When concrete learns to dance
LINDE, a film with NOWNESS and the first movement of a four part study
For the first appearance of LINDE we went to NOWNESS, one of the platforms we have admired for years for its instinct for culture and the present moment. We shot at ANTI the House of Social Wellness, in a brutalist building by Arno Brandlhuber on Brunnenstrasse. It is the first of four films portraying the feeling of the LINDE chair.
The space is raw concrete, a ballet barre and light shimmering through semi transparent curtains. Inside it, a single dancer, barefoot, and LINDE alone in the beam of light. Between the hardness of the architecture and the soft pink of LINDE there is no contradiction, but a tension that holds. You see it immediately: severity meets softness, and both come out ahead.
Dance as a language for the way something feels to sit in
The central idea behind LINDE is hard to show in a photograph: the feeling of an armchair, carried over to the dining table. Which is exactly why we chose contemporary dance. A dancer leans back into LINDE, her back follows the movement of the backrest, her hand runs over the folds of the fabric. The body shows what words can only suggest: giving way, catching, arriving. Dance and LINDE share the same moment, the moment of letting go.
Our creative director Janis describes the idea behind the film like this:
"What drew us in was the contrast between the raw, brutalist architecture of the Anti space and the lively, contemporary LINDE chairs by Objekte Unserer Tage. At the centre was a play of opposites: monumental architecture meeting delicate movement, hardness meeting softness, concrete meeting colour. Each film interprets that field of tension in its own way, sometimes through classical dance, sometimes experimentally."
About LINDE
Our head of design David Wendt developed the chair from the image of a flower calyx, a form that opens and holds you at the same time. "Not well behaved. Not eager to please. But with our character," is how he puts it. And that is what you see: legs, seat and back follow the same line, as if drawn in a single sweep. The backrest is resolved through a wire and foam construction. It moves gently with you as you lean back and takes the body in rather than resisting it. No hard wood against your back, as you know it from classic chairs, but the feeling of sinking into something that flows.
We make LINDE by hand in Germany, at a time when most furniture is made from volume rather than devotion and skilled handwork. You choose fabric and finish individually, from the smooth, pure version to LINDE SOFT with its soft folds. Individual parts can be replaced if needed. LINDE is built to stay, not to be replaced.
The name carries that thought further. Unter den Linden is a place in Berlin that brings movement, history and everyday life together. That is exactly how LINDE should feel: familiar and new at the same time.
The creative team
Direction and creative direction: Janis Storhas, together with Lucca Bukashkin on creative direction. Camera and post production: Marvin Vyhnal. Dancer: Greta Letix, accompanied by talent manager Leena Tsuchiya. Music composed by Tarek Soltani. Shot at ANTI Berlin, in a building by Arno Brandlhuber that has long been part of the city's cultural scene.
Why NOWNESS
NOWNESS was founded in 2010 by Jefferson Hack, backed by LVMH, and has since become one of the most important platforms for film at the intersection of art, design and fashion, independently curated and known worldwide for its instinct for what matters. Names that set their own standards have worked there, from Björk to Luca Guadagnino. For us the launch there is more than a channel, it is a position: LINDE belongs where design and culture genuinely meet.
This is only the beginning. Over the coming weeks we will show you how LINDE keeps moving, and which stories it still has to tell.
