Fendi, an Italian designer of fashionable merchandise collaborated with the Belgian designer Maarten de Ceulaer to create “Transformations” as part of the performance programme at Design Miami, the global forum for design.
For Design Miami/2012, Maarten has transformed this repertoire of two-dimensional expression into a three-dimensional installation, exploring the boundaries between hard and soft, natural and man-made, organic and geometric, luxurious and mundane. Converting the idea of a stripe into a physical module based on a piece of lumber, “Transformations” juxtaposes lacquered wood boards and tree stumps with exquisitely handmade leather planks arranged in a variety of eye-catching, multicoloured compositions.
The result is a total environment that, as a whole, becomes a living pattern reminiscent of design work from the early years of Modernism.
The “soft planks” that Maarten developed for this project can be applied wherever additional comfort is desired: the gesture of applying them is as simple as nailing a board to a tree.
