Wonder Room

Piet Hein Eek & Michael Anastassiades for Roll & Hill May 2015 - Jun 2015

 

The Future Perfect presents the Wonder Room, a curated combination of unique works, collaborations and art by Piet Hein Eek, emerging and established Dutch artists and designers, and new lighting by Roll & Hill (Lindsey Adelman, Jason Miller, Karl Zahn, Philippe Malouin, Paul Loebach), Bec Brittain and Michael Anasstassiades.

Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek’s Wonder Room is an idiosyncratic, highly collaborative space which sits atop his Eindhoven workshop. For the first time, Eek has bought that playful vision abroad, planting a flag at the Future Perfect during design week.

The Future Perfect’s gallery has been transformed into a one-of-a-kind version of the Wonder Room. The immersive installation features Eek’s “Tube Chair” made from discarded, industrial drainage pipes; the “Welded Steel Cabinet” created by welding steel plates finished with an experimental, oxidized lacquer; the original prototype of the “RAG Pipe Table” made from reclaimed pipes; and “Waste Steel” paintings, a triptych exploring the designers use of raw materials in a non-functional way.

THE PRESENT TENSE

ABOUT PIET HEIN EEK

 

Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek’s work embodies the concepts of transformation and reinvention. Spanning furniture design, architecture and fine art, Eek elevates discarded, quotidian and unorthodox materials into pieces that make a strong case for the design as art conversation.

By contrast to other designers, Piet Hein Eek’s contemporary and beautifully constructed designs are covetable, whilst conveying a clear social message. His design modus operandi is a response to mass production, design conformity, material waste and ostentation. As such, his material palette – much like the influential Arte Povera movement – has included everything from pieces collected from old wooden boats to industrial steel remnants. Piet Hein Eek wallpaper is a prime example of his talents.

Born in Holland in 1967, Piet Hein Eek made an immediate impact on the Scandinavian design world with his final exam project for the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven. Simply titled Scrap Wood Cupboards, the pieces were constructed of reclaimed lumberyard wood and inspired by chance, after the designer refurbished a cupboard for his sister. At the time, Scrap Wood Cupboards caused a sensation, perceived by many as a bold reaction against the cookie cutter, the industrial and the commonplace. Scrapwood is now a sought after design of Piet Hein Eek wallpaper.

After a year of building his firm, Eek went into partnership with designer Nob Ruijgrok, forming Eek en Ruijgrok v.o.f. Eek’s most famous piece, Waste Furniture, was designed during the 1990s out of discarded products, fomenting his vision of blending skilled, technically precise design with sustainability and the nascent credo of “reuse, recycle, reuse.” Building on this process and his rising profile in the design world, Eek added an additional line Waste Waste 40×40, pixelated-looking pieces built from “leftovers from the leftovers,” with materials cut into identical squares of 40 by 40 millimeters then assembled to cover chairs, tables and benches.

Since those seminal designs, Eek has gone on to create rugs, household wares, wallpaper, watches and eyewear. The designer has also created a restaurant – filled with his own pieces – and an art gallery, housed in his studio in Eindhoven, Holland. Among Eek’s critically acclaimed interior design projects are redeveloped industrial buildings, farmhouses and greenhouses. Piet Hein Eek designs are available in many galleries worldwide.

VIEW ALL PIET HEIN EEK

EXHIBITED WORKS