Project
The Unfolding Village
Category
Best Implemented Project of Temporary or Permanent Museum Exposition
About the project
Neri&Hu has started looking into the issue of disappearing villages and village culture, an alarming trend that greatly impacts the traditional notion of community, family and cultural roots. As many of our product designs are informed by notions of nostalgia, dwelling, home, family and individual’s relationship within a collective, we wanted to create an exhibition that represents the essence of the traditional Chinese village. Inspired by the alleyways and street life of clan-based villages, the layout is that of a sinuous or continuous alleyway that folds and unfolds to create lanes and layers of spaces slowly revealing themselves to visitors. The profile and form takes on the reading of an abstracted pitch roof which symbolizes the home, which when repeated in connected rows form a “village”. Neri&Hu products are curated within the continuous alley, to be built out of local timber from Sweden. Screens, built in millwork, windows and shutters create unexpected moments of encounter.
Location
Mässvägen 1, Älvsjö, Stockholmsmässan Exhibition & Convention Center, Stockholm, Sweden
Project implementation year
2019
Project website
http://www.neriandhu.com/en/works/the-unfolding-village-installation-design-for-stockholm-fair-2019
Project video
http://www.neriandhu.com/en/works/the-unfolding-village-installation-design-for-stockholm-fair-2019
Additional information
Media coverage:
FRAME, Netherlands, May/June 2020, P124-125
Diseno Interior, Spain, April 2019, P40-45.
For the Guest of Honour exhibition in 2019, we wanted to depart of the conventional aspirations of furniture fairs – often only focused on displaying product designs – and to actually link the objects and products on display to pressing social issues unique to China.
Applicant and authors of the project
Neri&Hu Design and Research Office.
Founded in 2004 by Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu is an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. The practice’s burgeoning global portfolio includes commissions from master planning and architecture, to interior design, installation, furniture, product, branding and graphic works. The diversity of the team reinforces a core practice vision: to respond to a global worldview incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new paradigm in architecture.
Other participants
Customer: Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2019
Furniture, Specified: Agape, Arflex, ClassiCon, De La Espada, GAN, Lema, Moooi, OFFECCT , Poltrona Frau, Stellar Works
Decorative Lighting, Specified: Artemide, ClassiCon, Moooi, Parachilna, Viabizzuno
Accessories, Specified: Neri&Hu, Driade, Nanimarquina, Poltrona Frau, Stellar Works