This is Concrete Rug by London based artist Alex Chinneck. Designed to be walked on but not to wrap yourself up in.
Credit where it’s due. Our attention was drawn to this by British Design Blogger Design Hunter a woman with a remarkable radar for all that is fresh, interesting and unexpected.
Concrete Rug, designed in collaboration with British illustrator Matthew Gaffen, applies the symmetry and motifs of traditional Oriental rug design. It is made up, 238 individual pieces of local authority paving slab and we think it is rather beautiful.
Concrete Rug is one of a number of interesting pieces featured on The Sculpture House, which also provided the images for this post. Motivated by a belief that artists bring alternative attributes to a design process, The Sculpture House says it wants to present promising international artists, bridging the disciplines of Fine Art and Contemporary Design. They are responsible for an ongoing series of furniture commissions, working with the artists, guiding their concepts through British workshops and channeling the sculptural practice into beautifully crafted, functional items.
Concrete Rug follows a series of large-scale outdoor sculptures, and Alex Chinneck’s investigations into concrete and the boundaries of its capabilities. As Sculpture House point out, the material is the subject, and Chinneck coaxes quite remarkable things from the overlooked, almost invisible ‘stuff’ of our built environment. Our thanks to Alex Chinneck for this fascinating and original piece of work, to Sculpture House for the imagination and enterprise to commission it and to Design Hunter for drawing our attention to it. The World would be a much duller place without all of them.
Images all: Concrete Rug, Alex Chinneck for The Sculpture House
