Director of Vitra Design Museum, the exhibition partner.
Grcic’s engaging welcome, was a progressive journey through some of his most recognisable work, telling the narrative of his thought process. What stood out is the incredible range of challenges that a designer of his calibre (and his dedicated team) can apply his design process to – one of his latest projects being for example a branded Hugo Boss yacht that is, the first ever black boat to exist. Always humble and intellectually stimulating, in answer to a question posed at the end, he said that he saw design professions becoming increasingly important in the world.
“Design is an open field and something for the future. The word itself has become so meaningful. It used to mean something negative – you know, like a designer handbag – but now it means a process of analytical thinking that turns into action.”
The exhibition comprises over 200 pieces including products, prototypes and drawings and design pieces, but also everyday items and objects that have inspired Grcic’s work, revealing his work process and design thinking. It’s a progressive and coherent journey, grouped into four spatial themes rendered through large scale installations that show Grcic’s personal visions for life in the future and brings questions to life that many of us are asking ourselves.
The first themed space is Life Space, an interior that reflects Grcic’s personal conception of a living room of the future, in which he questions the balance between intimacy and technology.
Public Space follows, where Grcic transfers several of his designs, including his iconic Chair_One (2004) and the seating object Landen (2007), into a fictional public space, all set against a 30-metre panoramic backdrop by conceptual artist Neil Campbell Ross.
The third space is Work Space, displaying as the name suggests the full spectrum from virtual work to finished physical products, including handmade prototypes crafted from sheet metal and models made of rough wooden planks. Visitors are invited to sit on and test numerous chairs at the exhibition, becoming a part of the exploration of the various types of spaces.
Finally, Object Space uncovers Grcic’s concentrated approach to creating new objects with a seemingly random display of products, drawings and prototypes – which together form the backbone of his ‘workshop’ as inspiration and as a memory bank.
In Panorama, Grcic places his work in a greater social context, creating layered connections between the objects he designs, the physical spaces they inhabit in the exhibition but also the intellectual spaces of some of the most interstesing and challenging questions of our time.
Panorama is on at the Hong Kong Design Institute until Sunday 2 April 2017.
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