Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
October 16, 2011 – January 8, 2012
This exhibit shows JODR’s activity in product design, research and writing, as well as in-progress interior design that the office is doing for NMNM. Products, videos of products in use shown on iPads, books, and press about the office are displayed together, on platform-benches designed for the museum by JODR. The benches offer a casual way of engaging multiple forms of media within the museum context. This exhibit marks the first step in the collaboration between JODR and NMNM, and offers a glimpse of the forthcoming La Table des Matières, a library, workshop, and multi-purpose social space, scheduled to open in April 2012.
Photos © JODR
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Commisioned by EXD11 / Lisboa
MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda
October 2 – November 27, 2011
JODR curated and designed this exhibit for the design biennial EXD11 / Lisboa. The theme of the 6th edition of EXD is Useless, and the biennial invited us to explore this theme as it pertains to design with an exhibition at MUDE, Lisbon’s museum of design and fashion. The exhibit explores the varied causes, manifestations and effects of uselessness in the design, production and disposal of contemporary products. A forty meter long display table, flanked by chairs, allows visitors to sit, study, read the exhibit guide, watch videos, laugh (there are some very funny videos) and discuss. The exhibit is a three dimensional library that re-imagines the design museum as a dynamic place for social exchange and debate.
Photos © Rodrigo Peixoto & JODR
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Ediciones Jalapa
May 19 – August 31, 2011
In 2010 JODR began collaboration with Ediciones Jalapa in Mexico City to research, test and eventually manufacture explorative archetypes that exist between architecture and product design. This first exhibit at Ediciones Jalapa shows explorations of staples in architecture – Walls and Bricks – and uses traditional building materials (rubber paving, glass sheet, marble panels and wooden beams) as the basis for new architectural products.
Photo © Fernando Etulain
CENTRO Diseño – Cine – Television
With support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Mexico City
May 5th – July 15, 2011
In this school wide exhibition on JODR’s work, we explore the social, spatial and professional matrix that the office works in. A photographic and animation project with Italian photographer Daniele Ansidei places JODR’s products within their architectural and functional context. A selection of material from our Outdoor Office project binders explore the office’s research methodologies. Every page of a Taxonomy of Office Chairs is exploded across a 10 meter long vitrine outside the school’s library. A three dimensional diagram outside the library links JODR to it’s clients, publishers, closest colleagues, and universities where Olivares has taught, and a second set of links connects these to other manufacturers and designers in JODR’s professional context. The whole diagram forms a “google list” for students wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the office’s work.
Photos © Ramiro Chaves & JODR
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Terri is a home-office desk with an unconventional but useful semi-circular shape, based on the reach of a users arms. The desk surface is made with self skinning polyurethane foam, which acts as a continuous mouse pad, and is soft to the touch, yet firm enough to write on with a pen.
Photo © Andrea Wyner
A Taxonomy of Office Chairs is an exhaustive visual and technical history of the office chair, from the beginning of the 1840s – a period that saw the origins of modern business management to the present. Over this time frame we selected the most innovative office chairs from the thousands that have been designed and manufactured. This rigorous selection process was underpinned by only one rule: only chairs that have introduced an least one novel feature have been included.
The project was motivated by the unnerving fact that our society cherishes, studies and documents the the natural world, yet we keep little track of the products that make up our predominant reality. To piece together and coherently map this vast technical history we interviewed dozens of designers, manufacturer employees, and design museum curators, sifted through archival manufacturer catalogues, and consulted with biologists to create a method for taxonomizing a man-made object.
Each chair is illustrated, each innovation is explained in a short text, and the details of the designers and manufacturers are provided. In addition, the book includes over 400 technical drawings of individual components, organized into chapters that map their evolution. Few man-made objects have ever been studied in such detail, and the taxonomical approach provides an objective analysis of design history. The book will serve as a detailed encyclopedic and professionally researched tool for anyone studying, commissioning, buying or designing an office chair.
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Commissioned for the exhibition La Ville Mobile
Curated by Constance Rubini for the Biennale Internationale Design 2010
Saint-Étienne, France
November 20 – December 5 2010
This installation considers and explains some of the effects that mobile devices are having on our society. Digital information, applications and the Internet are de-materializing the world of tangible objects around us. Over the last decade, countless products have been replaced by a small number of compact digital tools. The mobile device not only allows us to do more with less, it also dramatically expands our mobility. The three carts on display here carry the physical equivalent of the digital contents of three mobile devices: an MP3 player, a smartphone and an e-reader. In these carts we can visualize the enormous volume and weight of objects that once filled our spaces, but can now fit in our pockets.
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