The Wish List is a collaborative project between some of the best-known design names and up-and-coming designers, brought together by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and Benchmark Furniture to create an installation exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum during the 2014 London Design Festival.
The Wish List
AHEC and Benchmark brought together famous and emerging designers and architects to create an installation exhibited at the V&A Museum during 2014 London Design Festival.
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- 15 September 2014
- London
Terence Conran, co-founder of Benchmark, instigated the project when he wrote to a selection of famous architects and designers (Paul Smith, Norman Foster, Amanda Levete, John Pawson, Alison Brooks, Zaha Hadid, Alex de Rijke, Allen Jones and Richard and Ab Rogers) and asked, “What have you always wanted in your home, but have never been able to find?”
Such an open brief guarantees an extraordinary spread of design and the challenge was to produce each project in a single material: American hardwood. The Wish List has also given opportunity to a talented group of emerging designers, who worked closely with their commissioners to develop the designs and constructed them with the help of Benchmark’s master craftsmen.
Terence Conran himself commissioned a workspace in red oak and cherry from Sebastian Cox, who crafted a complex and ingenious cocooned desk with shelving units; Norie Matsumoto created the perfect set of tulipwood pencil sharpeners for Norman Foster; Win Assakul designed and made an extendable 3m long walnut serving dish for Amanda Levete.
Gwendolyn and Guillane Kerschbaumer, the sisters who form Studio Areti, designed a suite of interior architectural elements for John Pawson: a set of walnut shelves, a tapered white oak door, a set of walnut hooks and pegs and a walnut light switch, all for his new house.
Felix de Pass designed simple but strikingly elegant cherry kitchen stools for architect Alison Brooks; Gareth Neal made two extraordinary sculptural vessels out of white oak for Zaha Hadid; Nathalie de Leval, who is also a cabinetmaker, designed and built a personalised garden shed for Paul Smith out of thermally modified ash; Rob Barnby and Lewis Day of Barnby & Day created a dramatic circular dining table for Alex de Rijke using engineered cross laminated tulipwood. Richard Rogers, together with his son Ab Rogers, requested a red oak ladder that they could sit and work on from Xenia Moseley; and Lola Lely interpreted a very unusual design concept for a reclining seat from artist Allen Jones constructed out of maple and walnut veneer.
until October 24, 2014
The Wish List
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, London