If you’ve ever tried to decorate a room and have been frustrated because there weren’t pieces of furniture that were uniquely “you,” you might be in luck. Dutch design studio Tjep. will present its first exhibition of DNA furniture and jewelry, called “Future Nostalgia," at Ventura Lambrate in Milan this month. That's right — furniture shaped by DNA data.
Frank Tjepkema, founder of Tjep. studio, is making these truly one-of-a-kind creations in collaboration with DutchDNA’s Eric Wolthuis by taking genetic profiles, mapping them with 3-D imaging, and constructing pieces of furniture that literally capture a person’s essence and stand as unique pieces of art.
Wolthuis had the idea to design jewelry first through genetic mapping. He reached out to Tjepkema with the idea, and after realizing the potential genetic data had to augment design, they expanded to furniture, seeing it as another extension of people’s bodies and personalities.
The signature piece of the first collection of DNA furniture is the Darwin Table, which, somewhat confusingly, isn't made from Darwin's DNA, but rather that of Giulia Wolthuis, a contemporary dancer (and daughter of Eric Wolthuis). The table’s 3-D design directly corresponds to its DNA mapping visual, capturing Giulia’s essence through form, according to Tjepkema. The table almost seems to mimic Giulia's fluidity and motion as a dancer, with dips and curves that create a totally abstract shape. Some projects allow more artistic liberty, similar to how Tjepkema took the DNA mapping visuals and combined them with iconic symbols such as a heart and flowers for the jewelry collection.
The process to make one of their fittings starts at BaseClear Laboratories in the Netherlands, where they create a DNA profile from a sample of saliva taken with a swab. Rather than a DNA sequencing analysis, the DNA profile is similar to tests done in forensic analysis and paternity tests, creating a unique “DNA fingerprint” with 16 variable markers spread over the human genome.
Those markers are then translated by a design-mapping program created by Tjep. into a visual representation of the DNA. This DNA mapping serves as kind of a blueprint for the final project’s design as Tjepkema takes the 2-D and 3-D forms of the DNA, along with his own artistic direction, and uses them to design a specific piece.
Figuring out the best way to marry genetic data and design was a challenge, but one that Tjepkema embraced from the beginning. Using data sets and numbers pushed him out of his comfort zone, but also allowed him to experiment with a new form of abstract design.
"When I was asked to work with an abstract series of numbers I was thrown back into a world without cultural references and this was actually quite liberating,” Tjepkema says. "I had an excuse to make something abstract within a given conceptual framework. The resulting designs are either completely abstract, in which case the data itself was source of inspiration or a combination of a symbolic reference. The data in itself is very hard and raw but it opened up a whole new intuitive territory.”
Tjepkema and Wolthuis seem to have tapped into a new way of humanizing data, giving us another way to seek out information that we might not have been interested in before and use it to create something beautiful and practical. After the Furniture Fair in Milan, DutchDNA and Tjep. will be opened to commissioned projects—no prices are listed yet for individual pieces, but you won’t have to wait long to get that genetically-inspired coffee table you’ve always wanted.
