Studio Swine is Coming to Toronto

I'm thrilled to introduce on-stage Alexander Groves and Azusa Murakami of London's Studio Swine, for their first visit to Toronto. The design duo will be Guests of Honour at this year's DesignTO. They will be here to talk about how their multi-disciplinary practice is rooted to extensive research and development. My guess is this event, being held on January 25, 2019, will sell out quickly, so take this post as a sign now is a good time to buy your tickets.

If you haven't heard of them, here is a brief history. Studio Swine – which stands for Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers – was established by Groves and Murakami in 2011, after they met while students in London; he was studying visual arts, while she was working toward an architecture degree. They are best known for an installation called New Spring, a life-size "tree" that exhales scented soap bubbles from its chandelier-like branches.

Some 200 soap bubbles are released every minute as visitors, wearing wool gloves, are encouraged to try and catch the bubbles before they land on the floor and burst. Shown at Milan Design Week in 2017 to rave reviews, and later at Design Miami, the installation was inspired by the ephemeral nature of Japanese cherry trees, which bloom for just one week each spring.

What's interesting about Swine is the underlying themes that connect with nature and that run just below the surface of most of their projects. New Spring's bubbles, for instance, could be read as stand-ins for the unseen oxygen real trees add to the atmosphere. In other projects, their research is rooted in finding ways to use and manipulate raw material. Human hair, for instance, which when dipped in resin takes on the same rich and hardened appeal of tortoise shell. Or aluminum cans that can be crushed, compressed and shaped into three-legged stools.

One of my favourite Azure magazine covers (October 2017) featured a beautifully sculpted chair that looked like it was built out of bentwood and rattan caning. In fact, it is made of rubber sourced from the Amazon. It may look like yet another high-end Italian design offering, but its framework was crafted out of ebonite (a hardened material made of vulcanized rubber, sulphur and linseed oil, and that predates bakelite) along with other renewables, including fish leather

But don't call Studio Swine green designers. That label often comes attached with a political agenda or a granola-crunching stigma, which doesn't sit well with the designers, and nor should it. Their work is more of an exploration into materials that already exist, but have either been overlooked or ignored. As Murakami explained in a profile published in Icon magazine last year, the furniture they make is more like a vehicle to express ideas. It's the concept behind the product that matters most.

Studio Swine will be in Toronto to talk about their work on January 25, 2019. DesignTO Talks: Studio Swine.