Rooted Design for Routed Living

Rooted Design for Routed Living. Alternative Design Strategies

The Nordic Artists' Centre in Norway (NKD) and the A-I-R Laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw have initiated the project, and will host the events. Both institutions are working with artist-in-residency programs, but in very different conditions-the NKD is situated in a rural area on the west coast of Norway, while the A-I-R Laboratory at the Ujazdowski Castle is located in a European metropolis.

Many contemporary artists spend a lot of time travelling between exhibitions and commissions of different kind. During the last decade, it has become common to travel from residency to residency. The life of these artists can be considered rootless, in a way, and frequently, the same can be said of the places of their stay, in terms of the design of interior: it is often characterized as being too pragmatic. The similarities in the programs of the centres and the differences in several other dimensions created a space for a common interest in establishing an exchange. The idea was that each centre should use the other as a resource to gain new knowledge about the possibilities or impossibilities of making the interiors more relevant in relation to local circumstances. Since both institutions have programs on the borderland of art/design, and architecture where space related works play an important role, it was necessary to focus on our own facilities. Hopefully, the project can help improve the living and working conditions for visiting artists. Rooted Design for Routed Living is formulated as a project where groups of Norwegian and Polish designers go to work on foreign ground.

The aim of the project is to present prototype furniture, designed specifically for the spaces of each centre. The furniture will , hopefully, offer a design with a clear relation to local history, aesthetics and heritage. Nowadays, design has become a very vague concept with perhaps too much impact, and it seems important to try to turn it around. As we see it, this means more focus on concepts, to avoid the pitfalls of labouring expressions of contemporary design as pure appearance. Concepts that last over time usually have a relation to some kind of specificity, such as something local or personal. This is the impulse that leads to the idea of working with customization. Rooted Design for Routed Living is a project that has its point of departure in contextual purpose.

The project will be completed at the end of 2010, and will be presented through exhibitions organized at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw and at NKD in Dale. All the research materials, texts, images and documentation of the work with the prototypes will be presented in a book that will conclude the project.

Text Markus Degerman

Supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Financial Mechanism and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism

Organization: artists-in-residence laboratory at CCA Ujazdowski Castle and Nordic Artists' Centre Dalsåsen.

www.design-in-residence.org

Project group leaders:

Tomek Rygalik and Oscar Narud

Project group:

Rooted Design for Routed Living. Alternative Design Strategies.

Øystein Austad (StokkeAustad), Maja Ganszyniec (Kompott), Amy Hunting, Pawe? Jasiewicz (Kompott), Ola Mirecka, Oscar Narud (Okay Studio), Trond Nicholas Perry, Tomek Rygalik, Jonas Ravlo Stokke (StokkeAustad), Jakub Szczesny (Centrala)

Curators: Marianna Dobkowska, Ula Siemion, Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowacka

Laboratorium Building, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw

Opening: 1 October 2010, 19.00

Exhibition runs through 31 October

Admission free

Wedged Bench (Office building NKD) Oscar Narud, photo Nicolas Grospierre

The exhibition at the Laboratorium Building is the first public presentation of objects created by 10 young designers from Poland and Norway as part of the project Rooted Design for Routed Living. alternative Design Strategies . The presented objects were created in the course of a two-year process and were created specifically for two artist residence centres: a-i-r laboratory in Warsaw and NKD in Dale, Norway.

Pawel Jasiewicz, Chair ( NKD surroundings),photo Nicolas Grospierre