Lawrence Lek at Designers in Residence 2012

 

 
In a movie filmed by Alice Masters for the Design Museum’s annual Designers in Residence exhibition, Lawrence Lek explains how he created a modular system of plywood pieces that can be bent into objects including a stool and a pavilion. 
 Responding to the Design Museum’s theme of “thrift”, Lawrence Lek produced a modular system, called Unlimited Edition, which allows the same kit of parts to be adapted into different shapes and sizes.


“The pavilion I assembled for the Design Museum is hexagonal in plan and uses six pairs of modules, but you can also make two smaller triangular enclosures from the same pieces,” he told Dezeen.



“I wanted to create the shapes from a single cut of the CNC router, in order to minimise costly machining time,” he said. “The pieces can be cut by hand on a jigsaw using full-scale paper templates if no CNC machine is available – that’s how I made the initial prototypes.”



The structures are made from plywood, cable ties and leather cord – low-cost and readily available materials which don’t require specialist suppliers.



Lek also bent the wood by hand in a warm water bath made out of leftover plywood and waterproofing material.



Rather than building in straight lines, Lek was inspired by softer shapes of Rorschach ink blots. “The fluid curves of the Rorschach ink blots make us recall the forms that we typically see in nature – animals, plants, insects, and landforms. I wanted to reflect this in the design of the modules, as objects that appear both artificial and natural, industrial and organic,” he said.



The symmetry of the ink blots is also reflected in the plywood, which bends along the axis of its grain.



The movie is by Alice Masters and photographs are by X.



We previously published a movie about designer Yuri Suzuki’s contribution to this year’s Designers in Residence programme – a radio made from a circuit board shaped like London’s Tube map and a set of puzzle pieces that form a circuit.



Above: photograph is by Rima Musa

We’ve also featured a pavilion built from polygonal plywood plates and a table with a net-like base of modular bent plywood.



Above: photograph is by Rima Musa



Photographs are by Luke Hayes, except where stated. The movie is by Alice Masters.
for more  http://www.dezeen.com/2012/11/11/lawrence-lek-at-designers-in-residence-movie/