An interpretation worthy of a legendary design museum
The Berlin municipality turned to young German designers with the task of interpreting Bauhaus, and their work would be displayed during Bauhaus’ 90th anniversary. The design duo
Osko + Deichmann won with their innovative approach to interpreting Bauhaus with ‘broken’ pipes.
For decades, interpreting Bauhaus was a task that many people have been given or taken on themselves; one that often is merely a manifestation of bent, curved steel tubes.
Design duo Osko + Deichmann chose a completely different approach. They wondered how a world of steel tube furniture would have looked had Bauhaus, Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer not seen how the German aeronautical industry had discovered how to slowly bend sand-filled tubes to exact patterns and to obtain perfectly curved tubes.
Osko + Deichmann began by making copies of known Bauhaus models, but with kinks instead of the familiar curves. As an invitation to an exhibition in Milan, they sent out a postcard with Mart Stam’s classic Cantilever chair but made in their “kinked” version.
With the postcard firmly clutched, Blå Station rang
Osko + Deichmann, and said, “we want to do this”. The design duo’s immediate, straightforward answer was, “It can’t be done for any amount of money. The steel tube industry is structured and arranged around the bending of tubes – not kinking them”.
But where there’s a will, there’s also a way and the energy to find a solution.
The result was Straw, which Blå Station began producing and now has grown to an entire furniture range. Today, visitors to the Bauhaus archive can have a coffee at the Bauhaus café furnished with chairs and tables from Blå Station.