Besides the obvious coolness of saying I have a piece in the Andy Beach-curated Everyday Living Objects Shop in Milan--I mean, Milano--is saying I'm in a show with Martino Gamper. Yeah yeah, Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari! Martino Gamper!
I love Gamper's work, even if I wouldn't let him within a hundred meters of my Gio Ponti bedroom suite. So far, though, unless you count the awesome soccer ball-esque pendant lamp he made in 2001 with Rainer Spehl [and which was reissued in 2006], he's only done a couple of kid-related projects:
For a Amalgam, a 2003 exhibition in Austria, he wrapped a couple of Robin Day chairs--aka those little plastic stacking chairs you sat on in kindergarten--together into a double mummy using APC camo tape. [He later re-created the series using woodgrain packing tape of his own design.]
But my favorite kid-friendly piece of Gamper's came out of his 2000 thesis show at RCA. The Get Together Sofa is made of giant cardboard tubes, lined and wrapped in foam and upholstered in what looks like upcycled Street Sofa leather. It turns any living room into a playroom--and back.
These are the coolest Furniture Made From Cardboard Tubes I've seen since the H.U.D.D.L.E. Toobs by Jim and Penny Hull. Why do we have a thousand cardboard McMansions in 18 months, but only two cardboard tube designs in 35 years? Someone needs to hop to. Il Salone del Mobile in Milano is just 364 days away.
