Exploring the significance of dreams and memory

Inspired by an environmental awareness and the challenge of crafting something new within a pre-existing form, Los Angeles-based studio Otherside Objects presented ‘The Garden’ at Milan Design Week 2022 – an ethereal outdoor installation of furniture handcrafted from salvaged materials. 

Inspired by films from Last Year in Marienbad, Tarkovsky’s Mirror to Kurosawa’s Dreams, it aims to innovatively capture a visceral feeling referenced – the moment we experience a fall in our dreams and the startling jump or the landing we wake up to, known as a hypnic jerk. 

Skillfully conceived as a dialogue between beautiful soft, fallen forms and structured geometries – The Garden was an exploration of the significance of dreams and memory, where dripping shapes seem to have fallen from the sky and landed in a topiary dream sequence. 

The gently draped fabrics and duvet-inspired cushions brilliantly allowed visitors to achieve a dream-like comfort in their waking hours. 

“I’m fascinated by dreams as we spend so much of our life inhabiting these surreal worlds and altered versions of our perceived realities. 

I wanted The Garden to capture this feeling – making it an experience that feels as surreal as a dream but with tangible objects we can experience and utilize in our waking life” says Sam Klemick, founder Otherside Objects.

At The Garden, the studio unveiled four new pieces – Landing Stool, a more rounded and puffier version of Cutie Stool; Playstation, a site-specific and multi-functional sculptural chair or communal structure inspired by jungle gyms; Wavy Bench and the coveted Nap Chair, influenced by oversized duvets. 

Effortlessly giving new life to objects that were designated for the landfill, each extraordinary minimalistic product is handcrafted from salvaged materials – from deadstock parachute nylon to deadstock canvas and construction-grade Douglas fir salvaged from the streets of LA.