+ maniera
In MANIERA’s 4th series, entitled Dust Free Friends, 6a architects re-examines the long tradition of self-build that has shared the journey through modernism with industry and craft. A lot has happened since Enzo Mari opened the field of designer furniture to the user with his ‘autoprogettazione’. Affordable lifestyle consumerism has more or less ousted messy and old-fashioned DIY from our homes. Apple and Ikea have replaced amateurish tinkering with pleasure and promise sealed inside immaculate capsules. However, today’s portable power tools, such as the cordless drill, the self-tapping screw and the dust-free Festool have also revolutionised our vernacular. The world of self-made furniture has reopened with unprecedented speed and ease. The architects take a raw plywood panel as the basis for a catalogue of domestic furniture, ranging from tables (in three dimensions) and stools to folding privacy screens, all derived from their needs and their experiences of objects which adapt themselves to different uses in the domestic environment. The plywood, always a good servant to new tools, is decorated with wallpaper or hand painted and then cut and reassembled, creating new arrangements of colour and pattern with wood surfaces and neat fibrous edges. Craft and colour, paper and wood, maker and user come together in a new series, which it is hoped can and will be infinitely extended with the help of our dustfree friends.
maniera
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