Design Commissions
OS_Studio realised the spatial design of the exhibition Designing Scarcity (2014).
The 'OS' in OS_Studio stands for OpenStructures, a modular construction system started by Thomas Lommée, which more and more people worked with and added to over time. It is an open platform used by Lommée and Christiane Högner and their design studio, which other designers can also use and add elements to. "OpenStructures is a way to deal with scarcity," explains Lommée. "I think that Jan Boelen, the curator of Designing Scarcity, thought it would be interesting to make the scenography part of the exhibition theme." The modular system ensures that various components are compatible with each other and can consequently be redeployed in fresh combinations to make new products.
"The idea was to develop something light for the high-ceilinged, cavernous space of the main hall," says Högner. "We came up with a series of various structures of suspended tables; the only tables supported by legs were the reading and making tables in the centre." At the reading table, visitors could dip into the background information. The adjacent making tables functioned as an open building platform where visitors could add, dismantle or change something during the exhibition. This was also the advance announcement of the workshop, conceived to conclude and dismantle the exhibition, inspired by the idea of zero waste. "Visitors were able to sign up to help dismantle it", explains Lommée. "Based on the OpenStructures modular system, they were invited to then build something new from the exhibition architecture, like a little table or cupboard, that they could take home with them."
"The material left over after the workshop was returned to the OpenStructures depot for reuse," adds Högner. "We used it to make a large table for our studio, as well as for the racks for a presentation in Design Museum Ghent, and also used it for multiple workshops too." On their website there is a visual report of the first use of the materials, the components that they were made from, that ended up in other applications and will be used again for a following occasion. "This case study is a perfect demonstration of how an element can be used during an event and subsequently acquire an entirely different form and function on another occasion," she says. "And that multiple times, and in various ways."
"Through our collaboration with Scarcity we also discovered that the strategy lends itself well to the scenography of exhibitions," says Lommée. "Such an exhibition is on display for a couple of months and is then dismantled. The materials used often end up in a skip. The OpenStructure system appears to be very useful for everything with a limited duration. So, in the further development of the system we intend to focus more on temporary events such as exhibitions, festivals and workshops or the temporary furnishing of a space. We are now developing a strategy for shop window displays for a chain store, in which the same materials can be utilised again and again in different ways."
Designing Scarcity
Scarcity is the mother of invention. The urban planning projects, buildings, interior objects and consumer goods in _Designing Scarcity_ show that shortages don't have to constrain creativity: quite the contrary. Curated by Jan Boelen of Z33, the exhibition showcases a panoply of strategies used by designers and users to find novel solutions in the face of limitation.