La letra E está por doquier

In November 2012, Studio Manuel Raeder began developing the three display structures and furniture that make up La letra E está por doquier (The Letter E is everywhere) with fellow studio designer Santiago da Silva for Centro de Diseño de Oaxaca in the capital of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where it was first shown before touring to Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura in Mexico City, k. m, Kunstverein München and at Galerie Neu begining 2014. Centro de Diseño de Oaxaca is the first public institution of its kind in Mexico. It understands design as a tool for social change. In short they see design not only as a product, but also in relation to social structures and identity. Together with Studio Manuel Raeder they share the understanding that form relates to production and production to alternative economic relations based on dialogue and the exchange of ideas. The furniture features seating made out of plastic and wooden stools and upturned buckets, as well as the ubiquitous white plastic Monobloc chairs, which have been reconfigured and covered with woven palm leaf while the modular cake table was produced in collaboration with a furniture factory and local wood producers in Oaxaca. Two wooden cubic structures display a selection of catalogues and artist books produced by, and central to the practice of Studio Manuel Raeder over the past ten years. Rather than present a straightforward back catalogue in say, the pages of a book, publications are exhibited spatially and integrally amongst collected and found objects, such as pieces of Barro Negro (Black Clay) – a style of pottery originating from Oaxaca, which the designers collected from various encounters with Oaxacan handcraft workshops during their prolonged stay in Mexico and interaction with local artisans and ancestral craft techniques. Text originally published inside the booklet 4 projects in Mexico at k. m, Munich