Kalab (close to home) - Ezri Tarazi Design Studio

room composition, image from designboom

Kalab (close to home) is an exhibition the Paradigma Design Gallery in Tel Aviv Israel by the artist, Ezri Tarazi. (until March 18) It consists of both reclaimed war paraphernalia and mimics thereof that has creatively been remade/made into furnishings. There's a sofa resembling a sandbag fortification, a lamp constructed out of satchel straps, recreating the shape of tires from army trucks, a shelf built out of discarded ammunition boxes.

sandbag sofa, image from dornob

satchel strap lamp, image from tarazi studio

ammunition box shelf + powder coated iron, image from designboom

Of course, this is still high-end design place in a design gallery but there is an juxtaposition in Tarazi's work. It is based on the memories of a state at war, his childhood and his concern for the future of Israel, as noticed over at designboom and dornob. The designs speaking of the relationship between the military and the civil and how closely related these are within the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Conflict becoming domesticated when it is carried on for generations.

This is personal and is a retrospective of the designers own life, experiences and feelings. What is interesting to me as a landscape architect is the act of reclaiming materials for the purpose of remaking them into a new functional state of being but still somewhat resembling what it once was, what purpose it served and what memories are attached to it. I am a romantic in this way, and romanticising like this does not speak or reflect the reality of the experiences that somebody from this region would've gone through.

The act of reclaiming materials in the war torn landscape speaks about spatial systems, both the system of warfare and the system of recuperating and rebuilding from it. The system of warfare exhibited in the locations of found objects and the system of rebuilding in the new locations that the materials find themselves in. The objects themselves are framed moments in time but the process behind making/remaking them, speaks about landscape, the time and process of our culture and how we occupy space.