Design Without Designers: chairs, memories and invisible inhabitants in Casablanca

A research, a residence, a workshop and finally an exhibition. Design Without Designers is a project created by Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts, founders of studio d-o-t-s, which is about adapting to the urban landscape, or rather making a place suitable to our needs.

Selected in 2018 by the Moroccan Atelier de l'Observatoire association, Design Without Designers has resulted in a residency with workshop and final exhibition organized in partnership with the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Casablanca. Mr. Abdelhadi was the main protagonist of all this work: he is a car keeper and cleaner so fond of his chair that he always fixes and modifies it to leave it to his son. So Drouet and Lacrouts challenged nine design students: what if they convince Abdelhadi to exchange one of their chairs with his own one?

Divided into four groups, the students had four days, from December 31 to January 3, to discover the ergonomic and aesthetic requirements of the “ideal” chair, to realize the first prototypes and to shape the final object with only recovery materials and a very low budget (100 dirhams, about 9€) available. During the opening held at the Ecole Supérieure from January 5 to 13, Mr. Abdelhadi made his choice as the first, true, extremely demanding, client of these brand new aspiring designers.

Next to the four chairs, the photographic exhibition “The eyes watching you” by the artist Rita Alaoui, who has portrayed chairs as a symbol of surveillance and control in Moroccan public spaces, added a layer to the narration. While waiting for the show to reach Europe, studio d-o-t-s is working in another set-up for 2020 and updating “The Offbeats” research platform dedicated to the “togetherness in design” topic.