Rolling Bench

Exhibited during Dutch Design Week 2021 at Piet Hein Eek, Rolling Bench explores how designed objects can sustain richer, more adaptable domestic lives. The project offers ceramic-centered furniture and objects that are open or semi-programmed in form, and complete only when joined with other components.

In its basic configuration, the bench consists of dowels arrayed between two ceramic rings. Utilitarian strapping, rope, or yarn woven through or wound around wood rounds or branches supplies the compression and tension required to stabilize the object as furniture. The bench imagines a world in which design activates novel intersections of production and function. The project intends to advance the value of care by insisting we love most what we know directly, what we’ve found and constructed ourselves, and what bears specific provenance. The system provides doses of natural materials, narrative, and fun.