Studio Wieki Somers was established in 2003 by Wieki Somers and Dylan van den Berg, who both studied at Design Academy Eindhoven in the late 1990s. The studio focusses on providing an enlightened reading of the everyday environment.
The studio's oeuvre distinguishes itself by a sensitivity to materials, technological ingenuity and fantasy. The studio works for a great variety of international clients, such as, Alexander McQueen, Arita, Hermès, Valerie Objects, Moroso, Kvadrat and Galerie Kreo.
It has received numerous awards and its works are part of major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Astana - ASTANA is a seven meter high public sculpture commissioned by the municipality of Rotterdam. We took the opportunity to design a piece to serve the urban community, an addition to the city landscape with an underlying social function. We designed a sculpture that people could use and interact with, a site for public convening. Now it is about letting nature take its course, grass getting greener and trees growing while urban communities find their own way to use ASTANA and make it their own.
Astanaplein, Rotterdam
Shields, 2017 - To celebrate the launch of Kinnasand LAB, Studio Wieki Somers created the installation SHIELDS. The installation takes its viewers on a journey of rhythm, play and light. Stretched within various circular and square frames, the textiles float as kite-like shields beneath the ceiling.
The panels 'Shield' were a part of the installation and designed as a new product for Kvadrat (no photo here). Made of semi-transparent textiles with embroidered patterns and movable wooden strips, SHIELD enriches the space by allowing light through in different layers creating ever-changing patterns of illumination. Allowing the user to decide the needed level of transparency by the number of wooden strips, the panels can be used as window screens or as room dividers. The flexibility stimulates the user to play with rhythm and light, influencing both public and private aspects of a space.
Materials: non woven textile, embroidery, wooden sticks.
Dimensions: L 3000 mm; W 900 mm . Project; Kvadrat / Kinnasand. Exhibition; Salone del Mobile Milan and Cooper Hewitt New York.
Teasets for 2016/Arita - 2016/Arita is a new initiative conceived to boost the endangered porcelain industry in the Japanese town of Arita, thus preserving the deep-rooted, traditional knowledge of a precious craft. International designers have teamed up with local manufacturers to produce a collection of special objects for everyday use. Studio Wieki Somers has collaborated with Koransha to create two tea sets that combine traditional crafts with advanced technology. The tea sets showcase the iconic ‘Koransha blue’ glaze and feature patterns inspired by an ancient decorative technique that employs metal stencils to spray motifs onto the surface. The studio adapted this technique and abstracted it - revealing the process in the pattern and thereby celebrating the craft. The traditionally used metal stencils are replaced by functional parts of the products, for example the lid of the teapot and the handle of the cup. The forms refer to one of Japan’s most iconic symbols: the moon.
Frozen vase (Frozen in Time), 2010 - The collection Frozen in Time is inspired by the extreme freezing rain that hit the Netherlands on 2 March 1987, and that brought the country to a complete standstill. It was a historic day that brought mysterious images: cars stuck to the roads, street lamps deformed, washing lines strung with icicles, and trees bent and split under the weight of the ice. For one day everything was fused together by ice. One day later, when the temperature rose again, the flowers resumed blossoming and the cars were able to reach their destinations.
Ice is a fascinating material: it preserves, conserves, protects, eternalises. After the ice has melted, life can continue. A frozen item is still, white, encircled by silence, while on the inside one suspects a vibrant life, waiting for the ice to melt. A moment in time. A moment in a process.
UV topcoat is a kind of durable ice: after exposing it to the sunlight the material ‘freezes’ into a solid hard layer. It connects all the separate components together in a lasting way.
Collection: mudac Lausanne, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam
Rei (Mitate, 7 light poles), 2013 - Mitate debuted at Galerie Kreo in Paris. It was both a lighting collection and exhibition that was based on the experiences and research while Dylan van den Berg and Wieki Somers travelled through Japan, years before.
Larger than the visitors, the seven floor lamps filled and protected the gallery space, acting as flamboyant samurais. In Japanese, ‘mitate’ signifies the perception of an object in a non-habitual way, to contemplate an object as if it were something else in order to renew its meaning and experience. Since 2003, Studio Wieki Somers has personalised this philosophy in order to invent an intriguing design practice, reworking the concept of ‘magic realism’. Often inspired by ancient or mundane customs, which reveal a creativity that infuses the most common objects with fantasy, promoting an enchanted perception of the everyday life.
With Mitate, a game is played between the simplicity of the lamps and the sophistication of the Japanese references, such as the enigmatic XVIth Century Samurai flags whose designs identified clans and demonstrated their unique powers, the production and use of which was a highly ritualised affair.
