Published as commentary on new acquisitions of the FRAC Grand Large collection, Dunkerque, 2026.
Kueng/Caputo started working together in 2006/07, when they both graduated from the Zurich University of Arts in Industrial Design in 2008. The design duo has collaborated with brands such as Fendi, Arita, and Globus, and has realized interior architecture commissions, including the University Campus Brig (2021).
Exhibitions include the Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich (2021), Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (2017), and the Salon 94, New York City (2010), among others.
Their professional design career began with a radical gesture: the reinterpretation of their fellow students’ work as their own degree project. Despite it almost failed the department`s examination procedure, a subsequent publication received awards for challenging foundational concepts of the discipline such as originality, seriality, and collective imagery of use.
The Sand Chair series were produced for various exhibition contexts within the field of collectible design between 2011 and 2018, often situated in proximity to contemporary art. Kueng Caputo have been using this domain to develop experimental projects that operate between handcraft and serial production. Each of the Chairs is unique and composed of two slightly irregular yet geometric volumes, twisted in relation to one another. The vividly colored surfaces emerge through the application of multiple layers of a pigment-tinted sand and cement compound over Styrofoam blocks. Functioning as stools or side tables, the works combine the provisional character of modeling materials with an architectural surface. While two of the three acquired Sand Chairs reinterpret the archetype of stand and platform, a third is formed from two stacked pentagonal volumes. By superimposing materials and production processes that are typically kept separate, Kueng Caputo interweave private and public realms, as well as the disciplines of design, art, and architecture.
Work
Sand Chair, 2011-2018
Unique pieces based on cut styrofoam blocks, and a layered mixture of pigment, mortar
Selected Bibliography
Fischer, Mirjam (ed.), Schweizer Grand Prix Design 2020 = Grand Prix Suisse de Design 2020 = Swiss Grand Award for Design 2020, Bern: Bundesamt für Kultur, 2020
Copy by Kueng Caputo, Berlin: Passenger Books, 2008