By Editor Design.nl /asdf 09-04-2008

The prestigious Salone del Mobile design and furniture fair takes place in Milan 16-21 April 2008. Over the coming weeks we'll take a look at some of the designers and their work showing at this year's exhibition.

Adam Farlie: Mourning Light
The starting point for the project was based upon a long lasting fascination with the experience commonly known as 'Uncanny'. In short, the Uncanny is the feeling you experience when something habitual, homely and familiar, a thing that has become automatised in our perceptions, has 'become strange',unhomely and disquieting. In removing (visually) the most integral and familar element of the lampshade, i.e. the bulb, and reversing the lights primary function (illuminating what is beneath it) I have attempted to draw the viewers attention to the habitual expectations we have of archetypal objects. Through the use of pitch black, light-absorbing flocking I wanted to entice the viewer into placing his/her hands into the void beneath, and where they expected to find a flat base, were shocked that the void stretches up into the form of the light. I strove to play upon peoples experiences of the lure of such uncanny spaces. The primary motive to this work is to allow viewers to experience the object in-the-round, that is, to generate fully the uncanny feelings created by the void on the underside of the light (an experience that is not done justice by the flatness of an image!). The black unbelly of the object, in contrast to the white light emitted from its sides, absorbs the light completely, asking the viewer to place her hands, or even her face, into the space underneath. In doing so, the viewer is shocked that she touches not a flat plane but an uncanny, pitch-dark void that continues into the lightshade (for about 6 inches!). (Farlie graduated in 2008 from the Design Academy Eindhoven, Department: IM Masters)

Mieke Meijer: Nudes
Usually, the essence of kitchen appliances is concealed by their synthetic housing. Revealing the innermost secrets of the coffee making process, however, the coffeemaker Nude is a credit to its name. Bare essentials and stylized simplicity make it an honest product. (Meijer graduated in 2006 from the Design Academy Eindhoven, Department: atelier. Photo by Vincent van Gurp)

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