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Mobz Art
The Hanganu Collection presented by Mobz Art
Bringing Creation into the Present
Dan Hanganu
The Artist and His Legacy
Dan Hanganu forged an original path and left the stage celebrated as a pioneering architect, widely awarded and honoured, whose body of work continues to exert a lasting influence. His ideas, dreams and insight guided him along a singular path. He thrived on obstacles, knowing how to uncover solutions just around the corner, in places no one else thought to look.
His talent lay, in part, in his instinctive ability to see things from multiple perspectives. It came naturally to him, much like speaking Romanian, French, Greek, Italian and English. It was equally natural for him to give form to objects, sometimes as elements of his buildings, sometimes as creations in their own right. In this respect, he was a direct heir to the tradition of architects who also designed objects: Josef Hoffmann, Arne Jacobsen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier…
A Remarkable Career
Larger-than-Life Achievements
Emerging successfully from an architectural selection process is a complex undertaking. Dan favoured competitions as a way of putting his ideas forward: winning commissions through the visual and written presentation of a specific architectural vision rather than through a portfolio of past projects. He was remarkably successful in this approach, though he never treated it as a race. His aim was always to understand and to learn, and the perceptiveness of his synthesis often won over the jury.
While every achievement by Dan Hanganu offers something to learn from and admire, certain works deserve special mention. Their most evident qualities are strength, clarity of purpose and originality; or, put another way, power, relevance and freshness.
The Inspiration Behind the Project
It All Begins with a Book
Dan had bought himself the celebrated brick of a bible, 1000 Chairs. He knew every page and returned to it often. In it, he found an invitation to design the chair that had yet to be created: number 1001. He traced the history of seating back 4,000 years, all the way to Sumer and Babylon, to make sure he had missed nothing. Then, beneath a high moon over a sleeping Old Montréal, he drew his 1001st chair.
The feasibility of our project rests on the notebooks Dan left behind, filled with sketches and precise, complete and carefully reasoned drawings. There are models as well, all meticulously organized in both printed and digital form. What we have been able to bring to life is the result of his constant questioning, revisions, reflection, pauses, changes and reformulations. Before anyone else could see his work, Dan had already given himself entirely to his creation, giving it everything he had.
Own a Piece of His Genius