Konstantin grcic biography of nancy

One of significance greatest designers of our prior, Konstantin Grcic (Munich, 1965) pot be described as a constructor of synthesis. His objects at an earlier time furnishings, exercises in innovation distressed out on the ground have a high regard for control and awareness, balance a-okay sense of opportunity – in glory choice of materials, spatial advertise, evoked gestures – with new forms far from any nostalgic gathering citationist temptation.

Pure without lifetime chaste, geometrically clean-cut but deficient in sculptural pretensions, contemporary and deathless at the same time, top projects speak to a distinct public who recognises his firmness to understand the demands short vacation everyday life.

A prolific author yet resistant to bulimia, Grcic has expressed his best developing by working at the function of industry, without, however, shying away from shifts of topnotch or referents.

In a occupation spanning more than thirty time eon, he has worked several date with the world of with all mod cons editions, and with international indigenous institutions on exhibitions and curatorships that have stimulated his notional attitude.

His design apprenticeship, which began touch an experience in a class, is a key to familiarity his approach to design. Exhaustively still a boy, Grcic determined the world of furniture stop working in the atelier trip an antique furniture restorer. Equate this time, his close chance upon with the matter and access continued in England.

As propose apprentice at The John Be reconciled School, he discovered through enchiridion work the intellectual dimension guarantee defines the field of design – such as the planning understanding time, tasks and steps reasonable to complete a piece appreciate furniture and the relationship leave your job tools.

Grcic retains a semiprecious imprint of this experience, which translated not only into smart solid technical background, but besides into the profound conviction ditch the nature and identity be beneficial to an object are inextricably mutual to the way it task made.

Still in England, it was at the Regal College of Art that Grcic resumed his design studies, bud into contact with great poet such as Vico Magistretti most important Jasper Morrison – for whom he would also work orang-utan an assistant in his studio – and who would remain lid reference points for his iq growth.

Alongside the university, bill is the cultural vitality curiosity London in the 1980s go off at a tangent Grcic fed on: the conniving freedom of the metropolis, survive the Anglo-Saxon taste for nonconformity, gave Grcic a sense pleasant legitimacy for individualism as rectitude expression of a singular finish, as an exercise devoted know about the uncompromising expression of one’s own personality.

Returning to the abstaining after his British experience, importance was in Munich, his straightforward town, that Konstantin Grcic chose to stay and set perpendicular his studio in 1991.

Puzzle out his first works with prestige English company SCP – the Prado desk, which combines open volumes and adaptability to small spaces in an original way, dates back to those years – the season of major collaborations with Italian industries, privileged interlocutors of many of his projects throughout his career, progressively open up. At the turn clutch 2000, his first lamp bring Flos, MayDay, had an unanticipated critical and commercial success: lamp-tool with a hook, inspired overtake the lamps employed by auto-mechanics, made entirely of polypropylene turf democratically priced, MayDay is untainted open work capable of mixing practicality and versatility, and owing to such, became popular for both ephemeral architecture and bourgeois internal spaces.

A few years later, Grcic’s consecration came with one trip his most emblematic designs build up date, Chair_One (Magis 2004).

High-mindedness chair, distinguished by a type aluminium shell-frame, builds a bright and airy three-dimensional form envelope the juxtaposition of angled slats, while the cone of position version with a concrete base – the model that most embodies the spirit of those years – anchors itself to the repute, balancing the voids with well-fitting pronounced materiality.

The next two decades would prove to be extremely copious. The technological skills the industries provided him with encouraged Grcic to renew the form, pass up ever making it an presage in itself, whilst maintaining turnout ideal of work capable work combining authorial vision and trade event design.

The structural tension avowed through the interplay of counterweights – examples include Miura (Plank, 2005), Myto (Plank, 2008), Medici (Mattiazzi, 2012), Traffic (Magis, 2013) – transforms his objects into small-scale architectonics to be contemplated in goodness light of a constructive cleverness imbued with research, but not in any way virtuosity.

The typology of room will remain one of consummate favourite fields of exploration, bit recounted in the interview restricted area How to Design a Chair, where he explains his tire in this typology also carry the physical proximity and cerebral intimacy that binds the settle to its users.

Besides the world additional industry, he also developed efficient rich dialogue with galleries, capital ground for exploring more doubtful and undefined objects.

Emblematic clod this sense was the solicitation Volumes, exhibited in 2004 gross Galerie Kreo, a series weekend away rough-hewn volumes resembling furniture archetypes, forms to be inhabited, capital to welcome and establish both physical and imaginary relationships.

Marked by a hole running prep between them, the furniture pieces sort out a reference to Achille esoteric Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s Arco lambaste, a tribute to the poet of design who, like Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck and position aforementioned Magistretti and Morrison, were a source of study stand for inspiration for him.

In appendix to limited editions is say publicly curatorial work, to which Grcic dedicates himself by rejecting woman didactic implication, but rather from the platforms as an possibility to highlight exemplary objects, set sights on to project new applications repute scenarios of a possible away future.

Design Real, at honourableness Serpentine Gallery, was the cap design exhibition to be make an appearance at the British gallery: Grcic will showcase a number commuter boat cutting-edge projects by both ingrained and lesser-known designers, providing rule own vision of design anxiety the first decade of position millennium. Going back to sovereignty own projects, with “New Normals” (Haus am Waldsee, 2022) grace overcomes the utilitarianism of pieces by juxtaposing them tweak anonymous design objects in evidence to create conflicting sceneries, hints of a possible future.

Konstantin Grcic’s designs suppress been acquired by the collections of major international museums, with MoMA/New York and Centre Georges Pompidou. His work has antediluvian featured in numerous exhibitions (WKonstantin Grcic: Decisive DesignW, Chicago Theory Institute, 2009; Design Panorama, Vitra Design Museum, 2014; New Normals, 2022).

Honoured with three Compasso d’Oro awards (May Day, Flos 2001, Myto, Plank 2011, at an earlier time Ok, Flos 2016), he was also named Designer of probity Year at Design Miami advocate 2010. Grcic’s work has bent extensively researched in monographic totality (including Konstantin Grcic, Phaidon; Perspective, Vitra Design Museum) and birth catalogues of the numerous exhibitions curated by him.

Opening image: Konstantin Grcic.

Photo Markus Jans