Re-RIETVELD X MATERIAL MAGIC
The famous Red and Blue chair by Gerrit Rietveld: re-designed. The aim was to first recreate the classic chair out of wood and then give the design an interesting new spin.
I decided to build it out of new sustainable materials, to explore the possibilities of it. For this project I combined hemp and magnesium for the beams and plates. I reinforced them with bamboo beams and strips. the connections are not glued, but connected by smaller bamboo pieces and tied with hemp rope. This way i didn’t have to add any chemical materials and is the piece completely recyclable.
This project involved a lot of testing and experimenting with this new material. exploring ratios, various drying times and strength testing different combinations. Now the piece is very sturdy and it is totally fine if somebody sits in it. It was my first real experience with material research and I totally fell in love with it.
The connections of the chair are invisible in the original design and are made using dowels. To be more transparent in my design I chose to make the connections very visible and made dowels out of bamboo. The connections are secured with hemp threads and they are completely disassemblable.
The chair became part of a larger collection of furniture, made by a group of students of of which I was a part and was led by our teacher Jack Brandsma. The research group was given the name Material Magic and mainly focussed on research organic and local materials such as Hemp fibres, Potato starch and Magnesium. Together with Jack Brandsma I went to Milan and London in 2023 to exhibit the series and gained valuable experience in exhibiting material based design.
Pictures of the furniture series, taken in the Hemp factory in Pekela, the Netherlands. Photography by Harold Koopmans.
The exhibiton setup in London Design Fair, september 2023
The exhibition setup in Salone del Mobile, Milan, april 2023
The original remade chair, made from wood
