Writing about the ideas behind design. Think about it.
Today, our first guest post comes in the form of some choice updates by excellent London-based design writer (and friend) Giovanna Dunmall who has agreed to let me blog her twitter feed during the London Design Festival.
Many of the posts are familiar names to us, including designers Omer Arbel, Philippe Starck and Barber Osgerby, brands like Wrong for Hay and venues like the Ace Hotel and V&A Museum.
Check out Giovanna’s web page here or follow her @JournoGiovanna. Read more
“While necessities of size, cost, comfort and even aesthetics can be crucial when selecting furniture and lighting, stories are often what make us fall for design.”
Home Design magazine’s latest issue includes a comment piece from me on storytelling in design, including stories on products by Australian designer Trent Jansen, German designer Sebastian Herkner, Knud Eric Hansen from Carl Hansen & Son and UK designer Jay Osgerby from Barber Osgerby.
“Visitors are first brought to the centre of the space, where five timber sculptures stand like oversized totems. Dubbed “The Oaks,” each one is built in a unique geometry using a different type of timber, inspired by the five groups of grapes available for tasting: aromatic whites, chardonnay, varietal blends, regional and shiraz. “Based on the tasting notes that the sommeliers gave us, we reinterpreted that in terms of geometry,” explains Faye Toogood of Studio Toogood. “We placed the totems in a ring because there is a great mystique to wine which is quite spiritual.”
“In addition to this, each is infused with a different scent, created by Studio Toogood in partnership with Paris and New York-based perfumers Dawn and Samantha Goldworm at 12.29. The scents themselves are based on the tasting notes of each group of grapes; for example, the notes for the aromatic whites group are: pure, mineral, abstract, energy, sorbet, cool, altitude, elevation, pristine, vibrant. The resulting scents do not smell like wine but are related to the wine.”
This one’s a bit of a blast from the past – an article I wrote on The Blocks, an installation in Sydney by Faye Toogood, originally published in Artichoke magazine when I was Editor in 2012. My favourite thing about the project was the design of five scents – I love the idea of being able to create a new scent working with a perfumer.
Read the whole article (republished in full on architectureau.com) here.
There is a wonderful profile of Andre Balazs in the latest issue of Porter magazine (Summer 2014), in which he discusses his latest hotspot in London, the Chiltern Firehouse.
A dynamic man who surrounds himself with celebrities (including a string of high profile girlfriends such as Uma Thurman and Pippa Middleton), the Firehouse restaurant is an extension of this magnetic personality – a Google search for Chiltern Firehouse turns ups Orlando Bloom, Kiefer Sutherland and Heidi Klum. It makes sense that Andy Warhol was a close friend.
Balazs takes a personal approach to every hotel and restaurant in his stable and comments in the article that he has slept in every room of the Firehouse: “I need to know what every room feels like.”
The restaurant interiors by French designers Studio KO make the most of the existing architecture of the building, a former firestation in red brick built in 1889. A large kitchen is completely open, while the dining room is in white, with grand white columns, high banquettes separating diners in booths and cane chairs providing a relaxed feel. There are a few great pics of the interiors at The Telegraph.
Design exhibitions have always played second fiddle to art exhibitions. Perhaps this is because, in order to sell their work, the artist must exhibit it, whereas the designer can sell it via a manufacturer who makes and sells it for them.
However, the benefits of design exhibitions cannot be underestimated. Apart from online, an emerging designer may have no other way to show their work when first starting out.
For the second year in a row, Object Future gives emerging designers the opportunity to exhibit, this year at Allpress Studio in Melbourne. The co-curators of the show, emerging curator Suzannah Henty and emerging designer Dale Hardiman, have sought out some exceptional design from some great fresh talent this year. Read more
Design and the sea are two topics that are not often connected. However, they do overlap. Design has allowed us to explore the sea, through the development of scuba among other inventions. And thanks to some recent designs, it is possible to design while on the sea, as well as for design to evoke the sea. I don’t want to be morbid, but the history of scuba has more than a couple of corpses. People have been swimming in oceans, lakes and rivers to find food and bathe for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that French Naval Officer Jacques Cousteau patented the Aqua Lung, allowing divers to breathe under water.
