The display cases of Sept Appartements based on groundsman Hervé Liénard's DIY approach to renovation and upkeep of seven rental apartments.
What is your favorite object? The young designers from Benetton's prestigious Fabrica Institute presented this question to 15 staff members from Belgium's Grand-Hornu cultural center and museum. Translating their responses into considered one-off furniture pieces, the 15 objects were presented as one-half of the Objet Préféré/Objet Coloré exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum.
The interviews with Grand-Hornu's staff members—ranging from museum guides, administrative managers, site electricians to the museum's director—looped on a video inside the exhibition and were also accessible via transcripts laid out on newsprint. Grand-Hornu was built in the early 1800's as an industrial mining complex—today it hosts innovative design exhibitions and cultural events.
Under the art direction of French industrial designer Sam Baron, unlike typical exhibitions, individual designers and the Grand-Hornu staff members that contributed their thoughts are not identified—each piece is named solely after the object it is based on.
United Color of Benetton presents Objet Préféré
An exhibition by Fabrica and Grand-Hornu
Triennale Design Museum
Milan
On View through April 22nd
Nesting tables of Bottines pour Enfant & Crâne (Boots for Children & Skull) based on head of Grand-Hornu Images Françoise Foulon's first pair of baby shoes and the, "little skulls adorning the site's founders in the Grand-Hornu crypt." (Foulon couldn't choose which she liked more.) The tables extend to resemble steps as a reminder of Foulon's of first steps and the skull, as a memento mori, reminds her of the end.