Wandering around the Established & Sons preview the one ‘product’
that caught my attention was Sam Hecht’s Table, Bench, Chair.
The range of furniture seems a distinct shift from some of the more
recent, consumer goods, output from the london based studio Industrial Facility,
but it is still grounded in the attention to detail and passion for process one has come
to associate with the group.
Sam explained that Established gave an open brief, and furniture was a move
from his recent work, but he found constraint from the process of working
in wood, unfamiliar material, with the project developing over “very much a series of conversations”.
Hecht drew on Tokyo subway trains for inspiration, where a culture of conformity
and etiquette is paramount to daily life. Hecht noticed that each row of seats on the
subway train had one section that was coloured differently. His Japanese
colleague explained this is not about style, but function. The strip indicates the seat
that should be sat on first, with each following commuter filling the space to the left, until no seats remain.
Hecht subtly references this in his design with chair arms protruding from a bench structure,
resulting in an ambiguous piece of furniture which is neither a table a bench or a chair.
Unlike his commercial work, briefed and tight, this ambiguity comes as
slightly unexpected. Hecht explained his fascination with human quirks
and described a seat he has in his bedroom. The seat is not used for sitting,
but for clothes, so why did he put the chair in the room, why not use
a clothes horse, or alternative. “Because of those weird conditions it starts to
make alot of sense for those situations, its not a chair, its not a bench”.
Hecht explained, like all good designers, he finds inspiration all around him.
“Theres an enormous amount of oddity that is unexplained. Figuring out why it
is that way, thinking what’s going on there? Then you realise there are systems
and parameters you can use and manipulate”.
Its this ambiguity and the quirks of human nature, within a system, that
have obviously influenced Hecht’s design to produce a piece of furniture
that stood out from the crowd, born from a curiosity for life and validated by
a passion for process and narrative.
Established & Sons : Milan 2009
La Pelota, Via Palermo 10, Milan
Text: Ian Atkins
Images : David Wilson, Edward Vince