Palace Soestdijk used to be the residence of princes Juliana and prince Bernard. It was their home for over six decades until their deaths in 2004. Since spring 2006, it has been possible for public to visit, pending a decision about its future use. From the 25th of June to the 25th of September 2016 the exhibition Bal, curated by Anne van der Zwaag, exhibits 40 dutch artists and designers whom have been asked to create something around the theme: Bal Game of garden thrones.
 
As child princes Juliana dreams of a ‘normal’ life. As queen she is more approachable than her mother Wilhelmina and daughter Beatrix, she stands closer to the people. However hard she tries to live normally her position always stayed quite unique.
 
Frank Tjepkema (born 1970) a famous Dutch designer based in Amsterdam is an early collaborator of Droog and his work is part of the permanent collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Art and Design in New-York. Tjepkema is one of the designer selected to create for this unique exhibition.
 
“When asked to design furniture for the palace garden we thought a throne would be appropriate, and not just any throne, a ‘normal’ throne. Is it possible to design a ‘normal’ throne? We took the most democratic imaginable of all chairs, the one chair affordable to just about everybody and anybody and tried to make it very special. This became: Game of garden thrones.

To achieve the most ‘normal’ of all thrones we designed a special add on inspired by the very gardens so much cherished by Juliana. Using parametric design algorithmes imitating the structure of leaf cells we had the computer generate a transformations from the ordinary garden chair, the result is a very normal chair uplifted to royal appearance through the addition of a special ornamental collar.
 
The materialization consists of many hundreds of laser cut parts assembled together by hand to form an elegantly curved form. We displayed 6 different chairs varying from bright orange (the royal colour) to white, transparant and radient. “
 
 
www.paleissoestdijk.nl
 
www.tjep.com