By injecting concrete into balloons and arranging them in a mold, a perfectly fitting set of concrete bricks is made. This is a new method of generating distorted soft architecture and objects and an exploration in the visual and tactile exchange between soft and hard.
Soft Baroque is formed by Royal College of Art graduates Nicholas Gardner and Saša Štucin. Their London-based practice focuses on creating work with conflicting materials and processes, without abandoning beauty or consumer logic. They are keen to blur the boundaries between acceptable furniture typologies and conceptual representative objects, rendering a new set of aesthetic and functional values.
Making plays a big role in their practice. They are designers and manufacturers of their objects. Their interest in various materials results in a diverse body of work. The refined, simplified forms of their works reflect principles of mid-century design, but the pieces also veer toward conceptual territory by evoking the malleability of how objects are seen and mediated today. Traditionally a craftsman's practice would be in proximity to the raw material used to fabricate objects. In the same fashion Soft Baroque produces work in the context of metropolitan environment: processed materials manufactured for the domestic interiors are manipulated to unconventional ends. These new raw materials are converted into objects that still possess an echo from their intended use.
