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New Tendency: Revamping Donald

2014
Type: Consulting Spatial Design

New Tendency

Credits
  • Donald Discussion & Donald Corporate, Design: Markus Miessen for NEW TENDENCY, 2015
  • Oiled compact laminate, ⌀ 1600 × 770 mm, 1220 x 2500 x 770mm
  • Built & distributed by New Tendency

The work of Donald Judd is typically associated with a provocative minimalism: an austere elegance culminating in three-dimensional objects. Similar to the philosophy of New Tendency, Judd’s objects have been – and are still – driven by an obsession for craftsmanship. High quality of materials and industrial production techniques are coupled and met by the ambition of handmade production processes.

REVAMPING DONALD is taking Judd’s ambition as a starting point for a spatial conversation about the functionality of furniture-scale spatial objects. The core idea is based on a two-fold approach which unites our motivation to – on the one hand –bastardize and hijack an existing family of objects and – on the other hand – work around and implement a process of MAXIMIZING MINIMALISM. In the context of this collaboration with New Tendency, Studio Miessen is speculating on how to imagine and implement the maximum use value while maintaining the spatial properties of the so-called original. In our design for the set of tables, which have now entered serial production, we have developed a series of three typologies, which are aiming at different spatial and social scales and settings: display, corporate, and discussion.

The scalable work surfaces match diverse programmes: here, a single design is developed on different scales. Tabletops and stands can be reoriented in order to fulfill different functions and adapt to a variety of situational settings. All layers are built of super-thin sections, in which the structure doubles as formal aesthetic. The design of two sizes of individual storage units, which also work and can be used as individual furniture, act as table-stands. Each item comes with a second and sometimes competing use-value: a family of schizo-object of sorts.

As in Judd’s original, the tabletops contain a second layer, which – in the case of the revamped version – acts as a functional retrofit that is also mimicked by the stands. These storage units can be used and explored in a variety of formal and informal ways and range from the super-functional to the partially absurd.

Meet us at the space of dissensus.