Form does not always follow function

Australian design duo Stefanie Flaubert and Jonas Korban - who together make up Korban/Flaubert - are to show their sculptural metal works at the Gallery of Australian Design in Canberra this March. After exhibiting in New York, Milan and Tokyo, this will be their first solo show in Australia for seven years.

The partnership, Korban/Flaubert is based on collaborative research and exploration of ideas on form and motion. It was established in 1993 whilst the pair were working in Stuttgart - Korban for architectural metal workshop K.M. Hardwork and Flaubert for German architect Günter Behnisch. Returning to Sydney in 1995, they set up their current studio and workshop in the industrial suburb of Alexandria in 2001.

Korban/Flaubert, Speedknot

Despite their international sucess, Korban and Flaubert are proud of their roots and that all of their pieces are 100 percent designed and made in Australia. "First and foremost we are control freaks," Flaubert tells Phaidon. "We like to control what we do and how it is done. That's why we have our own workshop and all metalwork is from our own hands. It makes it more specifically ours, from this place, by us. We've always aimed to make less but make it better. That's increasingly important as we develop more and more sculpture work."

Korban/Flaubert, Rocking Cone

Working on a median between sculpture and design Korban/Flaubert create metal pieces which do not start with a predetermined function. "We're interested in exploring energy and motion and set up experiments which direct us towards a distilled expression of motion in some way," Flaubert says of their design process. "We make a lot of models to develop ideas and use our metal workshop to test what we can do with metal, finding out the limits of its manipulation."

Korban/Flaubert, Jetstream

Through their experimentations with materials, volume and process an end product may emerge; a stool, a light fitting, screen or purely decorative sculpture. Cellscreen, which will be on show at their upcoming exhibition is a geometrical sculpture which also functions as a transparent partition wall. Other pieces such as Involute (top) are less functional, but is this that they are perhaps most proud of. "It's a piece that's not large, but it involved manipulating 360kg of metal into a continuous fluid form, quite technically challenging," Flaubert tells Phaidon. "But like most people, it's the latest thing we're working on at any given time that is always the most exciting."

Korban/Flaubert, Cellscreen

The exhibition at the Gallery of Australian Design will include five new sculpture pieces and two new screens with particular emphasis on Korban/Flaubert's new Volatile series. "We're aiming for an expression of movement, using the scale of sculptures to explore the often quite mesmerising elastic effects of the shifting viewpoint."

Korban and Flaubert are not only busy with the preparation for their exhibition: "Right now we're working on concepts for new sculptural works in metal. One theme looks at explosive speed and another develops themes from Involute and explores introverted continuous surfaces." They're also in the process of making a large suspended sculpture entitled Unison for a public space next to Brisbane City Hall, which we'll definitely keep you updated on.

korban/flaubert: metal/work opens at the Gallery of Australian Design on March 21.

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