This exclusive video series produced by Dezeen explores the work of the six designers featured in Dezeen and ASUS’s Design You Can Feel exhibition, including Kim Colin, Giles Miller and Fernando Laposse.
Dezeen teamed up with Taiwanese technology brand ASUS during London Design Festival to host the exhibition, which explored the relationship between materiality, craftsmanship and artificial intelligence (AI).
In particular, the exhibition celebrated Ceraluminum – an innovative material by ASUS used to make its Zenbook laptop.
Ceraluminum combines the lightness of metal with the resilience of ceramics through an aluminium ceramisation process, resulting in a new proprietary material with distinctive nature-inspired hues that make each object unique.
The exhibition featured the work of six different design studios, who were asked to explore how material qualities such as form, colour and texture could be combined to create objects or moments that engage the senses.
In a series of exclusive interviews, Dezeen editorial director Max Fraser sat down with each studio to discuss the processes and influences behind their designs.
Niceworkshop
South Korean industrial design studio Niceworkshop showcased its Aluminium Formwork (AL – FORM) furniture range as part of the exhibition.
The studio repurposed aluminium skyscraper formwork to create a collection of seating and tables, in collaboration with formwork producer Format.
One of the studio’s chairs underwent the ceramicisation process specially for the exhibition, which marks one of the first times Ceraluminum has been applied to objects other than the ASUS Zenbook.
“This aged formwork is used ten to fifteen years in a construction site,” said the studio’s founder Hyunseog Oh. “So as you can see, you get traces of the concrete, it gets darker.”
“After using it, we melt and reproduce with this new form line, so you can see the difference of the textures,” he said.
Giles Miller Studio
British artist and designer Miller created a sensory installation for the exhibition. Titled Awaken, the floor-to-ceiling piece explored the interplay of light and materiality.
The installation was made up of over 1,800 components, including hundreds of one-millimetre-thick solid timber petals.
“This medium is a kind of combination of suspended wires with these bespoke fixings that we’ve developed, particularly so that we can compose and angle small planes in exactly the right position,” Miller explained.
“We wanted to use that ability to create a kind of frozen moment, almost like an explosion of energy,” he said.
“It’s a kind of paradox, because the pieces are very lightweight, and we’ve frozen them in this moment of stillness.”
Future Facility
London-based design studio Future Facility was specially commissioned to create a new device for the exhibition using Ceraluminum.
Named SUSA, the conceptual design took the form of a smart device that aims to foster a “calmer” relationship with technology.
The device can be used for organisation and communication similar to modern smartphones, but intentionally suppresses entertainment and attention-sapping apps.
“‘It’s a bit of a provocation about those ideas,” Colin said. “Ceraluminum offers us this opportunity to make a device that is different in the hand than any other device we’ve seen.”
“This has a very different, much warmer feel. It has a tactile feel that others don’t have,” she said.
Fernando Laposse
Mexican designer Laposse presented his furry Sisal Pup Bench and Loofah divider at the exhibition. With an appearance similar to a shaggy dog, the bench is crafted using knotted sisal, a fibre derived from the leaves of agave plants.
His Loofah Divider is made by repurposing edible fruit to showcase its potential as a sustainable solution for multifunctional living and working spaces.
“The magic of the agave is that they are what’s called pioneering plants,” Laposse said.
“So once you plant agaves, they can take hold in a very deserted environment with almost no soil, no water, but their presence starts to retain this water in the soil and starts to create the right conditions for other wild plants to come back.”
“The whole point of this project is to try and see how design can be the driving force that can increase the wellbeing of not only the nature in this area, but the community,” he continued.
Studio Furthermore
London-based design studio Studio Furthermore created a series of suspended lighting elements titled Quasar Lamp.
The lighting pieces were designed to resemble volcanic stone and each lamp was formed of 100 per cent aluminium upcycled from discarded car wheels.
The studio aimed to explore the relationship between the natural formation of geological resources and humanity’s ongoing depletion of them with this series.
“We stumbled upon a NASA science paper that was describing a ceramic foam process,” explained co-founder Iain Howlett. “From there, we wanted to do bigger, structural things. So we started to work with aluminium to find ways to use recycled material.”
“We can make it in a way where it’s very readable as metal, or very unreadable, and it becomes its own thing in its own right. It’s sort of a chameleon,” he continued.
Natural Material Studio
Natural Material Studio presented its Lighting Works collection, featuring handmade bio-textiles made from a blend of bio-polymers, chalk and clay. These materials diffuse light throughout each piece while adding unique textures and varying levels of translucency across their surfaces.
Also showcased were several bio-textile tapestries made using the studio’s proprietary Procel technique. In this process, a natural protein is mixed with a small amount of chalk for added strength and a natural softener made from plant oils for flexibility.
“I had this kind of drive in me when I started up that I wanted to create my own material and nobody really understood what I was talking about,” said founder Bonnie Hvillum.
“I just feel like there’s so many vast opportunities within the natural world. There’s a lot in the animal world that we can explore, there’s so much to learn,” she continued.
Design You Can Feel ran from 17 to 22 September 2024 at London’s Protein Studios as part of this year’s London Design Festival.
Partnership content
The Design You Can Feel exhibition is a partnership between Dezeen and ASUS Zenbook. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
