Our lab is an experimental playground set up to shape the future. It tinkers with craftsmen, scientists, engineers and many other young motivated people. We want to add cultural meaning to technological progress and show the beauty of how things could work using a hands on approach with a sense of poetry to create objects or installations full of content that bare a promise and eventually contribute.

Most manufacturing of our experimental work is done in-house since we refuse to believe things can't be done. We aim to develop and design industrial, and where possible open source translations of these in collaboration with companies like Flos, Vitra, Swarovski, Droog, Jaga and more.

making heatwave by Jaga.

The lab was set up in 2004 by Joris Laarman and partner and film maker Anita Star. They both were born in the rural countryside of the Netherlands in 1979. In 1998 after one year of fine arts Joris attended the Design Academy Eindhoven and graduated cum laude in 2003. He gained first notoriety with his functional rococo radiator heatwave that was first picked up by Droog and now also produced by Jaga. He contributed in articles and seminars for Domus magazine and he was a guest teacher at European universities like the Architectural Association London, Rietveld academy Amsterdam and the DAE. After her study film and documentary Anita joined forces in 2004 to set up a production house where anything can be created. From design to film to writing.

At the moment the lab works with a permanent staff of 6 and a continuously growing group of free lancers with their own specific talent who make everything possible.

Below you'll find some of our recent projects.

PAPER STARLINGS

Originally proposed as a concept for the Guggenheim museum in new york for the contemplating the Void exhibition, paper starlings is an interactive installation containing 200 architypical paper planes autonomously flying in a gracious organic ballet remotely guided by a indoor gps system. These planes can either fly as an interactive swarm that reacts on inteference with the public or be guided in a pre- determined choreography. The planes are motorized as micro robotics with radio transmitters and carry a tiny battery. When a battery is empty the plane lands on a ground platform and is charged automatically. When the battery is re-charged the plane lifts off again to join the rest of the flock. Imagine controlling your own swarm of paper planes...

On this research we collaborated with United states of entertainment and is still in development.

double click to watch video

Cedits: Otto Heinen

IN VITRO:

HALF LIFE LAMP
Inspired by groundbreaking artworks on the edge of arts and genomics the motivation behind this project is to set up a larger open lab in collaboration with university of Twente, wageningen and lifescientists and ethics from the university of Leiden in the Netherlands to study in vitro manufacturable products open to many motivated scientists, artists and designers.

Halflife is a bioluminescent lamp made of genetic modified material that was created last year with the faculty of tissue regeneration of the University of Twente in The Netherlands. Its CHO cell line, genetically enriched with the fire fly’s luciferase gene, glows in the dark in presence of an enzyme called luciferine. The lamp reflects on the upcoming wave of biotechnology and its intrinsic ethical consequences. It addresses the twilight between an inexhaustible harmless utopia, the fear of a monster of Frankenstein and our often-romanticized idea about nature that colors our moral. For this lamp no animal has suffered, in principle it doesn't need electricity to generate light and it is biodegradable. With the right ethical guidance these researches in the future might revolutionize the way we manufacture things, making use of the beauty and efficiency of biological growth and how we would take care of products when they would actually be alive.

double click to watch video

Credits to:

University of Twente, MIRA www.utwente.nl/mira/ (Aart van Apeldoorn, Clemens van Blitterswijk, Jason Doppenberg), University of Wageningen, Ellen ter gast (www.rtodto.nl, www.artsgenomics.org)

ROBOTS:
Asimov prototype chair miniature installation

Rapid manufacturing with sheet materials.
Computational curved crease origami folded (and in the future cut and welded) by robots in sheet material. With developments in origami mathematics, complex instructional diagrams, and technology, designs have taken on ever more sophisticated forms. A major breakthrough has been the evolution of written instructions that compress hundreds of creases into a single diagram. Recently software has been developed with which curved crease origami can be folded in strong materials like aluminum or stainless steel but also plastics using multiple robots. This technology allows us to create many different complex but elegantly shaped objects to be manufactured in a matter of seconds using the same installation. Our goal is to create small production platforms where the robots could produce on request at different places in the world. This would reduce carbon footprint enormously because transportation is largely done over the internet. It will create much more variety in terms of customization of products since these machines can make the same product but slightly smaller or bigger with a press of a button. Besides that one doesn't need high startup investments like injection moulds which creates again more variety since there is less risk to start new and different productions.

