KARTELL BY LAUFEN
VIRTUAL SPACE
VIRTUAL SPACE
Virtual Space | Global (2021)
Category | Things I built
LAUFEN virtual space – a new form to tackle space and product.
Where digital meets physical. Featuring products from the new Kartell by Laufen collection.
The Laufen virtual space is an immersive digital experience, showcasing the company’s bathroom collections in a new and exciting way. While memorable virtual reality applications are far from being realized – and are very far away from bringing a real live experience online – Laufen started this project with the aim of creating a communication which could go beyond the traditional boundaries. With personal contacts and communication reduced to virtual encounters, Laufen virtual spaces want to create a platform which enables the company to connect in the real world with people who, out of different reasons, cannot be present physically at a certain space and a certain time. In the end Laufen aims at connecting human beings on different levels of interaction.
While the sanitary, design or event art industry business models of fairs and gigantic booth build-ups had remained unquestioned for half a century, digital turn revolutionized new business models. The Internet has disrupted the way we produce, display, exhibit and document products, information and experiences.
Where digital meets physical. Featuring products from the new Kartell by Laufen collection.
The Laufen virtual space is an immersive digital experience, showcasing the company’s bathroom collections in a new and exciting way. While memorable virtual reality applications are far from being realized – and are very far away from bringing a real live experience online – Laufen started this project with the aim of creating a communication which could go beyond the traditional boundaries. With personal contacts and communication reduced to virtual encounters, Laufen virtual spaces want to create a platform which enables the company to connect in the real world with people who, out of different reasons, cannot be present physically at a certain space and a certain time. In the end Laufen aims at connecting human beings on different levels of interaction.
While the sanitary, design or event art industry business models of fairs and gigantic booth build-ups had remained unquestioned for half a century, digital turn revolutionized new business models. The Internet has disrupted the way we produce, display, exhibit and document products, information and experiences.
Due to limitations and new behaviors and needs caused by the pandemic, the virtual starts to increasingly place stories once experienced in the physical, into the digital. All that does not have to be built necessarily but can be told in another
form, can have a new space in the other realm now.
... the virtual starts to increasingly replace the physical. Yet, one cannot without the other. Annabelle is driven in finding the glitches and in-betweens that convey the same message
online and offline.
In midst of the pandemic, online virtual rooms provide a context to products, guided by a meaningful message. Senses such as touch, smell and personal relations are getting dangerously neglected with disastrous consequences on mental as well as physical health. This forces us to reinvent the ecosystem of communication and relationships through the creation of formats that blur the lines between digital and physical.
INTERVIEW: FRAME
... the virtual starts to increasingly replace the physical. Yet, one cannot without the other. Annabelle is driven in finding the glitches and in-betweens that convey the same message
online and offline.
In midst of the pandemic, online virtual rooms provide a context to products, guided by a meaningful message. Senses such as touch, smell and personal relations are getting dangerously neglected with disastrous consequences on mental as well as physical health. This forces us to reinvent the ecosystem of communication and relationships through the creation of formats that blur the lines between digital and physical.
INTERVIEW: FRAME
VIRTUAL SPACE
THE EXPERIENCE
Laufen virtual space is about exploring a dream-like landscape through four different Kartell by Laufen sets and nature-infused stories that let one wander and wonder. Starting in the urban area, driving to the desert, exploring the forest by night and escaping to an artist room in which Laufen presents a limited special edition of screen-printed collages by Swiss artist Monique Baumann. It is a digital solution with the goal of transporting emotions to the user - not an easy task considering that we are all online a substantial part of our lives today. The space wants to provide an experience of digitally animated, semi-interactive collages. Surreal spaces with a wink and the purposely very tactile feel while being fully immersed in the digital. A journey of process and progress telling a story and carefully taking the products by the hand. Almost like strolling through a Laufen booth at a fair designed by architect Gabrielle Hächler and Andreas Fuhrimann.
THE 4 DIFFERENT ROOMS Every location embeds a selection of products from the new Kartell by Laufen collection. Natural shapes and left-overs from consumption age form the architectural setting. Animals and human beings suddenly appearing
and disappearing; weather, daytime, lights and a very layered soundscape direct the journey through the space. Quick quotes deriving from surrealism provoke humoristic comments on current times. The stacked, interactive rooms are to be explored by scrolling and clicking. Entering different scenarios in which nature takes back over the built environment. A mixed media experience. Defined by collages, chaos and the flowers and moments of clarity orchestrated within, in order to trigger questions: ... “What is real? Where are we heading towards? Do we want this? What stays?...”
