Granite sling bench by Soft Baroque

The design duo Soft Baroque blurs the boundaries between acceptable furniture typologies and conceptual representative objects. Trained in furniture and graphic design respectively, they explore objecthood and the perception of materiality in the age of digital image cultures.

Their project Soft/Hard, commissioned by Etage Projects for Design Miami Basel/ 2016’s Curio program, sees the sensory manipulation of interior design objects like benches and shelves, and the automated value inscription embedded in everyday objects. The surfaces of materials, like exotic wood and granite, are scanned and digitally printed onto silk textiles. Analyzing the idea of a digital veneer, these objects negotiate what happens when materiality travels from the physical to electric signals and pulses, and back again. As objects, they defy any obvious compartmentalization in art or design, and humorously explore the critical hierarchies that exist between functionalist and aesthetic objects. The project lends itself to trending discourses of object-oriented ontology and speculative realism, without abandoning our perverted sense of consumer logic.