The City of Berlin approached young German designers there with the mission of interpreting Bauhaus during the 90th anniversary of Bauhaus. For decades, interpreting Bauhaus was a task that many people have been given or taken on themselves; one that often is merely a manifestation of bent, curved steel tubes.
Osko+Deichmann chose a completely different approach. They wondered how a world of steel tube furniture would have looked had Bauhaus, Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer not seen how the German aeronautical industry had discovered how to slowly bend sand-flled tubes to exact patterns and to obtain perfectly curved tubes.
Osko+Deichmann began by making copies of known Bauhaus models, but with kinks instead of the familiar curves. As an invitation to an exhibition in Milan, they sent out a postcard with Mart Stam’s classic Cantilever chair, but made in their “kinked” version. With the postcard clutched firmly in the hand, we rang Osko+Deichmann and the first thing we said was, “we want to do this”. Their immediate, straightforward answer was, “It can’t be done for any amount of money. The steel tube industry is structured and arranged around the bending of tubes – not kinking them”.
But where there’s a will, there’s also a way and the energy to find a solution.
