collection co. connect to our planet

Year: 2019
Account: studio aisslinger

Team: Werner Aisslinger & Tina Bunyaprasit
Producer: Glasmanufaktur Freiherr von Poschinger

Project „collection co. connect to our planet“

Drinking water is the most important food, it cannot be replaced. But although 72% of the world’s surface are covered with water, only 2,5% of them are sweetwater and just 0,3% are potable. Currently a sixth of the world’s population, about 1,2 billion people, don’t have access to potable water. About 30% of all people suffer from water shortage. In Germany, where tap water is cheap and drinkable, the problem seems abstract, but in coming years potable water will turn more and more into a scarce ressource. Soon it will be one of the planet’s most wanted substances.
Werner Aisslinger’s and Tina Bunyaprasit’s project „collection co. connect to our planet“ wants to resensitize for the inestimable value of water. Together with the 450-year-old glas manufacture Freiherr von Poschinger a water dispenser of the highest workmanship and with a fascinating optical and haptic quality has been designed, a shrine, whose colored glas makes its content shimmer like liquid gold. The compactness of the massive and yet light object, seeming to levitate in space, bestows a unique presence upon these wondrously new glassy volumes. The act of drinking gains new bearing; and water manifests itself within a quotidian chore as essential condition of life.

Design & „Making“
The project is marked by its method: the method of „making“ – different to the everyday routine of most designers, which is dominated by several 2D or 3D softwares, „making“ stands for a designprocess that is not primarily computer based and does not progress as virtual, abstract concept. Instead, the product emerges from concrete work with the material in the manufacture. Design and production are linked in one process, for which the unmediated, personal collaboration with the artisan plays a constitutive role.

Hidden Champions
Europe is full of hidden craftsmanship, of skilled specialists, whose Knowhow is bound to the respective location and personnel and is handed down from one generation to another. With the glas manufacture Freiherr von Poschinger Werner Aisslinger and Tina Bunyaprasit have found such a „hidden champion“ as partner for their project ‚collection co‘. Conceptually progressive design and the perfection of traditional artisan production form a perfect symbiosis.

The Product
‚collection co‘ combines a round oak base with huge handblown glasvolumes. The tumblers coming with the water dispenser can be combined with different oak coasters, allowing each set to appear in changing compilations of little glas-wood sculptures.
Over several centuries, the famous Bavarian glas manufacture Freiherr von Poschinger has developed its own glascolours, providing ‚collection co‘ with a special chromaticity of uniquely intense presence.