Title Glass Elephant
Category Exhibition design
Client Stockholm Furniture Fair, stockholmfurniturefair.se
Material Aluminium
Year 2013
Glass Elephant is a design installation exploring glass as both material and formal subject, presented in the Skeppsholmen Caverns at the Far Eastern Antiquities Museum in Stockholm as part of Stockholm Design Week 2013. The installation was a collaboration between Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair and ABB, bringing together industrial robotics and traditional glassmaking craft in a single space.
The concept departs directly from the character of the cavern setting, a space entirely without natural light. Rather than working against this condition, TAF chose to emphasise it, introducing windows as a symbolic theme throughout the installation. Unable to look out, the windows become objects of reflection rather than openings, drawing attention inward to the interplay between the delicate qualities of glass and the precision of industrial robot arms.
Glass sheets were placed on tripods commonly found in mechanical workshops, a pragmatic and cost conscious solution that also reinforced the industrial character of the installation, connecting the display directly to the working environment from which the robot technology originates.