The World Of THE WORLD OF
BEHIND THE SUN

Our icon is a medieval sun, redrawn from the Flammarion engraving, an anonymous wood engraving first published in 1888. That original work portrayed a traveller reaching the ends of the earth, and poking his head through to new realms of imagined futures.

The sun conveys the core of what we do. Night and day. Earthly and cosmic. We create worlds, and worlds revolve around the sun.

INTERVIEW, SECOND EDITION
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When Amy Seo and Shahar Cohen founded Second Edition with Bill Clifton—a director of Robert Plumb Collective—they’d just wrapped their Masters of Architecture, with a thesis centered on deconstruction and reuse. Since then, their research-driven, highly experimental practice has bloomed into a radical force for waste minimisation. Collaborating with architects, fabricators and builders, Second Edition reimagines how reuse can be embedded into the building process—saving materials from landfill and working toward resource efficiency. Realising their architectural training often separated them from the act of building, the pair often situate themselves at construction sites. (“We wanted to get our hands dirty,” they once told a reporter.)

“A lot of our work deals with materials and limitations,” explain Seo and Cohen, so we are constantly testing, sampling and prototyping how to use them. In one project, Offcut Kitchen (2021) a plastic grating commonly used for walkways collides with staircase offcuts, creating a revolutionary, entirely modular space, designed for simple disassembly. Their commission for THE WORLD OF, a modular shelving unit forged from discarded red brick and a magnetic stainless plate, is installed in the agency’s offices.

. 260 Bricks, 2023
THE WORLD OF

Describe your current surroundings.

Amy Seo & Shahar Cohen

Amy Seo I’m currently working from home in the attic space of a terrace. The ceilings are Oregon timber lined with exposed beams. I can see the canopy of a large Chinese tallow through the windows to the garden. I like to watch the changing seasons.

Shahar Cohen Right now, I’m working in an office on the mezzanine level of a warehouse that contains all our materials. There’s a constant stream of people coming in and out to drop off and pick up items from various construction sites, as well as salvaged material that would have been discarded.

THE WORLD OF

Can you explain the genesis of your project for THE WORLD OF?

Seo & Cohen

We often will have surplus stock given to us through our association with Robert Plumb Build. When ordering material, a builder might include an additional 5-10% to account for any breakages or errors—you’re left with small amounts at the end of a job if the material isn’t used. This was the case with several pallets of the red bricks we’ve used here, which are now discontinued by the supplier.

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THE WORLD OF

Bricks are one of the oldest-known construction materials, however they’re usually relegated to the exterior of a space. As a key element within furniture, they’re unusual. What is the significance of their use here?

Seo & Cohen

Our creative process starts with the material, looking to common waste streams to

set our design parameters. We were motivated by the question of what is possible to design from small, leftover quantities of bricks. These quantities aren’t enough for a wall—and the bricks themselves are custom in size and colour, meaning they cannot be used as supplementary stock. This makes them perfect for furniture-scale objects.

 

260 bricks is considered impractical for a furniture piece due to its weight. To turn the material from something impractical—and thus often discarded—to something workable, we split the design into manageable size modules. These modules are light enough to be carried by two people and moved and manipulated by the user as their needs change over time.

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THE WORLD OF

Name one person whose brain you’d like to climb inside of.

Seo & Cohen

Seo I think Eileen Gray, an Irish architect who [worked across] modern furniture design, architecture and interior design in the early 19th century and still has furniture in production today. I appreciate her style and diversity and the timelessness of her work.

Cohen At the risk of sounding cliché—Leonardo Da Vinci. He thought of things years before they were invented, in a time so different to ours. I’ve always been fascinated by his drawings.

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THE WORLD OF

What is something the world needs more of?

Seo & Cohen

If anything, the world needs less. Less options, less clutter, less layers.

FURTHER READING secondedition.com.au instagram.com/secondeditionau
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