DN100 Stadtmöbel 23

Behind the artistic duo called Pitsch & Schau are two artists living and working in Hamburg, Mario Pitsch and Oliver Schau. Both are graduates of the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, where they specialized in design. The pair have worked together professionally since January 2017, and as “Studio Pitsch & Schau” have concentrated on the field of design in the public space. Through the very different seating forms in their designs for urban spaces, Pitsch & Schau redefine them, giving them a use and an identity they didn’t necessarily have before. Their seats are made of unconventional materials, such as bright yellow flexible drainage pipes, or off-the-shelf cable ties. Form and colour provoke a special effect in the viewer: on the one hand they invite a new perspective and a rethinking of the familiar. On the other, they prompt an interactive engagement with the furniture as well as with those using it, for these pieces also shed light on the extent to which a design is able to call up a potential for communication – as a place of exchange, as well as one in which to sit down together and watch the world go by.