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Tag: Irma Boom

Irma Boom

Irma Boom

Irma Boom is a graphic designer from Amsterdam, specialized in the manufacture of books: through her use of unknown formats, materials, colors, structures and typography, the designer manages to transform the book into a highly fascinating visual and tactile experience. Her passion for books was born from an early age and is ennobled through studies.

Irma Boom in fact studied graphic design at the AKI Art Academy in Enschede and after graduation she worked for five years at the Dutch Government Publishing and Press Office in The Hague, where she managed to enrich her theoretical knowledge with a very daily practice. intense. In 1991 he founded the “Irma Boom Office” studio, which operates nationally and internationally in both the cultural and commercial sectors. Among his clients: the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, Inside Outside, Museo, Boijmans Van Beuningen, Zumtobel, Ferrari, Vitra international, NAi Publishers, United Nations, OMA / Rem Koolhaas, Koninklijke, Tichelaar, and Camper.

Since 1992 Boom has been a critic at Yale University in the United States and holds conferences and workshops around the world, being considered among the most authoritative minds in the field of publishing and graphic design. In fact, she has been awarded numerous prizes for her book designs and was the youngest winner ever to receive the prestigious Gutenberg prize for her work. For five years he worked on the “2136 pages SHV-. The Think Book”, which was published in English and Chinese and is considered his editorial masterpiece.

His project for ‘Weaving as a metaphor’ by the American artist Sheila Hicks was considered by the Leipzig Book Fair as ‘the most beautiful book in the world’. His books have been exhibited in numerous international exhibitions and are also featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His collection of wallpapers, which takes up the scanned and verticalized images of the continents, a UNESCO heritage site, are true artistic masterpieces, which incorporate the same concepts and the same way of working and representing the ideas of his precious books.

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knoll

Knoll

In 1938 Hans Knoll, German emigrated to the U.S. due to racial laws, she opened a small laboratory for the creation of furnishings to create modern interiors and in 1943 she married Florence Schust, architect and designer graduated from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills in Michigan and with her enlarged the company, which in 1946 it became Knoll Associates, and then finally changed into 1951 into Knoll International, a name still in force.

The two spouses immediately call Florence Knoll’s classmates to design for the company such as Eero Saarinen, son of the director of the school, the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, and Harry Bertoia, at the registry office Arieto Bertola sculptor and designer of origins Italian. Everyone involved within the Knoll embraces the creative genius of the Bauhaus and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, which was then an American interpretation of the Bauhaus school itself, to create new types of furniture and environments for everyday life, for home and work. Craftsmanship combined with technology through the use of design fixes their point of view and shapes the values ​​that still live within the company today.

In 1957 Eero Saarinen designs what is still the most successful product of Knoll today, or the Tulip series, made up of chairs, tables and small tables with continuity between the shell and the base, convinced that “the lower parts of the tables and chairs create an intricate and irritating confusion … wanting to end the chaos of the legs; wanting to make a chair a unit again. ” The Tulip table, better known by the name of Saarinen, is still today the best-selling, most imitated and most desired table by design enthusiasts in its variants with the top in white or black laminate, or in marble in multiple colors.

Harry Bertoia instead creates a collection of chairs for the Knoll, inspired by those of the Eames couple, where the theme of discontinuity returns: a steel rod easel support holds a steel rod mesh body of various shapes. The Bertoia collection turns out to be a true masterpiece, a meeting point between design and art: a light and transparent chair, where the air, which passes through the metal mesh, becomes the true protagonist of the project.

Since the early years, Knoll has distinguished itself from the other famous American furniture design company, Herman Miller, for the choice of an extremely rigorous and rationalist design and for the courageous re-presentation on the market of some historic furnishings such as those designed by the Maestro. Mies Van Der Rohe: the Barcelon collection, which still remains one of the best-known design icons today.

Following the premature death of Hans Knoll in 1955, his wife Florence took over the reins of the company, preferring then to leave the presidency in 1960 to fill the position of artistic director of the design department; throughout his long life his motto will be “Good Design is Good Business”. Florence Knoll designs some very elegant furnishings for her company, which are useful for furnishing public and private spaces, among the most important in America, for illustrious private customers or public companies. Among them we can remember the Florence Knoll sofa with rigorous shapes, on a chromed steel structure, the tables with elementary and refined shapes with marble or glass tops and the containers, later many imitated, in natural or lacquered wood on a steel base polished chrome.

In more recent years, Knoll has made use of the collaboration of the best contemporary international designers such as Frank O. Ghery, Piero Lissoni, Barber Osgerby.

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