STUDIES IN MUMBAI
World-renowned architect Bijoy Jain brings his unique aesthetic to the world of furniture design.
Studio Mumbai’s limited edition furniture for the Belgian company Manieri are exercises in architectural form. The Brick Studies series of benches and chairs uses precise, scaled down replicas of traditional clay bricks, dry-stacked according to heritage methods into evocative open-work arches that sit atop simple, almost gestureless rosewood benches. The Illumination Studies appropriate the traditional Tazia, models of monuments that are carried on men’s shoulders in processions during Muharram month in India, in remembrance of the martyred son of the prophet Mohammed. In the hands of Studio Mumbai’s craftsmen, the fine bamboo sticks are secured with silk thread, covered in gold leaf to reflect the light when a bulb is suspended within the structure. The Net Room is demarcated by a slung nastary silk net tinted with organic marigold dye, held up by bamboo bound with bimel tree bark rope. Apparently haphazard, the poetry resides in the informality of the gesture. Studio Mumbai buildings are notable for their inherent reliance on craft, and built from materials often gathered onsite. What’s extraordinary is, the more one pulls back from them, the more their modernist lines become pronounced. It’s like watching pixels slowly coalesce into solid form. “This idea of zooming in and zooming out – that’s the idea of agility,” says Bijoy. “This allows the building to exist in different dimensions.”
The same can be said of the furniture, which from close quarters privilege an interpretation as craft, but with distance appear architectonic. “The way craft is understood, I find it very nostalgic,” says Bijoy. “And I want to move away from nostalgia. What I discovered, after working for a time was, why is craft important? In fact, it’s a question of touch. It’s touch that’s important, not craft in itself.”
Studio Mumbai Studies series for Maniera, available in a limited editions of one to 15, according to the model.
“The way craft is understood, I find it very nostalgic. And I want to move away from nostalgia.”