double click to watch video

credits & video: Robofold UK

IN CASE OF A THOUSAND BOOKS

Originally designed as a special commission this is an example of creating objects of an uncommon scale combining the craftsmanship of an architectural model maker and structural engineers. It is a 5.6 meter high bookstaircase in glass stainless steel and poly concrete partly made in the architectural model making workshop of Vincent de Rijk. The bookcase could contain as many books as an early E-reader which visualizes the disappearance of shape, volume and material in the digital world and somehow makes it a monument for ones treasured books and their smell, material, form and feel in general. We would love to make a completely mechanical Iphone one day, but we'll need a big warehouse...

STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION:

BONE FURNITURE

If evolution could create a chair...
Generating constructions using the exact same principle as bone growth first developed by Claus Mattheck and further developed by Opel in Germany to create elegant lightweight car parts of the same strength as their bulky geometric ancestors. The optimization video shows the concept that started in 2004 in colaboration with Droog, Friedmanbenda and Opel. We used the process not only to optimize an existing shape but to actually sculpt from a block with the underlying codes of mother nature. For the first time the completed body of work is presented all together at Friedmanbenda gallery in new york from March 4th till April 10th. The series contain the first aluminum chair, rubber chaise, marble/ resin armchair, marble/ resin rocker, tungsten/ aluminum table and bronze bookshelf. These all were studies in shape, strenght and different materials. Together with vitra we are now working on a low cost and efficient industrial translation of the concept.

double click to watch video

Credits: Claus Mattheck, Lothar Harzheim & Adam Opel Gmbh, Droog design, Friedman Benda NY, Gravotech BV, BPO

more soon....

Museum of modern art new york, 'Action! design over time', USA

Guggenheim museum new york, 'Contemplating the void', USA

2121 design site, 'Post fossil', Tokyo, JP

Friedmanbenda gallery NY, 'Joris Laarman Lab', USA

Design Museum Holon ,'The State of Things. Design and the 21st Century', IL

Victoria & Albert Museum, 'Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design', UK

Indianapolis Museum of Art. 'European Design Since 1985, Shaping the new Century', USA

Institute of Modern Art, 'Extreme Frontiers, Urban Frontiers',Valencia, ES

Chicago Art Institute, modern wing, USA

Museum of modern art new york, 'design and the elastic mind', USA
Cooper hewit museum, 'Rococo: The Continuing Curve', USA
Centro de Arte Caja Burgos, solo exhibition. ES
Grand Palais , 'Design contre design', paris, FR
Museum Gestaltung Zurich, 'nature design', Zurich, CH

MoMA new york, USA
Centre pompidou, FR
Cooper-Hewitt, USA
FNAC, FR
Groninger museum, NL
High Museum Atlanta, USA
Stedelijk museum Amsterdam, NL

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, CA

Centro de Arte Caja Burgos, ES
Vitra design museum, DE
Chicago art institute, USA
Museum Kunst Paviljoen Groningen, NL
Boymans van Beuningen, NL
FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, FR
Museum of Modern Art Den Bosch, NL
DSM art foundation, NL

Textiel museum Tilburg, NL

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg DE
Museum of Rouen, FR
Centraal museum, NL

Houston museum of fine arts, USA

2009 Woon award

2008 int. Elle decoration award
2007 Woon award
2006 Red Dot design award
2004 interior innovation award, International furniture fair imm Cologne
2004 Young designer of the year award, Wallpaper magazin

2003 Rene Smeets prize nomination

Our work has been published in most well respected design/architecture magazines and newspapers around the world including The new york times, Herald tribune, Domus, Archis, Icon, vogue, Abitare etc. Next to that our work was published in several books and catalogues about art, design and architecture of publishers like Phaidon press, Die Gestalten Verlag and Thames and Hudson publishers.

JORIS LAARMAN LAB
Ottho Heldringstraat 3
1066 AZ Amsterdam
The Nederlands
Phone: +31 (0)206179461
Email: info@jorislaarman.com

Lab editions

Email: joris@jorislaarman.com

Gallery contacts:

Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.239.8700
F: 212.239.8760
gallery@friedmanbenda.com

www.friedmanbenda.com