Bestiary – Hamburg, Germany
 
Items of furniture often look like animals when in silhouette. Benches and tables, in particular, can look like four-legged beasts from a distance. And it’s enough for one of these legs to be out of alignment for the piece of furniture to seem to lose balance and start walking. However, there is still a difference between a real animal and a bench. It was to override this difference that we imagined this steel bestiary, like a missing link, which deliberately stands halfway between abstract sculpture and usable furniture. What these three pieces have in common is that they represent animals with symmetrical profiles, either because they have natural symmetry like the spider, or because we have added a head, as with this this two-headed dog. We wanted them to be simultaneously appealing and frightening, so that people would want to sit on them but would also be nervous of them.