Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Future Now: Dror Benshetrit

THE FUTURE NOW: DROR BENSHETRIT -- At Studio of Style, we love people who can create the future for us in the present to enjoy now!  And Dror Benshetrit is one of those people.  Over the past decade, Dror has explored movement, form and space and how these can be applied to the realms of product design, interior design, architecture and art direction with his personal quest to "unlease the mutable and non-static nature of objects" as he describes it.  What that has translated into has been collaborations between him and such global powerhouse companies as Alessi, Bentley, Bombay Sapphire, Cappellini (the "Tron" armchairs shown here), Kiehl's, Levi's, Puma, Rosenthal, Swarovski and Target -- to name a few -- and pieces such as the "Volume.MGX" cube light from Materialise (bottom left) and the "Volume 60-10-12-3-12" rusted steel sculpture (bottom right).  From his studio in New York, Dror observes the world, looking for responses to the needs in our modern lifestyles.  He has received numerous design awards for these observations and his pieces are found in the permanent collections of museums internationally.  In October of this year, Studio Dror and the Buckminster Fuller Institute gathered together top thinkers and doers in the architecture and design fields where they discussed how to push their respective practices towards more ecological and socially-responsible directions in light of interrelated global crises -- what Fuller termed as "comprehensive anticipatory design science."  A lot to consider, yes -- but fortunately we have Dror keeping his eye on the future of style for all of us!
Images courtesy Dror / Photo collage by Greg Firlotte