A new exhibition spotlights the studio’s innovative kitchen designs


Now Showing: Chmara.Rosinke in Berlin

By Anna Carnick

This week, Berlin’s Museum of Decorative Arts launches a new exhibition dedicated to experimental design studio Chmara.Rosinke and their ongoing fascination with a space we can all relate to: the kitchen. Over the past decade, the designers’ work has frequently explored the “what ifs” relating to food culture, looking with fresh eyes on the spaces and norms associated with food’s preparation and enjoyment. Through six major works, in a variety of contexts, they’ve reimagined the structure, functionality, and aesthetics of the kitchen—the physical and symbolic heart of culinary life. And in doing so, they’ve created opportunities for the rest of us to reconsider this familiar space, as well as our relationships to food, dining, and beyond. The new show brings together all of the studio’s kitchen designs in one place for the very first time.

Time for Oneself, a mobile kitchen designed for Hermès Image courtesy of Chmara.Rosinke
From a beautifully handcrafted kitchen that fits on one’s back (perfect, say, for a worn out city dweller to escape with to the countryside for an afternoon retreat) to a wheeled, mobile kitchen and dining set intended to gather strangers together as an exercise in hospitality, the duo has realized concept-driven design solutions that evoke, in turns, joy, humor, grace, and even romance. Simultaneously, they’ve used the kitchen as a frame through which to posit a number of questions, big and small: What if we wholly reconsider the culture of dining? What are the real barriers between private versus public spheres? How do we facilitate and nurture community? How do we renew and feed our own souls in this context? And on and on.

According to exhibition curator Claudia Banz: “I came across the work of Chmara.Rosinke for the first time a few years ago in Hamburg at the annual fair for art and craft...We are united by a great interest in the complex topic of food, which Chmara.Rosinke embody in their own holistic way and which they interpret and aesthetically design again and again in very different projects. Thus the idea was born to dedicate an exhibition to this focus in their work.”

Chmara.Rosinke at work Image courtesy of the designers
She goes on, “What inspires me about Chmara.Rosinke is their conceptual ideas and their respective implementation, which are located between object, interior, and architecture. They are defining a new aesthetic of cosmopolitan urban living while reflecting the natural needs of people who have often fallen victim to the rationalization of design in recent decades. Important facets of design such as sustainable production, social interaction or the use of technical expertise through appropriate cooperation are transported with a light, sometimes poetic formal language that creates new emotional values and thus a double sustainability.”

An overview of Chmara.Rosinke's kitchen designs from the past decade Image courtesy of Chmara.Rosinke

Design Lab #3: Mobile Kitchens by Chmara.Rosinke is open at Berlin's Museum of Decorative Arts (Kunstgewerbemuseum) from June 6 to July 21, 2019. For more details, click here

  • Text by

    • Anna Carnick

      Anna Carnick

      Anna is Pamono’s Managing Editor. Her writing has appeared in several arts and culture publications, and she's edited over 20 books. Anna loves celebrating great artists, and seriously enjoys a good picnic.

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