Atelier Van Lieshout arranged its new furniture pieces for Dutch company Lensvelt around an enormous blue cannon at Ventura Lambrate last month.

Called WWIII, the cannon is based on an American design and follows two previous cannon sculptures based on Czech and Soviet models.

The new furniture pieces are the AVL Cloud Bar Table with bulging bubbles on the underside, the cantilevered AVL Koker Chair and the more traditional wooden AVL Spider chair.

Atelier Van Lieshout and Lensvelt have previously collaborated on a sofa system with sliding backrests - see our earlier story.

Joep Van Lieshout is best known for his disturbing sculptures and you can see all our stories about his work here.

The Ventura Lambrate design district took place from 17 to 22 April. See all our stories about Ventura Lambrate 2012 here.

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

Photography is by Ilco Kemmere, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here's some more information from the catalogue, entitled Furnicaton:

“The WWIII cannon is the third

in a series. This series is about design. The first was a Czech cannon. Made of iron, with round, feminine forms.

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

The second was a Soviet cannon. Enormous amounts of those things were made, tens of thousands. Ugly and cheap.

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

The third one, in Milan, is based on an American cannon and is constructed following modernist principles. A cannon is a monument to heroism and sacrifice.”

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

“We live in a world where ugly things that people would really rather not see, like war, are polished and glorified. Heroism and sacrifice are presented as something beautiful. In computer games, and in the media. While that’s a lie. There’s nothing beautiful about dying as a piece of cannon fodder. This world has become one big Walt Disney film. A perfect world. While exploitation of people is growing ever more efficient. This cannon is a protest against that.”

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

The AVL Cloud Bar is everything an traditional table isn’t. Designed as a bar table, it serves as a meeting point,
a place for socializing, inter- action, spontaneity. It does not look like a traditional table either. It is neither square, flat or four-legged. Instead, it looks like an assembly of clouds, or balls, or air, connecting ideas and people. It symbolizes the freedom, creativity and volatility of clouds, the liberation of the office worker.

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

The AVL Koker Chair looks timeless, almost primitive, and seeks to contrast with the static look that ‘design classics’ have. The chairs’ design was dictated by limitations. Joep set himself the task of creating a stackable chair with only the materials he had available in the workshop; this resulted in the use of square metal tubes – which in Dutch are called ‘koker’. At the same time, the name refers to the Dutch word for a pencil skirt (kokerrok), which exudes elegance and sexiness.

Above: photograph is by Frans Strous

The AVL Spider Chair is first and foremost a functional chair, which was made using traditional carpenters methods. Its’ wooden, light-weight, thin legged frame makes it resemble a spider, a weaving animal, connected to crafts. It forcefully denies the dry, technical, emotionless methods used in modern day design.