'Transcendental Phenomenology' by unown space is a meditation on everyday rituals

 

Dubbed ‘performative furniture pieces’ by Swati Jain, lead designer of the transdisciplinary studio unown space, the artefacts that make up Transcendental Phenomenology are sculptural, a bit strange, and incredibly playful. Each piece in the collection—which includes a table, a tapestry, a bookshelf, a chair and a lamp—is meant to be multi-sensory, Jain states. With a focus on the ritualistic aspects of movement, the collection draws on phenomenological theory, creating a link between how each piece mediates relationships between the body, the object and the world. Springs, coils, sprockets and even natural light and air activate each piece in their own turn, bringing them alive and giving a new dimension to what could constitute furniture design.

The Indian architectural designer explains how she drew inspiration from classical Indian ragas/ rasas (liminal moods) with different parts of the pieces, enabling varied elemental embodiments through active use of light or the sense of smell. What’s perhaps most striking about the collection, is that to illustrate these performative aspects and the unique design of each piece, unown space created a film that underscores an almost mystical quality, inspired by Yasujirō Ozu's work. In the film titled Performing Thresholds, a lone woman in the wilderness plays with the pieces, dislodging a disc here, moving with a leg-shaped table leg in another sequence. It’s an abstract, evocative, and artistic depiction of this liminal connection with the natural environment, that the pieces draw on through their multi-sensory aspects.

In Jain’s words, “They are very much alive in their mobility of being and becoming by dispersing elemental forms to evoke atmospheres that are external to their presence. These objects are meant to be inhabited across multiple layers of time, consciousness, and elemental atmospheres… The design was based on how the body (our senses) interacts with different natural [phenomena] (and their materialities) at different hours of the day. The [five] performative furniture pieces act as thresholds to help us give birth to space, camouflage ourselves, practice silence to gestate thoughts, disintegrate so one can reincarnate a new possibility of the future.”


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