Design Miami | Radical Chic
The 16-year-old Wolfsonian-Florida International University museum has become a favorite Miami Beach destination, thanks to its intriguing Mediterranean Revival architecture and consistently impressive exhibitions, the latest one of which — “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” — opened last week. It represents a little revolution in exhibition design, which is led by the French!
Organized in partnership with the Centre National des Arts Plastiques in Paris, a government-financed institution that concurred to lend the Wolfsonian part of its design collection, the exhibition offers a sort of cross-section of more than 60 years of French design. But it’s not so much the pieces on display that make a lasting impression — the eclectic, sometimes puzzling mix includes work by Roger Tallon, Philippe Starck, the Bouroullecs and Matali Crasset, as well as lesser-known designers — as the way in which they are displayed.
Originally, the quirky Crasset was to curate and design the exhibition herself, in collaboration with the design historian Alexandra Midal; the avant-garde design office M/M Paris was hired to design the accompanying catalog. But the assigned division of labor quickly turned into a hands-on collaboration among the three parties, along with Marianne Lamonaca of the Wolfsonian. The end result is as eccentric as it is fun: Crasset, Midal and M/M devised nine narrative clusters that are spatially delineated by wooden units that can be broken down into three-legged stools, and which are painted in the French tricolor. The dimensions of the units are based on Le Corbusier’s human-scale system of proportions, the Modulor, but when grouped together they can form stars, pedestals or barricades — a reference to the political and cultural ferment in France at the time that some of the furniture on display was made. For example, a white flag hanging over figurative barricades that frame two couches from Ligne Roset and one by Pierre Paulin evokes the 1968 Paris student uprisings.
Completing the exhibition is a selection of clips from culturally, politically and visually relevant movies of the past decades, which support its show’s claim that design in general — and in France in particular — has far-reaching consequences beyond the strictly aesthetic. The Wolfsonian’s uncommon decision to invite Crasset, Midal and M/M to produce this unique exhibition proves exactly that point.
More source:
Design Miami | Radical Chic - NYTimes.comDesign Depot Furniture | Florida's most innovative and unique ...
Miami Chic Designer Bath Video : Rooms : Home & Garden Television
Josh Wollowick - Ornare - Miami Chic - SocialMiami
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Submited at Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 at 1:00 am on House by Alina
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