Inflated metal furniture by Oskar Zieta

Chippensteel chairs by Oskar Zieta at Moss Gallery

Oskar Zieta has to be one of the busiest exhibiting designers around at the moment. This month alone his work has been on show at DMY International Design Festival Berlin, Design Miami/Basel, Moss Gallery in New York, and the Saatchi Gallery in London.

Pin hanger system

The Polish designer creates objects by inflating steel components using a process he has developed himself, called FIDU. Zieta says of the process: “FIDU stands for FreieInnenDruckUmformung - the Internal Pressure Forming - which implies inflating two steel sheets welded around their edges into a 3d object. It takes only two thin steel sheets to create a complicated and very durable 3d object from steel in FIDU.”

Kamm hanger system

Zieta first started developing the FIDU process while working as a research associate at ETH Zurich, where it became the focus of his doctoral thesis. He founded Zieta, his design consultancy, in 2007 alongside its sister company Steelwerk Polska - which is responsible for CNC processing the sheet metal that the furniture is made from.

ETH Zurich space at DMY Berlin. Foreground: Plopp stools; background: Bones

Products shown at DMY included copper and brass versions of Chippensteel and a table designed in collaboration with Lutz Huening (both shown by the Karena Schuessler Gallery). Hanger systems by Zieta called Pin and Kamm, and a construction system called Bones, were also shown at DMY, this time in collaboration with ETH Zurich.
 
Earlier pieces, including Plopp stool and the original Chippensteel, were on show at Design Miami/Basel, and as part of ‘Poetic License: deliberate deviations from normally applicable rules and practices’, at Moss Gallery in New York.

Plopp stools

The Saatchi Gallery is showing multi-coloured Plopp stools as part of the ‘Connectors’ exhibition in its Phillip de Pury & Company Gallery. The exhibition focuses on design which converts the two-dimensional into three-dimensional, and features Zieta alongside the likes of Max Lamb, Nendo and Pieke Bergmans. It runs until 2 July 2010.

http://www.zieta.pl/

Sarah Housley
Interiors