Laufen virtual space is about exploring a dream-like landscape through four different Kartell by Laufen sets and nature-infused stories that let one wander and wonder. Starting in the urban area, driving to the desert, exploring the forest by night and escaping to an artist room in which Laufen presents a limited special edition of screen-printed collages by Swiss artist Monique Baumann. It is a digital solution with the goal of transporting emotions to the user - not an easy task considering that we are all online a substantial part of our lives today. The space wants to provide an experience of digitally animated, semi-interactive collages. Surreal spaces with a wink and the purposely very tactile feel while being fully immersed in the digital. A journey of process and progress telling a story and carefully taking the products by the hand. Almost like strolling through a Laufen booth at a fair designed by architect Gabrielle Hächler and Andreas Fuhrimann.
THE 4 DIFFERENT ROOMS Every location embeds a selection of products from the new Kartell by Laufen collection. Natural shapes and left-overs from consumption age form the architectural setting. Animals and human beings suddenly appearing
and disappearing; weather, daytime, lights and a very layered soundscape direct the journey through the space. Quick quotes deriving from surrealism provoke humoristic comments on current times. The stacked, interactive rooms are to be explored by scrolling and clicking. Entering different scenarios in which nature takes back over the built environment. A mixed media experience. Defined by collages, chaos and the flowers and moments of clarity orchestrated within, in order to trigger questions: ... “What is real? Where are we heading towards? Do we want this? What stays?...”
THE URBAN Spaces designed for humans, conquered and shaped by the elements of nature. A platform of hope and reflection. Wired emotions; survival mode; disruption in midst of crisis. Traces of life within the urban area. Moving the elementary, abandon spaces that were meant to live and work. Smoke and light fill the air. Water reflects the moment.
THE DESERT An escape from abandoned city life to the desert. Fire and wiggling paths through the sand define the journey. Precious life is found in the oasis – where water pours. A standstill to examine progress – a pause to reflect.
THE FOREST Wandering and wondering through the woods. Detecting life in sunken places. Discovering and flying with the magical and indulging within the built environment surrounded by the depths of the forest.
THE ARTIST SPACE An exclusive space with limited products and collaborations. Shown first in the virtual - as it is different and functions as a satelitte room besides the post-apocaliptic scenario of the other three rooms. This space features Swiss artist Monique Baumann’s limited edition of screenprints on ceramic. Putting her analog art into the digital realm is bewildering and yet free of hierarchy and expectation. In her space, the artist brings in the nature of making, deconstruction and new assembly with a positive outlook to the new, based on the recycled already existing.
THE USER JOURNEY
The visitor enters a prompt that already asks for “what is actually real? Where do we live, what are our rituals? Or what does really count in life....? Do we live in a dream or is it real? (...)”. After a short Intro, the Kartell plastic inspired, rotating sphere drops and the user is invited to scroll through the 4 differnet rooms. Each of them designed under the same narrative - the post-apocalyptic, mixed media infused, chaotic. Wandering through semi-interactive rooms, sprinkled with traces, unveiling life and deeper questions to our current Zeitgeist - an era of instability and crisis.
Every location embeds a selection of products from the new Kartell by Laufen collection. Natural shapes and left-overs from consumption age form the architectural setting. Animals and human beings suddenly appearing and disappearing; weather, daytime, lights and a very layered soundscape direct the journey through the space. Quick quotes deriving from surrealism provoke humoristic comments on current times.
The visitor enters a prompt that already asks for “what is actually real? Where do we live, what are our rituals? Or what does really count in life....? Do we live in a dream or is it real? (...)”. After a short Intro, the Kartell plastic inspired, rotating sphere drops and the user is invited to scroll through the 4 differnet rooms. Each of them designed under the same narrative - the post-apocalyptic, mixed media infused, chaotic. Wandering through semi-interactive rooms, sprinkled with traces, unveiling life and deeper questions to our current Zeitgeist - an era of instability and crisis.
Every location embeds a selection of products from the new Kartell by Laufen collection. Natural shapes and left-overs from consumption age form the architectural setting. Animals and human beings suddenly appearing and disappearing; weather, daytime, lights and a very layered soundscape direct the journey through the space. Quick quotes deriving from surrealism provoke humoristic comments on current times.
DATE 2022 (on-going)
LOCATION www.laufenvirtualspace.com
CATEGORY Virtual Space Design, Pop-Up Design, Graphic Design, Storytelling, Mixed Media
ROLE Art Direction, Concept, Design, Production
COLLABORATORS LAUFEN (Client), Fuhrimann Hächler, Carlo Peters (Sound), Henkel Hiedl (Web)
KEY TERMS #Virtual #MixedMedia #Collage #FutureInteriors #Bathroom
LOCATION www.laufenvirtualspace.com
CATEGORY Virtual Space Design, Pop-Up Design, Graphic Design, Storytelling, Mixed Media
ROLE Art Direction, Concept, Design, Production
COLLABORATORS LAUFEN (Client), Fuhrimann Hächler, Carlo Peters (Sound), Henkel Hiedl (Web)
KEY TERMS #Virtual #MixedMedia #Collage #FutureInteriors #Bathroom