The Unfolding Village | Installation Design for Stockholm Fair 2019

The Unfolding Village – Installation Design for Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2019
By Guest of Honour Neri&Hu

For the Guest of Honour exhibition this year, we wanted to depart of the conventional aspirations of furniture fairs – often only focused on displaying product designs – and to actually link the objects and products on display to pressing social issues unique to China.

Neri&Hu recently started looking into the issue of disappearing villages and village culture, an alarming trend that greatly impacts the traditional notion of community, family and cultural roots. As many of our product designs are centered around and informed by notions of nostalgia, dwelling, home, family and the individual’s relationship within a collective, we wanted to create an exhibition that represents and captures the essence of the traditional Chinese village.

Inspired by the alleyways and street life of clan-based villages, the exhibition layout is that of a sinuous or continuous alleyway that folds and unfolds to create lanes and layers of spaces slowly revealing themselves to visitors. The profile and form takes on the reading of an abstracted pitch roof which symbolizes the home, which when repeated in connected rows form a “village”. Neri&Hu products (furniture, lighting and accessories) are curated and place within the continuous alley, to be built out of local timber from Sweden. Screens, built in millwork, windows and shutters create unexpected moments of encounter.

The Chinese notion of “fiction” actually derives from the term “small talk” originating from alleys and streets. The spatial device of the alley creates a quirky tableau for the objects while inviting the subversive behaviors of gossip, voyeurism and eavesdropping amongst fair visitors.