Visiting designer offers unique focus on materials

Gabriel Tan is the 2015 Julie Neupert Stott Visiting Professor for the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Tan, a partner and cofounder of Outofstock, a design studio based in Singapore, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires, will present a lecture, “Design Junction,” at 5:30 p.m. January 21 at the White Stag Block in Portland and at 5:30 p.m. January 23 in Lawrence Hall in Eugene.

Gabriel Tan
Above: Gabriel Tan will teach a furniture design studio, titled “Borrowed,” for the Interior Architecture Program and a seminar, “Experimenting with New Materiality.”

As the Stott Visiting Professor, Tan will teach a furniture design studio, titled “Borrowed,” for the Interior Architecture Program and a seminar, “Experimenting with New Materiality.” Tan is only the second recipient of this honor; the first was New York architect David Ling in 2008.

Outofstock, a multidisciplinary practice, works on interior design, exhibitions, branding, furniture, and product design. The firm designs furniture and home accessory products for clients including Ligne Roset, Bolia, Environment, Foundry, and Biobu. Outofstock has completed several restaurant designs for Hatched at Holland Village and Plain Vanilla Bakery as well as FiftyThree, all in Singapore. 

Tan graduated from the National University of Singapore with a degree in industrial design in 2007. He studied at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, Switzerland, and interned at Lunar Design in San Francisco, California, before returning to Singapore.  

Apart from his work at Outofstock, he is an adjunct faculty at Lasalle College of the Arts and previously was on the faculty at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Outofstock is a design collective born out of a fortuitous meeting in Stockholm, hence the name Outofstock. Tan and Wendy Chua from Singapore, Gustavo Maggio from Argentina, and Sebastián Alberdi from Spain met at Electrolux Design Lab in 2005.

Outofstock’s work has been exhibited at Milan Design Week, Tokyo Designers Week, London Design Festival, IMM Cologne, Maison & Objet Paris, and the Singapore Art Museum.

Outofstock has also won several awards for their furniture work including the Concurso de Diseño Interior Buenos Aires 2013, the Singapore President's Design Award 2010, and Elle Decoration Spain's Young Talent of the Year 2009.  In 2014, Tan was invited to serve as a jury member of the Product Design Lions Award at Cannes Lions in France.

The Julie Neupert Stott Visiting Professor in Interior Architecture, established in 2008, supports an internationally recognized scholar and/or professional in the field of interior architecture to teach and lecture design students in A&AA.

Tan’s presentation is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the Interior Architecture Program in the UO Department of Architecture.

set of nesting tables
Above: Inspired by the overlay of colors in Venn diagrams, this set of nesting tables is composed of waterjet-cut low iron glass tops that are sandblasted and colored. Legs and support frame in painted steel. Manufactured by Ligne Roset, 2011. Image courtesy Outofstock.

Plain Vanilla Bakery
Above: Outofstock restaurant designs include Plain Vanilla Bakery in Singapore. Photo by Beton Brut Photography.

BlackForest table
Above: Inspired by tree branches, the Black Forest table can be disassembled into three separate parts for flat shipping. Note the visual analogy of a pool of water with the table surface, so that when objects are placed on the steel mirror tabletop, its reflection is visible beneath. Manufactured by Ligne Roset, 2010. Image courtesy Outofstock.