Profile: Tord Boontje
With items in the permanent collections of contemporary art museums, the work of Tord Boontje can just as easily be viewed in his open-door studio...
Words by: Emily Martin
In Charlotte Road, in trendy Shoreditch, you’ll find Studio Tord Boontje. It’s a fitting location with other design studios all around, as well as being within easy reach of London’s ‘silicon roundabout’ (in equally trendy Old Street) and the tech hubs that surround that. It was some 20 years ago that studio founder Tord Boontje set up shop; it’s open to the public who can walk in to see Boontje and his team working, and even buy something. He also puts on exhibitions, the latest being Electro Craft (it finished in October), all born out of his studio space and ‘this idea with having a very public front to the shop and not being this tucked away design studio’, he says.
Poetic Lab’s Empty Memory, from the exhibition Electo Craft
‘We serve different purposes and one of them is to make exhibitions and show things to people.’ Electro Craft, which opened to coincide with the London Design Festival, saw Boontje team up with other designers and manufacturers to showcase beautifully made objects created by those who have a fascination with technology. ‘Previously, the exhibitions were only about my work. After the last one I thought it would be really nice to do something with a group of people,’ he says. ‘I’d noticed a lot of my friends were also working on electronics and doing really cool stuff with it.’ The Netherlander trained at the Eindhoven Design Academy and the Royal College of Art.
USB Lamp from Future Facility, from the exhibition Electro Craft
Over the past decade he has become known for his expression of romanticism in contemporary design: some of his designs are whimsical and light-hearted, while at the same time they can connect with strong emotions. ‘I’m interested in creating elements for everyday life that are exciting and uplifting to live with,’ he says. With a strong interest in storytelling, nature, decoration, materials and technology, his work has an experimental approach. The results can vary from the ornate to the minimal, from the handcrafted to made-by-robots.
100 Objects Series 3, for Electro Craft from Boontje’s professor at the RCA Daniel Weil
Nevertheless, the studio has worked with international companies on a range of products that includes lighting, graphic identity, textiles, ceramics, site-specific installations and furniture. Work can be found in major museum collections, including the V&A in London and MoMA, New York. At the RCA, Boontje’s professor was Daniel Weil, of Pentagram. He describes Weil as an inspiration, teaching Boontje that ‘electronics don’t need to look like a square or minimal box’, while products such as Ron Arad’s concrete sound system was showcasing how technology can be communicated using a very different language.
Creature Speakers: Studio Tord Boontje and Yamaha’s Hairy
No surprise then that Weil was invited by Boontje to exhibit in Electro Craft – others included Map, Studio Drift, Poetic Lab and The Tail Company – a tech manufacturer of mock-animal tails that move and react with the mood of their human users. This showed, says Boontje, the joy of not only doing something with colleagues but also of creating public awareness ‘of the world of ideas outside the conventional industry’. In addition, it showcased how smaller, independent businesses can respond when ‘crafting’ electronics.
‘Craft has always been at the forefront of technology and it is only recently that there has been a divergence of the two,’ he says. ‘If we think back to 16th-century glass blowing, that was the hi-tech industry of the day. I think the link between craft and technology has always been there, it’s only much more recently that they have become disassociated from each other. Because things are made by robots in industry we don’t see it as craft any longer.’ Boontje suggests that high investment and industrial scale is partly to blame for a lack of physical design innovation. He and his exhibitions aim to challenge a stagnant industry by viewing design from a very different angle.
‘Electro Craft was an exhibition about style, approach and concept. It wasn’t a design movement either; it was about a group of people saying very clearly that besides making chairs, tables and lights we also make electronic products,’ says Boontje. ‘There is a large part of design about creating decorative lifestyle objects, but there also is a really important part of design about making functional products that work for people.’
