Studiomama was selected as one of 10 design studios to collaborate with creative leaders from London's cultural institutions and create an object of personal relevance from American red oak for London Design Festival. Studiomama collaborated with Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, to create a post box that would enable visitors to the museum to share their experiences.
Experimenting in our own wood workshop, we designed and made a playful post box in two sizes, one for outside the gallery and a smaller one for the bookshop. Each post box is clad in fluted and oiled American red oak provided by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), created by using a spindle moulder on individual pieces of oak, which were then glued together with the help of craftspeople at Benchmark. The oversized ‘mouth’, designed to highlight the purpose of the post box, was created from a CNC-cut block of red oak and the top is flat so that people can lean on it as they write their postcards by hand.
‘We see fewer post boxes now in public spaces than when I was a kid and I wanted to bring one back,’ said Obrist. ‘We have 1.2 million visitors a year at the Serpentine so it will be a very public post box.’
Photography courtesy of Petr Krejci