Tall Furniture / Robert Douglas Turek

Rating: 9.0/10 (2 votes cast)

TALL FURNITURE

Robert Douglas Turek created a new system for live performance. These sculpture-furniture-objects are condensed stages for each performer. By spreading the stage into multiple focal points, the audience is deeply immersed in the performance, free to move about and experience intimate and unique vantage points.

This set of furniture for musical performance can be spread throughout a crowd, creating multiple points of interest to engage an audience. They represent a larger project that includes performance, graphic design, illustration, marketing, songwriting and music recordings.

Robert Douglas Turek

In my most recent performance I lead a team of 3 brass, 5 vocalists/musicians/actors, 3 fabricators, and 1 wardrobe consultant to create a 2 part musical that was presented at the recent reopening of Cranbrook Art Museum. I composed all the songs, designed and built all the furniture. There was no traditional stage; instead musicians wandered and marched around the museum crowd, accompanying the actors singing from tall furniture spread throughout the room. Everybody could see and hear, and the audience was free to move about, getting as close to the objects and performers as they wished. This gave each audience member a truly unique experience.

Core77 Design Awards

Some of the best designs are solutions to problems we didn’t know we had. What a great idea! And well executed. We loved that this is both sculptural and community-building! The furniture is incredibly striking and elegant, but the best part is the way it opens up all sorts of possibilities for performance space. Simple concept, nice clean design, and replicable with the right resources. Really well done. We especially loved seeing the project in action.

Data

Name: Tall Furniture
Type: Furniture for live music performance, Stool
Materials: Red Oak
Materials Combination: Wood, Eco/Recycled/Green
Dimensions: Tall Stool – 22″x22″x5′
Colour: Natural Color
Year: 2011

Award:
Core77 Design Awards 1st Place – DIY / HACK / MOD 2011

The people

Furniture Designer: Robert Douglas Turek
Text Description: © Courtesy of Robert Douglas Turek, Core77 Design Awards
Images: © Ronald Thibault, Rob Walcott