Cousteau’s influence on our knowledge of the sea cannot be underestimated. As well as developing the first Aqua Lung, he was responsible for marketing this device and bringing the sport of underwater diving to thousands. His books and films also brought the underwater world into the homes of people who had never seen anything like it before. While underwater photography had existed for nearly thirty years (National Geographic was the first to publish an underwater colour photograph – an image of a hogfish off the Florida Keys in 1928), Cousteau’s 1953 book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, and documentary film of the same name were hugely successful – the film won the Palme D’Or as well as the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Cousteau was the inspiration for the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou in which, like all Wes Anderson films, each visual element is carefully designed. In this case, the ship itself is a major character in the film, especially during a scene which pans across a cut section of the ship displaying each room. This was achieved by purchasing two ships, World War II minesweepers repainted in bright colours, and actually cutting one of them lengthways down the middle. Likewise, the costumes, suits, breathing apparatus, helicopter and submarine all undergo Wes Anderson-ification resulting in beautiful redesigns. A particular personal favourite is the yellow submarine and matching helicopter.
One of the most exciting sea-related designs is not for breathing or floating on the sea, it is a system that allows anyone with a boat to create furniture using plastics found in the ocean. Japanese Architect Azusa Murakami and British Artist Alexander Groves of London-based Studio Swine are behind the Open Source Sea Chair project. The chair is created by firstly collecting plastic found in the sea (there’s plenty of it), grouping these pieces by colour, then heating them up and using special moulds and tools to create a stool seat and three legs. These are bolted together to create the stool (all of which can be done on the boat), creating a second income for those who fish for a living as well as reducing plastic pollution. You can watch the process in action in a beautiful film they made here.
The quality of water is often an inspiration for designers and two particular products capture this extremely well, both shown at Spazio Rossana Orlandi during Milan Design Week 2014. The first is Bricola, created by Venice-based Andrea Forti and Eleonora Dal Farra of design studio Alcorol. This collection features repurposed timber from Venice’s canals, complete with holes from molluscs, that have been combined with a clear vegetable resin (clear like water) to make tables and a stool. The combination creates a sense that a sub-section of Venice’s canals, complete with historical poles and water – is made solid.
The other outstanding piece related to water is Ripple by London-based duo Hanhsi Chen and Shikai Tseng of Poetic Lab. This floor lamp is made of mouth blown glass which slowly rotates, casting shadows on the walls made by the imperfections in the glass, like ripples on water.
Here it is not the object itself which is innovative, but the effect it creates, an effect which is as ephemeral and yet constant as the sea itself.
There is a certain circularity to the relationship between design and the sea. Design (of breathing equipment, submarines and so on) allows us to see under the sea in a way we never would have before. And this knowledge and understanding in turn inspires design. A nice loop.
At the Magis showroom in Milan, I met Dutch designer Rogier Martens who posed with his chair for children, called Trotter, at the Fair the next morning. The chair can be used by small people for sitting, or can be lifted and wheeled around like a wheelbarrow.
In designing it, Martens thought about what he would have liked as a child, and the result is a simple idea, well executed. This chair is part of a series of Magis products for children called Me Too, which also includes iconic design Puppy by Eero Aarnio and Bunky bunk beds by Marc Newson.
More on Magis Me Too.
“While there is much that is innovative at the fair itself, some of the more experimental work happens in other design districts. Ventura Lambrate is a wide-ranging series of exhibitions located in Milan’s Lambrate precinct. It began in 2009 when Dutch curators Margriet Vollenberg and Margo Konings teamed up with architect and entrepreneur Mariano Pichler to provide a new space for design talent during Milan Design Week.
“Growing each year in size and quality, this year Ventura Lambrate showed a lot of the best emerging and unknown talent, both Dutch and international. The strength of the work is due to the exhibition’s careful curation by Vollenberg and Konings, with strict judging criteria applied to each project.”
Thanks to editor Peter Salhani for publishing my review of Ventura Lambrate on architectureau.com.
The story you tell yourself about your world, your life, so often becomes your reality. It’s the same at the Milan furniture fair. It is impossible to see the number of things that are on display during the citywide plus fairgrounds event – or to go to all of the parties. So, each fairgoer’s experience is necessarily different, though there is a lot of overlap.
On Dezeen last week, Marcus Fairs claimed that “The star of Milan this year was Instagram” and this was certainly the first year that I used Instagram as the main tool with which to share in real time the show, and check what my friends and fellow journalists were seeing and doing. The fact that it feeds directly to twitter and facebook is also handy. Read more