A Search Behind Apparencies

A Search Behind Appearances is a unique collaboration between designer Hella Jongerius and theorist Louise Schouwenberg for la Rinascente department store in Milan. Commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries.

For the third year of an ongoing collaboration at Salone Del Mobile – Milan’s celebrated annual design festival – Serpentine Galleries and la Rinascente department store have commissioned celebrated designer Hella Jongerius and theorist Louise Schouwenberg to create a special installation for the store’s eight front windows.

A Search Behind Appearances reflects on the state of affairs in design and prompts a consideration of the meanings that hide behind appearances. It does so through a sophisticated shadow play. Ingeniously animated and automated small-scale machines assemble and dis-assemble iconic objects.
Presented at the Salone del Mobile, Jongerius and Schouwenberg’s 2015 manifesto Beyond the New addressed the deceptive world of empty spectacle and commercial verbiage in design, and made a plea for a renewed idealistic agenda.

In 2016 Jongerius and Schouwenberg move beyond criticism and celebrate foremost the innate potential of design. The imaginative shadows, the intricate fabrics, and their interplay, evoke questions and offer means for ‘reading’ a design’s true value.