Christopher Deam: Restyling the classic Airstream trail

23,036 views ・ 2009-04-02

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00:12
I was asked by Wilsonart International,
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a plastic laminate company, which is
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the largest plastic laminate company in the world --
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they asked me to design
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a trade show booth
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for exhibition at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair
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in New York, in 2000.
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So looking at their three main markets
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for their product which were basically
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transportation design,
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interiors and furniture,
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we came up with the solution of taking
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an old Airstream trailer and gutting it,
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and trying to portray laminate,
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and a trailer, in kind of a
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fresh, new contemporary look.
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When this trailer showed up at my shop
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in Berkeley, I'd actually never stepped foot in
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an Airstream trailer, or any other trailer.
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So I can be somebody that can look at this
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in a totally fresh perspective and see if I can
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optimize it in its most idealistic fashion.
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I decided I had to do some research
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and really figure out what had gone wrong
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somewhere along the history of Airstream.
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What I discovered in these interiors is that
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there was a disconnect between the exterior shell
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and the interior architecture of the pieces.
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In that the shell was originally conceived
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as a lightweight, modern, futuristic,
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high-tech pod for hurtling down the freeway, and
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the interiors were completely out of sync with that.
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In fact it appeared like they
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referenced a mountain cabin.
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That seemed really like a crisis to me,
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that they had never been able to
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develop a vocabulary
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about escape, and about travel, and modernity
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in this trailer that was consistent with the shell.
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We really needed to do some archeology
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in the trailer itself to figure out what's authentic
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in an Airstream trailer,
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and what feels like it has true purpose and utility.
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We stripped out all the vinyl
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and zolatone paint that was covering up
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this just fantastic aluminum shell.
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We took off all the visible hardware and trim
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that was kind of doing the country cabin thing.
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I literally drew on the walls of the trailer,
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mocked it up in cardboard,
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we'd come in and cut, decide things were wrong,
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pull it out, put it back in.
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The main goal was to smooth out the interior,
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and begin to speak about motion,
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and mobility, and independence.
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The biggest difficulty on one of these trailers
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is that when you're designing there's actually no
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logical place to stop and start materials
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because of the continuous form of the trailer.
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There's no such things as two walls and a ceiling
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coming together, where you can change materials and shapes.
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So that became a challenge.
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Compounding that,
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the material of choice, laminate,
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that I was trying to highlight,
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only bends in two dimensions.
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It's a compound curve interior.
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What I had to devise was
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a way of fooling the eye
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into believing that all these panels
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are curved with the shell.
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What I came up with was
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a series of second skins
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that basically float over the aluminum shell.
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And what I was trying to do there was
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direct your eye in the space,
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so that you would perceive the geometry in a different way,
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and that the casework wouldn't break up the space.
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They also gave us a way to run power
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and rewire the trailer without tearing out the skin,
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so they function as an electrical chase.
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That's the trailer, pretty much finished.
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That trailer led to another commission,
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to participate in whats called Tokyo Designers Block.
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Its a week of furniture design events in Tokyo, in October.
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Teruo Kurosaki, who owns a furniture company called Idee,
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he asked me to ship him two trailers to Tokyo.
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He said one he would like to
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make a real trailer, functioning, and we would sell that one.
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Trailer number two, you have a blank slate, you can to anything you want.
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We came up with a fantasy scenario
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of a DJ traveling around the States,
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that would collect records and go on tours.
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This trailer housed two turntables,
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mixer, wet bar, fridge, integrated sound system.
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It's got a huge couch, fits quite a few people,
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and basically we'd had a great time with this.
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And so in this trailer I took it upon myself to think about travel,
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and escape, in an idiosyncratic sense.
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A lot of these ideas migrated into
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the production trailers for Airstream.
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This brings us up to the time that I started consulting to Airstream.
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They came to me and said,
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"Well, what can we do to freshen this thing up?
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And do you think kids, you know, skateboarders, surfers,
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rock climbers, would use these things?"
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And I said, "Well, not in that interior."
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(Laughter)
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Anyway, I went out to Airstream
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about six times during the process of building this prototype,
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and it's called the Bambi prototype.
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I thought, "Finally, oh yeah great,
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big company, I'm gonna work with somebody with money
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for tooling and molding."
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And I walked in their prototype facility, and
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it's exactly like my shop, only bigger --
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same tools, same things.
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So the problem became -- and they set this dilemma to me --
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that you have to design the interior using only our existing technology,
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and there's no money for tooling or molding.
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The trailers themselves are actually hand-built.
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All the casework is hand-scribed in, uniquely,
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so you can't just cut 100 parts for 100 trailers,
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you have to cut them big, and every single one is hand-fit.
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They didn't want to go to a componentized system.
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And there it is, that's the Bambi 16.
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06:11
(Applause)
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