cambridge MASSACHUSETTS

Zoe Coombes will speak about her experiences working in the world of contemporary furniture design. Reflecting on both the rate of change within digitized production, and the all-too-contemporary question of how best to learn from the past, Zoe’s talk will pose questions about the future of utility and desire in a robotized age.

Zoe COOMBES, “Forged by Numbers”
Friday, 04/12
12.30pm / MIT Department of Architecture
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

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new york NEW YORK

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

cmmnwlth (zoe COOMBES & david BOIRA): The Seltanica is a production light we originally developed for Wright Auction and Volume Gallery of Chicago. It appeared in their fall contemporary exhibit, ‘Truth in Form, Reason For Being’. It is a suspension lamp, cast in white Gypsum. Modeled via software generally used for the replication of animal skins and other such intricate surfaces, the piece is ultimately cast into a material that has over 5,000 years of use- White Gypsum. This attempt to relate the contemporary to the historical is common to most of our work.

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new york NEW YORK

The Business of Aura is an exhibition hosted in two locations, Elga Wimmer Gallery and Broadway Gallery, curated by Kelsey Harrington. It includes painting, drawing, photography, sculptural prototypes, and installation. The show examines the potential of studio processes to produce aura.

Artists & architecturally trained designers at Elga Wimmer Gallery include - Helen Brough, Elizabeth Cooper, Cmmnwlth (Zoe Coombes & David Boira)-in collaboration with Timothy Saccenti, Kelsey Harrington, Jon Meyer, Steve Orlando, Devin Powers, Snarkitecture, SOFTlab, Studio Mode, and yo_cy (Christine Yogiaman & Ken Tracy).

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brooklyn NEW YORK

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

cmmnwlth: ‘Headspace’ was a symposium convened by Paola Antonelli, of the MoMA, and Laetitia Wolff of Futureflair, exploring the impact and potential applications of scent on design. Given the challenge of combining constructed smells with designed objects in a way that sheds light on the nature of both fields, we immersed ourselves within the laboratories of global perfume giant, International Flavors and Fragrances.

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brooklyn NEW YORK

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

zoe COOMBES of Cmmnwlth: Is the provisional name we’ve been using for a cabinet that will be launching in the fall as part of our upcoming ‘Morfina Series’, for MatterMade. We’ve been exploring the effects of gouged solids via soft body collisions, and cloth simulations on a relatively thin surfaces.

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brooklyn NEW YORK

zoe COOMBES + david BOIRA: casas i carbo is a set of two masks made in sla photoresin and horse hair presenting a meeting of the exact and the hairy, and the natural and near-figure. one mask is for a man, the other for a woman. the masks were developed for a short video with director and photographer timothy saccenti in conjunction with partizan films. in casas i carbo, the naturally grown material (pony hair), is embedded within the highly unnatural, yet precise rapid-prototyped photoresins. this uncanny material relationship is something that has inspired new ideas at commonwealth- ones which attempt to embed these sorts of dense material relationships within future furniture design projects.

painted sla photoresin and horse hair. (palamino pony tail hair).
each mask is secured by antique leather strapping.

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