Jul 10, 2015

mobile furniture by harry thaler

We love Harry Thaler's mobile furniture and these beds in boxes that were commissioned by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museion in Bolzano, Italy. This studio (called Atlierhouse) is used as a temporary home for visiting artists and curators.The brief involved furnishing the artist in residence studio and living space. Thaler worked with local carpenters to build the pieces and then moved into the studio himself for a few weeks whilst he tested and added.

The Italian born, London-based designer grew up in a village in the Italian Alps and has a background as a goldsmith and craftsman, so it is also not surprising that his furniture is artisanal in nature but also modern and functional.

Through his furniture design, Thaler strives to explore the reinvention of objects and juxtapositions. The resulting pieces of mobile furniture are surprising, simple, practical and elegant. It's the kind of furniture that makes you want to slow down and relax. It’s also the kind of ingeniously simple innovations that make you stop and think, why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?

The beds and most of the furniture are also on wheels and they have their own individual hanging lights, so the artists and curator can close their beds and engulf themselves in a mini studio or their own private world.

The whole studio is based around the idea of multidisciplinary space, where you live work and play. A great idea for the home artist or freelancer, lucky enough to be able to work in slippers. It's also an inspiration for those of us trying to live big in a small space in the big city.

For example, whilst the double bed opens up on a number of sides so it can transform into a modern four-poster, it also closes up into a tiny four-walled studio. The lights cleverly move up and down, switching on and off, when opening and shutting the horizontal pull-up shutter. The wood and furniture are in calming Japanese futon inspired neutrals.

We love this single bed, like the old style pull-outs from a retro 1950s, RVs meets Japanese minimalism. This one would be a great object and spare bed in an inner city loft or studio. The bed also has bookshelves to put your evening reading on and you can pull it up against a large window like this on a bright day. It looks so inviting, even just for a lazy Sunday afternoons spent in slippers.

The range extends to wardrobes, tables and desks. We particular like the idea of a box frame desk for extra storage and space. It gives room for pinning and lots of space for shared sketching across the table, It's a great desk for laying out your plans and a great boardroom table for exchanging ideas.

The rest of the studio is also neutral in soft and natural materials such as grey slate floors, white walls and large barely dressed windows. The whole studio is like a blank canvas waiting to be filled, a place to lay out your ideas across its floors, walls and furniture without the interruption of over-designing.

Thaler studied at the Royal College of Art in London where he prototyped an award winning chair, (click here). He has won a number of awards for this design including the Conran Award 2010 and Interior Innovation Award 2011 in Cologne. Recently he has received the 2014 Monocle Global Retail Award 2014 and 2014 IF Design Award 2014.

While these wooden mobile pieces of furniture were handmade by Thaler and his small local team onsite in Italy, in interviews he has mentioned that he is looking for a manufacturer to help get his furniture out to more people. You can find out more at harrythaler.it

In the video interview below he talks to Dezeen magazines Marcus Flair about his designs and plans while excepting his award in Cologne in 2011.