Above image: 17 Screens exhibition by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec Design, 2015.

The following is an extract from Niche Media and Gorman/Birrell’s Architecture and Design Forecast 2016

As workspaces deconstruct and home spaces veer towards more broken plan configurations, room dividers are set for a revival. Last seen lurking in splendour in the 1970s (often in rattan or copper), the new look room divider is ceiling suspended and entirely modular, allowing a constantly evolving articulation of office or recreational space.

French designer brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have devised 17 Screens exhibition currently on show at Tel Aviv Museum of Art (until 26 March). The result of more than 12 months of research and development, the room dividers are variously expressed in glass, aluminium, ceramic and even wooden twigs linked together by 3D-printed joints.

“The Screens are a sort of knitting in space, they float in a solid but ephemeral manner, present, but also immaterial,” says Ronan Bouroullec. “They organise the space by creating an opacity between zones rather than a real separation. This allows the separate zones a certain materiality, but not an oppressive one. If you think of Japanese sliding paper screens, they are present but also quite absent because of their frailty, delicacy.”

The Bouroullecs also experiment with freemounted fabric to evoke a sense of fluidity in interior layout. 17 Screens will be extended and modified in the Bouroullecs’ European summer exhibition takeover of the French city of Rennes (25 March to 28 August 2016).

To find out more on the Forecast, visit future.australiandesignreview.com

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