P R O D U C E R Droog Design, Netherlands
1999
M A T E R I A L
A N D
D I M E N S I O N S
stainless steel
100 x 75 x 70cm
Do hit was created in December 1999 for an assignment at the Design Academy. The goal was to design an interpretation of a chair by an Italian designer. I choose Enzo Mari's 'sof-sof chair'. Its complex looking frame to me seemed a result of good craftsmanship but as it turned out it was one of the first examples of spot welding in the furniture industry. This contradiction became the concept for the chair and the first result was the rocking chair. It was a full-scale sketch but a finished product at the same time. Although my teacher urged me to further explore the shape and form I thought it basically answered my handcrafted-industry concept and didn't see the purpose. The car panels with their intricate details stood for the industrial part and the cutting and welding back together for the handcrafted part. Do hit started a small copper model which I beat into a tiny chair with the pointed part of a hobby hammer. The cube would be easy to produce industrially and would be molded into a chair using a hammer. Repetition of the beating only strengthened the concept. When the model was scaled up the small radius on the pointed tip of the hammer was scaled up as well. The shaping of the first do hit was filmed by Sophie Krier and was presented in December 1999 and picked up by Droog a few months later. It was named Do Hit and I agreed to allow the chairs to be shaped by others for the project.
