Much is made of materiality, aesthetic, and final appearance in design. The end product, how it looks in the pages of a glossy magazine. Oft-overlooked — by both designers and end-users — are the very things that hold it all together. The structure, the connections, the bonds that bind each element.
Opening 28 November at London’s The Aram Gallery, Joints + Bones investigates those structures and connections in design, the surfaces or skins no longer the stars of the show. Encouraging a dialogue on the deeper understanding and appreciation of design and its process, the show looks at how these ‘joints and bones’ can be elevated beyond mere purpose; a series of emerging and established international designers showing innovation and experimentation in the coming together of elements.
In Joining Bottles, London-based designer Micaella Pedros uses discarded plastic bottles as her joints — placing their bodies over other found materials and shrinking them through the application of heat. It’s a simple but effective way to find innovation and imagination in the simplest of places; where bolts and dowels or dovetails might be found, Pedros’s fix is quick, practical, and aesthetically engaging. Elsewhere we see fabric, clips, bespoke 3D-printed parts, cable ties, elastic ligaments, and Studio Ilio’s skeletal structures grown from hot wire and waste 3D-printing powder; a pleasing and sometimes baffling array of methods to step outside the confines of traditional joining techniques.
Joints + Bones runs 28 November — 28 January at The Aram Gallery, London.
Loom Bound by Rive Roshan
Rodular by James Shaw
Offcut by Raw Material
Hot Wire Extensions by Studio Ilio
Wrong Colour Furniture System by Studio Minale-Maeda
Joining Bottles by Micaella Pedros
Dado by Adam Guy Blencowe
