Storytelling-furniture: spatial design by Astrid Tolvon

DESIGN_Looking for something original and unconventional about furniture and design creations, I couldn't help noticing the eye-catching works by Astrid Tolnov, a Danish student of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts that usually tries challenge the furniture as a designobject. About her creations she said: 

“My works are often based on a exploration of the borders between art and design. I wish to look at aestethics and question what's aestetically appealing and appalling, and quest to find the beauty in what would normally be considered ugly.

Despite the designs often abstract appearence, the designs' functionality is still essential and things like durability, comfort and general usability are key thoughts in the design process.”

To better understand what she talks about you have to take a look at some of her products in which the result is really captivating. 

AMORF is a storytelling-chair. Its final shape has been dictated by many material experiments. The chair is made out of latex coated fabric with tarmac imprint, flexibel polyurethane, and acrylic sheet.

“My wish was to create a storytelling-furniture, that didn't tell one specific story, but would lead the user/viewer to make up his/her own story. The furniture should activate more than just the visual sense, and explore the way we think a chair. Throughout the design process the work has evolved around the meeting of contrasts – the living/dead, sterile/organic and right/wrong.”

TRÅD is a wingchair, that despite its light and open construction, would still create the room-within-a-room-feeling that wing chairs are known for.

The chair is created in way so that the user is lifted away from the cold metal construction, and the users body is only in contact with the chairs' warm materials – linen cord, and oiled ash tree.

ÆDT is a sort of “narrative seating furniture”, a balance between the aesthetic and non aesthetic, accommodating and repulsive . The design of the bench is inspired by worms, guts and by organic takeover of the man-made. The bench is not supposed to tell this exact story, but to ignite the viewers imagination.