BARNEYS WINDOWS
Client: Barneys
Type: Experimental Furniture
Design: LOT-EK
Location: Madison Avenue, New York
Installation: 1994
A series of experimental furniture, selected by Simon Doonan and installed to fill the windows of Barneys at the opening of its new location on Madison Avenue in New York City. The pieces are the inceptions of LOT-EK’s work, philosophy and ethics—entirely made of found objects and city-dweller’s leftovers, they investigate the presence of technology in domestic space.
In the windows, mannequins dressed in Martin Margiela and Jil Sander complemented and activated the domestic lifestyle.
The series includes:
- the STEREO-CHAIR, crafted from a dismissed mailcart and a set of speakers
- the MONOLITH, a swiveling unit of TV, cassette-player, speakers and DVD player held together by bicycle inner tubes
- ELECTRIC CHAIRS, a set of (3) chairs transformed as (3) newly-working technologies / CALL, a body-enveloping disassembled telephone, with separate microphone, headsets, a side table with phone keyboard and a light, plus a spring for the line connection below one of the chair’s legs, to activate the call once sitting / WATCH, a chair lifted to head-height on aluminum pipes, retrofitted with a TV set cushion and its guts below, and two mirrors to reflect the TV moving image and light / MAKE UP, a chair lifted on broom and mop handles to table height, fitted with pivoting mirror and lights, and with a blow-dryer connected to a bowl for blow-drying hair
- DESK, a bent box-spring, lifted with broom and mop handles and stabilized around a flat, pivoting surface, retrofitted with a desktop computer, speakers, lamp, and with different floating gadgets and compartments to become a workstation. A chair, made of caution tape and conduit pipes, swivels in an out to accommodate the body.
- GOSSIP-CHAIR, a steel oil-drum split in two halves, tilted and recombined around a coffee maker
- FAN-LAMP, a small table lamp from an AC-unit squirrel fan.