Shown together and reflecting off another, each of these lamps possesses its own identity, displaying its specific surface, shape and chromatic colours while proposing a unique combination of technology and craft. Each of these light totems illustrate one of the seven principles of the bushido samurai code of honour, after which they are named.
More info; Galerie Kreo Paris.
Chimney Pots, 2014 - Chimney Pots are the crowning glory on a new housing development in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands. In keeping with the architect’s reinterpretation of the English Tudor style, Studio Wieki Somers has created a range of chimney pots that enhance the identity of the new neighbourhood.
The inspiration came from the tall, richly decorated chimney pots characteristic of English Tudor architecture, which echo the way in which farmers stacked peat around the Haarlemmermeer Lake in the sixteenth century. The studio developed a modular system by stacking several elements in various combinations to produce different compositions. It is a kind of Lego-system with infinite possibilities. The details of the Tudor chimneys are translated into polyester concrete, a contemporary and durable material that allows sections to be ground open, revealing the underlying structure. The residents of each of the 1250 houses can choose their own Chimney Pot from a family of six different sets named after the Tudor monarchs.
Materials: polyester concrete
Dimensions: diameter 420 mm; H 1360 mm.
Project: housing development in Hoofddorp for Ymere and Haarlemmermeer.
Chinese Stools, made in China copied by the Dutch, 2007 - As a response to the extremely fast growing metropolis Beijing, in which temporality and obsolescence seem to menace each and every object, we focussed on the small things in the daily street life. In the most varied parts of the capital we would find customised seats used by people such as security guards, street vendors or rickshaw drivers. We were fascinated by the many charming details of these primitive seats, the way the various materials and parts were connected and the relationship they held to their respective makers. The stools, probably cherished for a lifetime, testify to a long history in which both the maker and the user have left their traces. The aluminium replicas pay homage to the original items, while referring to China’s famous culture of copying.
Materials: coated aluminium
Dimensions: various sizes (stool with extended legs: H 600, W 290, D 270 mm; seat height: 400 mm; box: H 220, W 310, D 350 mm.
5 different stools per series, red or blue/green.
Collection: Stedelijk museum Amsterdam.
Merry-Go-Round Coat Rack, 2009 - The Merry-Go-Round Coat Rack, which was designed for the entrance of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, took inspiration from a traditional wardrobe system used by miners. As its name suggests, the coatrack stands like a merry-go-round in a square.
The carrousel is made from red and white ropes that were patterned in-house at the studio. Plastic pulley blocks, fire hoses and metal weights were used for the mechanism, which is easy for the visitors to use. In the museum the jackets and coats float beneath the ceiling, filling the empty space, and safely hang high. The visitors’ other belongings, such as bags, are displayed in transparent mesh lockers, as museum pieces. It is a cross between an artistic installation and a genuinely functional fixture.
Materials: robes, plastic, metal, textile, etc.
Dimensions: diameter approx. 10 metres, H 4.20 metres
Project: Entrance Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Dutch Design Award/ Golden Eye Award 2009 (best Dutch Design), and nominated for the Rotterdam Design Prize 2009 and Brit Insurance Design Awards, Design Museum, London.
Bellflower, 2007 - A combination of high-tech fibres and a braiding technique has made it possible to weave a one-piece lamp. The lampshade, its base and the connecting arch are woven in a single production line. The carbon fibre is used as an electrical conductor of electricity as well as a structural material. The light-emitting diodes strewn across the lampshade create the feeling of gazing into the night sky.
Material: carbon fibre and glass fibre, epoxy resin, LEDs
Dimensions: H 1850; W 1350; D 500 mm
Collections: MoMA, New York; Textile Museum, Tilburg; Centre Pompidou, Paris.
More info at Galerie Kreo Paris
High Tea Pot, 2003 - A pig’s skull has become a teapot. The tea cosy is made of rat’s fur. Imagine that bourgeois ritual moment, when tea is ready with several people already gathered around the small table. And then the furry animal skull lands. A delicious shock, a clash of contradictory thoughts. Horror and delight, celebration and menace.
Materials: porcelain, muskrat fur, stainless steel and leather.
Dimensions: L 470 mm, W 200 mm, H 250 mm
Project: Delicious Decadent! initiated by Het Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden.
Collections include: The Art Institute of Chicago; Die Neue Sammlung - The International Design Museum, Munich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Den Bosch; Het Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden; Musée royal de Ma riemont, Morlanwelz; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Le Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rein, Germany.
