'Laputa' bed, 1991

The ‘Laputa’ bed was renowned Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata’s final furniture design and a response to his bedroom brief at the group exhibition ‘Il Dolce Stil Novo della Casa’ (A Proposal for a New Life), curated by Andrea Branzi for Pitti Immagine at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 1991. As with his ‘Miss Blanche’ chair, the ‘Laputa’ bed draws inspiration from literature. Laputa is the flying island from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. The island, which has a base made from the mythical material adamantine, hovers above the land of Balnibarbi. Looking at the body of Kuramata’s work and his practice, it is possible to draw parallels with both of the above concepts: levitation (defying a physical force), and adamantine, a mythical material that shackled or destroyed the most formidable characters from Ancient Greek mythology to the Classics. Wrapped in the ‘Star Piece’ satin and with a high metallic surface finish, ‘Laputa’ has an extraterrestrial appearance as galvanized in outer space, and, as the artist intended, the elongated form creates a dreamlike sense of levitation. The physical appearance of the bed is very similar to the bed in Marcel Duchamp’s painting Apolinère Enameled of 1916–1917. The reference to this assisted readymade displays Kuramata’s ability to combine multiple cultural references into a single object.