Weiki shocked my sense of conservation a few while ago when I discovered her porcelain High Tea Pot in the shape of a pig skull, with a tea-cozy of waterrat fur. Where tasty and unsavoury, harm and delight aren’t discerned any longer. You get curious how the tea actually tastes. This surreal hunting trophy can actually pour tea.
I am not sure wether the designer wanted to transmit a certain message through this object, but visually, the impact is notable. And it is anxious. Although I am a “NO hunting” activist, I must reckon that I would drink tea out of it and offer it as a present to the undecided – little by little, hunting dishes will be eradicated.
The project we’re discussing today is milder with our conscience and will leave you with a smile. Studio Wieki Somers (Wieki Somers, Dylan van den Berg and their team) were comissioned to contribute to solving the unfriendly character of Boijmans van Beuningen Museum’s receiving area. The foyer has recently undergone important transformations. It has been renovated into a new cafe, games area, print gallery and education space for children. At the center of the foyer is probably the most impressive transformation, the Cloackroom, designed by the above named team. The Dutch designer Wieki Somers found inspiration in Jiska Rickel’s film – 4 Elemens, where mineworkers have to hoist their coats up and down due to the lack of space, Somers has created a new typology of what a cloackroom can be. Fully functional, the merry-go-around “carousel” is made from red and white ropes with customized patterns created in-house by Somer’s studio. Plastic pulley blocks, fire hoses and metal weights make up the low-tech mechanism, where you simply pull on the rope, hang the coat and fasten the lock. The metal weights ensure that hoisting up and down works automatically.

Falling somewhere between furniture, architecture and sculpture, it animates the space in which it hangs like an outsized chandelier and demands interaction from the visitor.(the London-based design writer, The Guardian, Blueprint magazine and Design Week contributor Caroline Roux nominated this project for the “Brit Insurance designs of the year 2009″, Furniture section.)

Wieki Somers

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