Furniture style rarely grapples seriously with the problem– nay, opportunity– of a space’s center. The majority of pieces are conceived in relation to walls, edges, and the architectural perimeter: a backdrop instead of an object. Shelving especially tends to exist as a type of vertical airplane pushed versus a surface area. Colin King’s Crescent Shelving– his very first foray into furniture for Audo– difficulties this convention at a structural level, proposing a kind that can easily inhabit the middle of a space. Developed as part of a brand-new chapter in King’s partnership with the Danish brand name, the piece reframes storage as a spatial experience, shaping the space as much as it serves it.
The profile, flat at the front and curved at the back, is the central decision from which whatever else follows. The crescent-shaped shape– both strong and silently well balanced– provides the piece a meaningful directionality without closing it off, enabling sightlines and light to go through the open kind no matter technique angle. This is furnishings solved on all sides, which in practice means it works similarly as shelving, storage, and room divider– though none of these classifications completely includes it.
The better framework is most likely sculptural things, one that takes place to organize and support things. The open back and gentle curvature engage the surrounding area from every vantage point, strengthening the concept that the piece participates in the space rather than merely inhabiting it. King’s trajectory into item design deserves comprehending in this context. A
professionally qualified dancer who moved into editorial styling for publications like Architectural Digest and T Magazine, he brings a particularly embodied understanding of how objects trigger space– not just aesthetically, but through the method they structure motion and attention within a room. Dance training conditions an intense awareness of how a body reads from several viewpoint concurrently, and Crescent shows this completely. It is a piece that modifications meaningfully as you move around it, the flat front face paving the way to a softer, more volumetric rear profile. In that sense, the design feels less like a fixed furnishing and more like an item in quiet dialogue with its surroundings.
The lacquered oak construction premises the sculptural context in product heat. Rounded corners and smooth contours work versus any propensity toward severity, softening what is in truth a significant form. Two heights are currently offered, permitting the style to operate throughout different spatial registers– the smaller version functioning behind a couch or as a console, the taller introducing vertical stretch into bigger rooms.
In either scale, Crescent keeps its necessary proposition: that shelving can be more than storage. It can be architecture in mini, a things that subtly specifies the circulation of area while still leaving room for light, objects, and everyday life to move easily through it.
To discover more and go shopping the brand name, visit audocph.com.
Photography courtesy of Audo. Leo Lei translates his passion for minimalism into his daily-updated blog Leibal. In addition, you can find distinctively created minimalist items and furniture at the Leibal Shop.