Freshwest

I came across 'Freshwest' this morning whilst reading an edition of the Telegraph magazine from earlier this year. Freshwest is the furniture design company of the design duo Marcus Beck and Simon Macro and 'embraces both experimental and functional design and is driven by (their) desire to realise ideas'. What caught my attention was the simplicity of furnitures' appearance, versus the obvious complexity of the physics behind some of the works, resulting in pieces that have the feel of half school-boy experiment, half modern art.

One of my favourite pieces by Freshwest is the recent 'Brave New World Lamp' (left), as all the wood pieces look to me like scaffolding, holding up the lamp, where in actual fact the wooden pieces are constructed in a way that they are themselves the lamp's form. The lamp was launched with the Dutch company 'Moooi' in April, and made an appearance at the Milan Design festival, quoted by many as one of the highlights of the festival.

The 'Lazy Chair' was also exhibited at the Milan Design Festival; in actual fact it was present at the entrance to the festival to grab people's attention as they walked by. The Lazy Chair is constructed of wood and strings, and the piece contains movement sensors so that when people walk past, the chair collapses. It reminds me of those little children's toys of say, a giraffe on a little wooden stand, that will collapse and reform when the button underneath is pressed and released.