06/11/2013

The cabinet of curiosities of Franco Clivio

Have you ever wondered how many examples of exceptional design pass unnoticed? When we think about design, we usually search for the unusual, the extravagant, the shocking, the decorative or stylish. We almost never look for the ordinary, the simple, the practical or the useful. We expect from design to amaze us, to leave us wide-eyed and with our mouth open, and, thus, we miss all those silent, everyday objects of extraordinary poetics. Designed through years of extensive use, or through hours of intense engineering work and laboratory tests, those everyday objects have become so ubiquitous and so essential that we don’t even consider them as objects of design.

Nevertheless, history has taught us that some of the greatest design masters have turned to those simple, plain objects and transformed them into some of the greatest masterpieces of contemporary design. In fact, Achille Castiglioni’s studio bares witness to this kind of practice, as does Jasper Morrison‘s research about wooden spoons, or Franco Clivio‘s incredible cabinet of curiosities. Made up of everyday objects, usually considered commonplace and hardly spectacular, Clivio’s extensive collection is currently the subject of an exhibition at Mudac – 
Musée de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains, in Lausanne.

Titled “No Name Design”, the exhibition is entirely drawn from Clivio’s collection and was devised by functions, or into system typologies, materials or formal families, each of which tells a particular story about the ingenuity of craftsmen and engineers who provided solutions to a variety of problems. From hammers to spoons, from nails to scissors, each of these objects builds a particular narrative about our relationship with these objects, how they were made, produced and even copied, about how lost we would feel if we were to live without any of them, even though we usually don’t consider them meaningful enough to be ‘designed’.

No Name Design, The cabinet of curiosities of Franco Clivio” runs until February 9, 2014 at Mudac – 
Musée de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains, Lausanne.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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01/11/2013

Shoreditch: Design Studios = Shopping Destinations

Multitasking is not just about mental organization. Our most widespread attempt for simultaneous multiplicity, a true synonym of contemporary weltanshauung, is also investing in the space we live in, transforming our environment into an hybrid place open to different targets and expectations. A visit to Shoreditch, London’s East-End epicentre of creativity, is a chance to observe how this phenomenon has been affecting design studios’ identity.


The most acclaimed British interpreter of minimalism, Jasper Morrison was among the first to move his office to this neighborhood. His headquarters, hidden behind an anonymous street door, rubs shoulders with a shop devoted to his “Supernormal” collection of ordinary but essential objects, and a design studio, inaccessible for clients. When you ring the doorbell and enter the white, tiny court, it feels like accessing a secret, suspended world: the discovery of the place or its offers isn’t due to serendipity. On the contrary, both the interior design and the products selection are no-frills but accurately conscious, and every object has more of a fetish than its plain look would suggest at first.

Few blocks away, Tord Boontje welcomes the followers of his laser-cut floral world into a wide open space. Its layout is similar to traditional shops: all its multi-branded creations are on sale, and their display is as accurate as if we were in a luxury department store. Yet, on a closer inspection, the presence of computers on the back suggests us that a few designers are working side by side to customers. Their presence is discreet and their glances silently observe our preferences: are they there to gather our wishes and interpret our unknown desires?

Lee Broom, enfant prodige of interior design and interpreter of the XXI century posh punk, is the latest to choose Shoreditch as a base. His brand new “Electra House” hub is both a showroom and a design studio: two contiguous rooms, each with a specific function, interact through an open door which leads to communication and exchange. Customers have their own dedicated perspective, like the audience of a play, and are free to observe how ideas and sketches take shape around the conference table and the moodboards on the walls. Thus, design is no more a segregated working attitude, as commerce is no more about buying: melted together, they are turned into a sophisticated and often intangible form of entertainment.


Giulia Zappa 
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30/10/2013

The Poetry of Castelvecchio

Castelvecchio Museum is a jewel located in Verona, northern Italy. It was built by Cangrande II della Scala in the middle of the fourteenth century, and was restored by Carlo Scarpa, between 1959 and 1973.

