Dunja Weber

visit www.gate-08.com

Participating at the Salone Satellite was a wonderful experience but also a huge effort. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of many wonderful people around me to whom I would like to say a very big THANK YOU!

Alberto Colzani for his generous help and technical advice for the prototypes of Soba
Alessio Mazzola from Komunicart for printing my postcards in just one day
Andrea Gregnanin for all his moral and technical support and advice
Ezio Manciucca for the wonderful photography of my products
James Irvine for letting me use his workshop
Kyoko Inoda and Nils Sveje for their patience and design advice
Mauro Bianchi for preparing the bamboo strips of Fancy Fency
Silvia and Lino Gregnanin for helping with the transport of prototypes
Valentina Folli and Arihiro Miyake for helping me with the stand building

from left to right: Kyoko Inoda, Dodo Arslan, Cristina Cher, Maddalena Casadei, Alessia Cusinato, Emmanuel Gallina, Kensaku Oshiro, Dunja Weber, Philippe Nigro, Jim Hannon-Tan.

My friend Pia Bianchi who is a fashion journalist had the idea to use the Gate-08 designers (www.gate-08.com) as models for the Spanish fashion company Desigual. We spent a whole day with make-up artists, hair-stylists and fashion photographer Stefano Babic. The photographs will be on show at Bar Basso during the Salone del Mobile 09 (22-27 april) and will be published in the april issue of the magazine Velvet.

The pictures above are the result of a hard day of work – yes – being a model is surprisingly hard work and maybe being a designer isn’t so bad after all.

Snapshots taken during the shooting.

One year ago a received a phone call from an old friend in Luxembourg: Hey Dunja I have seen your lounge chair in “Officiel”. We would like to use it in a project we are working on at the moment.

One year later June sits proudly in the brand new centre socio-culturel Le Cité in the center of Luxembourg, in fact it is the old Cité cinema I used to go to as a teenager that has found a new function.

I’m very pleased that one of the first contract projects in which June is used is actually in Luxembourg.

In the beginning of this year I worked together with my friend Maddalena Casadei on a competition called “Fuori dal Tunnel”. The competition was about improving the visual impact of a very intrusive high-way passing right next to a picturesque skiing resort (Bardonecchia) in the Italian Alps right on the border to France.

Bravely we decided to take up the challenge of this rather complex landscape architecture project. Sadly we didn’t win but we had a great time and were nevertheless rather satisfied with the result of our work.

Bardonecchia is a skiing & holiday resort and thus closely linked to outdoor activities during all seasons. The first question that springs to the holiday makers mind as soon as he gets up is: How’s the weather today? …but leaning out of the window to check instead of looking at a lovely mountain landscape he is confronted with a massive highway bridge.

But what if this monumental brigde became a feature rather than an eye-sore? We proposed to transform the bridge into a giant horizontal thermometer ( 6m x 300m). Interesting also because temperatures in Bardonecchia vary between 37°C in the summer and -15°C in winter.

The graphic visualization of the thermometer is achieved through a special metal-mesh which contains LEDs (Mediamesh and Illumesh). This means the thermometer is visible both during day and night. Since the LEDs are computer commanded colours can change. At lower temperatures the thermometer appears generally in colder tones whereas during summer it appears in warmer colours.

The metal mesh is also interesting in so far that even though seen from the village it veils what is going on on the highway it remains translucent from the highway side allowing the drivers to look at the landscape. The LEDs in Illumesh and Mediamesh remain visible over very long distances and thus the temperature could still be read from the mountain top.

The LEDs are powered by a system of 3D solar panels which we designed to cover some of the concrete walls and to integrate into the alpine landscape. For the realisation of this we discovered a phantastic technology produced by Nanosolar.

In march 2005 I traveled to Senegal on a trip organized by Fratelli dell’Uomo (Frères des Hommes). The reason for the trip was to discover if there could be any parallels between pre-war Italian furniture production and Senegal’s present situation. If there was anything to be learned from the development of the furniture industry in Brianza which transformed from a situation of pre-industrial craftsmen working on a very local level to the world-renowned furniture industry it is today. It is acknowledged that one of the main reasons for the extraordinary development in Brianza has been the design factor. Could Design do the same miracle in Senegal?

At first we were overwhelmed by the apparent poverty and chaos. The workshops we visited were little more than sheds, most of the work being carried out in the open. Tools were lying on the floor, saw-dust was piling up in meter-high heaps, the rooms were filled with junk. The machines, they surprisingly owned – most of them were second-hand from Italy and Germany, were badly maintained and above all were not placed on even ground. It looked as if these machines had fallen from outer space into a world which in some respects could be compared to our medieval times. It seemed obvious that before learning about production or design the craftsmen had to learn about keeping their workshop tidy and health and safety basics.

We soon also learned that most of the craftsmen were actually illiterate, had never been to school and drawing their ideas before making the products is not part of their procedure. I assume that this is the main reason for very little innovation in the Senegalese furniture industry. The things are build following already existing models.

In-fact all workshops seemed to offer coarse interpretations of western period furniture, a style reminding me somewhat of American furniture. Apart from the lack of development work there is another reason for this. Those who can afford to buy furniture aspire to a ficticious ideal of western styles and life-styles. If they buy a sofa it has to be BIG! The same counts for beds and wardrobes. The most popular furniture seem to be a sort of caricature of their stereotypes. It is interesting to note that we discovered one company (Atelier Atiss)which tried to focus on local skills and heritage. To our disappointment we were told that they catered mainly to the western market.

Beyond chaos and poverty however there is an incredible amount of inventiveness, imagination and creativity to be found in a country like Senegal. In-fact I feel that poverty in some degree pushes people to be inventive, not having the money to buy things they have to make things themselves. This leeds to a great variety of beautiful one-offs. I wish the Senegalese would learn to understand the richness of their heritage and build on it.

Still the question keeps lingering on. Does it make any sense to teach “Design” in a context where basic necessities are not covered, people live by the day, children don’t go to school, hospitals don’t exist and governments are helpless.

If “Design” is about style, glamour, taste and quality, if it is about imposing our own culture onto others then teaching it doesn’t have any meaning outside our own culture.

If “Design” however is understood as the process of documenting thoughts to paper, as a tool that helps to communicate with ones-self, a tool to develop thoughts and to test ideas without wasting time & material. Then design can be useful to the single craftsman as to the country as a whole since it can channel creativity and speed up development of industry and society. In this case it will be worth teaching “design” in a place like Senegal.

A few month ago our Japanese friend Kyoko asked if she could put us in contact with her journalist friend who is doing an article about flats in Milano. We said yes and surely enough a few weeks later Mayumi and her photographer turned up in our flat and took some shoots. For those of you that haven’t visited us yet here you see how we live , what we do you’ll only find out if you read Japanese.