About the Shelter to Ground collection:
‘Shelter to Ground’ is a family of sculptural furniture that evolved from a fascination with the relationship between Hong Kong’s natural and urban landscapes. Discarded boulders – many of them fallen from old stone walls – found on Hong Kong Island are responded to with simple bent sheet metal to create functional furniture. An exercise in ‘as little interference as possible’ – every item produced is unique as the natural shapes of each stone dictate the proportions of the overall piece.
Set to find harmony between natural and human-made materials, a two-year experiment by design and art duo Batten and Kamp bring sculptural chairs, tables, lights, and mirrors in the “Shelter to ground” series.
The series relies on the premise of responding to the natural shapes in a way that complements it, later developing forms from metal and glass. Rather than using nature to bend to their will, the duo tries to design around untouched boulders they found in nature (which serve as the anchor), deciding on the proportions of seats, surfaces, and lights. This results in every piece of design being different and unique. They stated: “It’s a particular kind of minimalism – minimal interference with the existing, rather than minimal visual complexity. We simply want to highlight the beauty that is already there”.
Natural and man-made materials coexist harmoniously throughout the collection, similar to Hong Kong’s contrast of metropolis and jungle, and the result is a beautifully raw and elegant furniture collection that is both usable, but their primary tool is contemplation — to help people think or feel more deeply about relationships – to nature, between different materials, places, landscapes, ideas.
Check out the “Shelter to ground” by interior architect Alexandra Batten and designer/artist Daniel Kamp below, and visit their website at Batten and Kamp.
