LABRA: Experiments with Chairs

In October 2007 interior architect Jouko Järvisalo will bring Labra, a design laboratory, to Design Forum, presenting new furniture designs and prototypes in different stages of completion. Only two of the chair designs are currently being produced, while the rest will reach the manufacturing stage within the next few years.

Our senses provide us with information about the world around us. We also perceive the world of objects with the senses. The five main senses are taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch. We also speak of the sense of the position of the limbs and the sense of balance. The classification of the senses often leaves a gap between the body and the emotions. A tense muscle will cause a tense mood, while a relaxed muscle will improve one's mood. Nervousness or joy, however, is not associated with muscular sensations. When speaking of the sixth sense we generally mean instinctual behaviour related to internal sensations. Animals, in turn, have senses lacking in man. Bats make use of sonar in perceiving their surroundings, while fishes have the lateral-line sense permitting them to sense vibrations etc.

Labra is an exhibition approaching furniture design with the "sixth sense". 'The exhibits present the design stage, by which the concept has already achieved the shape of a chair but has not yet evolved into a object for use or a manufactured product. In the completed product, usability and structural consistency blend fluidly with the assigned brief of serving as a seat.

"I know instinctively what I'm aiming at and what my dream is when I'm proceeding towards a completed object for use in the design work. Designers must rely on their intuition also during the technical stages of the design process. Labra demonstrates a brief interval along that route," says interior architect Jouko Järvisalo.

Chairs are associated with so many everyday matters that they are not generally regarded as art objects. Nor is art unequivocal. The conceptual content of art is close to the concept of skill, which merges with emotion in the minds of those who experience it. Art can also be present in everyday objects when skill and feeling are fused. The result of the design process may sometimes be more than just a chair or an object of applied art.

Interior architect Jouko Järvisalo is a furniture designer working in his own studio in Helsinki. He has designed furniture since 1979 for several Finnish manufacturers, including Asko, Artek, Avarte, Inno and Mobel. He became head designer and artistic director at Mobel in 2000. Since 1982 Järvisalo has participated in numerous joint exhibitions both in Finland and abroad and has received several Finnish and international prizes, including the 1983 and 1983 prize of the SIO Interior Architects Association of Finland, the State Design Prize of 1991, the Pro Finnish Design Prize of 199 (as a designer for Mobel), and the Good Design Award of the Chicago Athanaeum in 2004 and 2006. Jouko Järvisalo's works are in the permanent collections of Design Museum in Helsinki, the Chicago Athanaeum, the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam and the Reykjavik Design Museum. Alongside his own work in design, Jouko Järvisalo teaches furniture design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.


Labra - Experiments with Chairs, Jouko Järvisalo 5 October - 4 November 2007
Design Forum Finland, Space 1
Erottajankatu 7, 00130 Helsinki
Mon-Fri10 am- 7 pm, Sat 10 am- 6 pm, Sun. Noon - 6 pm.
Info Tel. +358 (0)9 6220 8132

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