Towerland emulates the silent silhouettes of urban skylines with 'X2' series

Towerland, an independent design and art practice founded by Chinese architect Wu Zhenyan, recently designed and built the X2 series, a collection of rectilinear wooden sculptures. Delineating the rationale that led to the naming of the studio, as well as the ethos that guides the architect’s work, Zhenyan shares, “I named the studio Towerland because of a yearning for towers. Towers symbolise downward force along with upward belief. It is the mental energy that I rely on when making each piece.” The X2 series, too, comes together to evoke images of city skylines. This ties back to the Chinese designer’s vocation in architecture. Although she is now more involved in the disciplines of interior design and furniture design, Zhenyan invariably approaches each project with an architect’s perspective, to explore the visceral potential of the materials and spaces she decides to work with.

When asked about the inspiration behind the X2 series, the furniture designer shares, “My persistent yearning for towers has led me to continuously experiment with various materials to express the concept of towers in my mind: utilising metals, stones, colourful wooden panels, and the X2 series - black solid wood sculptures.” Just like architecture, the pieces that make up the X2 series, too, are constituted in balanced formats that comprise a uniform set of blocks fixed against each other using the mortise and tenon system of joints. These blocks leave out naturally formed openings in between them, hence enhancing the image of each sculpture. The wooden blocks, mechanically cut up in a wood factory, can be combined and oriented in various formats, in order to give form to distinct silhouettes.

Pondering on the designing process, Zhenyan shares, “The design process for these pieces happened in a swoop. I prefer to close my eyes and conceptualise, simulate, judge, and choose the desired image in my head, before sitting down to draw with my hands. Once I have visualised an image in my mind, there is often little to change when I start drawing on paper.” Each of the six art sculptures is made using Elmwood. Their surfaces were then aged by applying a layer of black-brown wood oil. This stains the surfaces such that they appear dark and maintain a sense of weightiness despite being light and small.

The product designer of the X2 series hopes for these pieces to be integrated into people’s everyday spaces, either as decorative artefacts or as entities that can find organic usage in an indoor space. She intends for the user to find novel methods to place these pieces and redefine their symbolic significance—perhaps as a vase by the window or a candle stand, or maybe even a three-dimensional wall hanging. Since the pieces are small, they can easily be moved, inverted, or even combined with the other pieces to build the desired artefact. In the coming months, Zhenyan also intends to design and create a new series of ‘towers’ using aluminium panels.