My point of view: Jay Osgerby

Sky-Frame is continuing the expansion of its editorial offerings on the company website with a new series. The section ‘My point of view’ profiles prominent international architects and designers, approaching them through steady tracking shots and discreet text passages and photo galleries. The viewer is given a first-hand, close-up look at their respective stance as a designer and their very own way of seeing.

For the first installment, Sky-Frame was able to engage one of the biggest names in international design: Jay Osgerby. Since 1996, the British designer and his creative partner, Edward Barber, have operated the studio Barber & Osgerby. The two met as students at the Royal College of Art and have built a reputation with their puristic, contemporary designs for companies like Magis, Flos, Established & Sons and Vitra. Their work has garnered many awards and gained a place in the collections of numerous renowned design museums.

Without a doubt: Osgerby is an aesthete whose own living and studio spaces exhibit the same clarity, functionality and stripped-down design vocabulary that infuse his work. Everything here speaks the language of a sensitive selection of materials, objects, forms and colours. And it was his renovation of the London house where the designer lives with his family that brought him to choose Sky-Frame as a partner.

The company drew Osgerby’s attention during a visit to the VitraHaus in Weil am Rhein, designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Large windows and sliding doors by the Swiss manufacturer were used in, among other parts of the building, the popular ground-floor restaurant. They offer a spectacular view of the Vitra campus and, during the warm summer months, allow the café to be opened onto a sunny terrace.

Jay Osgerby chose Sky-Frame with an eye to his design for the opening up of the house’s kitchen-living area, which now affords a vista deep into his garden and brings generous light into the high-ceilinged space, along with the London sky and its play of clouds. Yet the metropolitan bustle seems far away. The calm of the garden invites observation and contemplation – essential for anyone who does creative work.

In the first instalment of the series ‘My point of view’, we are also introduced to Jay Osgerby the photographer, who in his travels captures expansive land- and skyscapes with his Leica. He commissions large-format prints of his photos in which the viewer can immerse himself in the recorded places and scenes. These images, too, are points of view, personal and distinctive. After this very successful opening with Jay Osgerby, we can expect captivating further instalments that offer new insights and perspectives.


© Architonic