Name: Nebil Zaman
Discipline: Furniture design
Education: Bachelor’s in Interior Architecture and Furniture Design, Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO)
Alone together
Personal Space is a 180-centimetre-long bench with two seats that can be either pushed towards or away from each other. The bench is inspired by Edward T. Hall's concept of Proxemics, which describes how physical spaces affect communication, behaviour, and social interaction. Personal Space challenges how we think of a piece of furniture and what is expected of it.
Panel remarks
This is a very nice bench! Nicely dimensioned and technically interesting, with an innovative twist of 70s aesthetics, it invites us to reflect on how we relate to each other. It is also playful and irreverent, and it would have been amusing to see the bench in a public space and film it to see how children, adults, and senior citizens approach it. The contributor writes in the application that the bench becomes even more exciting if it is extended with more seats, and we are very much in agreement.
The fact that this is a bachelor’s project and the student’s first piece of furniture reveals a talent that will be exciting to follow in the future.
