YOUNG TALENTS
Desirable Deviations

Turn left out of Vulkanstrasse, go past the construction site for a factory hall and a Pakistani restaurant and there they are, the two red concrete towers. One is still unoccupied while architect Arno Brandlhuber has converted the other into a workspace for his office bplus. Here in the middle of Lichtenberg’s commercial park a community of creators have created a base. One of them is young designer Matthias Gschwendtner. The tower is just the right place for him, he enjoys working with others, networking, and developing projects with different partners. And there is enough space to do this on the ground floor of the former silo with its solid concrete pillars. Robust desks on castors distributed casually around the room, warehouse shelving, machines, tools, boxes, cables – definitely somewhere to get your hands dirty! “I’ve been here for a year,” says Gschwendtner in an accent that is unmistakably Bavarian. “It’s a good place to work.”

Two prototypes of Matthias Gschwendtner’s best-known project to date stand in front of one of the large windows, the “New Sources” chair. One of the two chairs is banged together from branches, while the seat and backrest are made of coarse wooden boards. The other prototype is already closer to the finished chair; the frame is made from birch branches, seat and backrest are cut out as recesses. Some two years ago, Gschwendtner produced “New Sources” as his final year project to complete his Master’s degree at the Berlin University of the Arts, after obtaining his Bachelor’s degree at Regensburg Technical University. However, the word ‘chair’ is not really an accurate designation as what the designer has actually done is to develop a process for re-using wooden leftovers such as tree cuttings. The process begins with a digital model of the object to be produced. Then Gschwendtner uses a professional 3D scanner to input the branches. Subsequently an algorithm he developed fits the branches in the right place on the 3D model and calculates what needs to be cut off.

According to Mattias Gschwendtner the object of “New Sources” is “to plan an object precisely using imprecise material”. Not only did the project receive a prize at last year’s Designblok festival in Prague, it was also on display in the exhibition of the German Design Graduates Initiative in Dresden; the Museum of Decorative Arts there bought one of the chairs. Moreover, the “Ukurant” design platform recently showed his work in Copenhagen during the 3daysofdesign. The project came about during the Covid-19 pandemic: Matthias Gschwendtner was in the middle of his final year and the doors to the university’s workshop were closed. So without further ado he moved back to his parents in Northeast Bavaria for six months and set up a second-hand industrial robot in their garage. There was plenty of waste wood around anyhow. “Great material for the Master’s degree, as you can experiment a lot and it doesn’t cost you anything,” he comments. However, he didn’t get the robot arm up and running as quickly as he’d anticipated. “I was rather naive in that respect. I spent four months getting the thing to work.” He’s going to re-assemble it in a friend’s studio in Pankow shortly. Then he plans to use the same process to transform old pieces of furniture into new objects – calculated digitally and tailor cut using the robot arm.

Matthias Gschwendtner also copes just fine with ancient artisanal skills: The young Berlin glass label “Analog Glas” is presently launching a hand-made decanter as a small series for which he and his partner Shantala Chandel made a tool. While still hot the glass bubble is pinched together with pincers and shaped. The gesture of pinching turns out a little differently every time, as chance plays a role in the design. “I find it exciting working like this, developing processes for small series where you get slight irregularities owing to the material or technique. You never end up with exactly the same item.” He is currently involved in a project for which he’s busy collaborating with designer Anton Defant, who also works in the Lichtenberg tower. It is about industrial design for the sanitary sector – more can’t be revealed at the moment. Part of a model is taking shape in the 3D printer as we speak.

With Berlin ceramic artist Jojo Corväiá, by contrast, Matthias Gschwendtner designs organically shaped ceramic console tables – unique pieces that are to be exhibited in a design gallery later this year. In addition, he works several times a week in the studio of Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade – to finance his livelihood and all his freelance projects. But he is also making money from his design work, such as the globe luminaire he has set on a wastebasket in the workshop. With its light-bulb spikes it resembles a coronavirus, and indeed it mutates a little with each version. Gschwendtner uses stainless steel balls for it into which he cuts holes for the fittings. In each model the fittings are positioned differently. The luminaire is already an Instagram success and he is contacted regularly by people saying they would like to buy one. He will shortly produce a series of ten and the shiny balls are already lying ready in a warehouse at the top of the tower.