Dublin Art Book Fair 2019
BWR x TBGS
Recently Temple Bar Galleries & Studios commissioned us to make shelves for the Dublin Art Book Fair. We love the DABF and TBG&S and were delighted to be involved.
As this year marks the centenary of the Bauhaus’s foundation, DABF had decided on a Bauhaus themed fair. We took this as an opportunity to reflect on the work of the Bauhaus and see if we could incorporate elements of Bauhaus design into our work, while also bringing some of its ideas and motifs into 2019.
Our first ideas roughly drew on De Stijl sensibilities of Mondrian and Rietveld—black paint with sections painted in primary colours; simple, structural forms. However, the shelves were to accommodate books made by artists and writers involved with TBG&S—all beautiful books, standalone works of art.
Not your typical De Stijl palette
Moreover, the space, like most galleries, is pretty much a white box. We needed a softer colour palette, so as not to overwhelm the space and the books. We did some reading, and came across this nice little Mondrian colour study. Not your typical De Stijl palette—or as if the usual primary colours were left to fade in the sun. We thought these would be a nice soft accent against the white walls. We also decided to invert the typical black painted battens with white ones, giving the books room to breathe.
A fun little joint
We tried to find a balance between visual lightness and physical rigidity. We thought that with these new colours, a Rietveld-inspired batten structure would serve us well.
Rietveld developed a three way joint, sometimes referred to as a Cartesian node, where the intersecting battens span the three dimensions described in the Cartesian coordinate system (x, y and z).
Each batten is secured into the two perpendicular battens it joins with, and so each dimension is supported by, and supports in turn, the two others. The resulting joints are very simple and yet robust.
Rietveld’s interest was in creating high quality, strong furniture with simple materials (almost all of his furniture uses standard timber sizes), and simple methods of construction.
The Cartesian node is the epitome of this belief. There is no mortise-and-tenoning, and the fact that the battens do not intersect other than by their connectors (usually dowels), allows great flexibility in the positioning of such joints.
The Cartesian nodes allow the position of an x, y or z member in any position or configuration imaginable, merely through an iterative repetition of such joints.
Using these joints as the fundamental unit of our shelves, we made a simple grid-like structure. The network of joints gives good stability, especially close to the vertical pillars, if you will. The structure still had some flex between the uprights, as the connecting planks were relatively thin and quite long (~1300mm between neighbouring verticals), so we decided to reinforce the gap with some diagonal members close to the base. This also minimizes point stresses at the joints. The result is light and yet structural, with decoration or ornament mostly in the coloured sections. The separation of bottom, middle, top sections, marked by the diagonals, shelves and beams reaching past the topmost shelf, give a somewhat architectural quality to the shelves.
Photos by Caoimhe Creed
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