Oriental or Gothic character emerges in this project – both influenced by built traditions of Venice, which was a cosmopolitan city with trading history, but also by an Eastern influence due to Scarpa’s admiration of Japan.


“Castelvecchio was all deception,” said the venetian architect in 1978, with regard to the elevation which leads to the courtyard. “I decided to introduce some vertical elements to break up the symmetry as the Gothic demanded. Gothic, especially in his Venetian form, is not very symmetrical.”

Castelvecchio shows more than anyplace else how Scarpa’s architecture is based on juxtaposition and reconnection of the spaces with distinctly modern elements and his choice to expose, rather than brush over, the differing layers of history. Complexity is often perceived as counteractive to good modern design. It does not constitute the safe course, but within the work of a great artist/architect, well-handled complexity lends a project virtuoso quality.


Through a simple variation in levels and falls, Scarpa has created a deeply felt separation of the elements, within an area in which many parts converge. This is because (in psychological terms) level paving and steps feel completely different, and even though the steps are extremely shallow, they still register to our brain in a similar way to conventional steps. It is interesting to compare the entrance stairs with prints by the Venetian artist, Piranesi. These dramatic scenes illustrate a series of structures in which landings project forth into subterranean spaces. They are ‘architectural dreams’, and the space that Scarpa created, is an example of the poetic character that resonates through much of his work.


The pattern used and the walls adorned with square sets of various colours of Prun stone, a limestone from Verona, reflect the architect’s interest in the work of the modern artists, Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee and in vernacular materials (the roughly textured finish, emulate the character of historic walls). Manipulation of the qualities of the materials, the sophisticated grammar of his paving pattern and the details of the steps are good examples of his ability to imbue junctures with a profound beauty. The point at which two points meet can often be perceived as a problem by architects or designers; a problem that needs to be solved. Within Scarpa’s work, the joint is an opportunity that provides detail and can expose the nature of an object. Any seemingly unnecessary gesture, which may have had a practical purpose in protecting some parts, appears as a poetical touch.

Scarpa’s sensitive consideration of materials and details helped his work to achieve a sense of continuity with the several historical layers. As an example of the way in which tradition can form an integral part of modern design, Castelvecchio is a masterpiece.


Giulio Ghirardi 
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29/10/2013

Alan Fletcher and the Art of Looking Sideways

Even though the very nature of their work implies being committed to wider public and its understanding of the world, it is rare to find designers of such depth, wit and intelligence whose work speaks directly to the hearts and minds of those unfamiliar with design practice. Alan Fletcher, the great British designer who passed away 7 years ago, was one of those rare exceptions. During his long and prolific career, Alan Fletcher had created some of the most eloquent visual interpretations of our material culture, our environment and the very human nature, through posters, logotypes, postcards, billboards and books.


Fletcher was born to a British family in Kenya in 1931 and, having moved to England at the age of five, went to study art during the post-war years. After years of studying and, later, teaching in the UK, Fletcher was awarded a travel scholarship to Yale University where his astute thinking and fascination with visual culture was merged with a fairly American sense of advertising and its appealing pop-culture. After his return to the UK, Fletcher founded one of the most important design firms, Fletcher/Forbes/Gill, which would later change its name to Pentagram. During those years Fletcher had created some of the most iconic graphic design projects such as Victoria and Albert Museum‘s classically elegant logotype, advertising projects for Pirelli, designs for Penguin books, Reuters or the Institute of Directors‘ logotypes.


Tired of commercial projects, Fletcher decided to leave Pentagram in 1992 and commit to his personal work, collaborating on commercial projects only if they appeared to be ‘fun’. In this period, two of his exceptional books, “Beware Wet Paint” and “The Art of Looking Sideways” were published by Phaidon, a publishing house for which he worked as creative director. The latter of two books was defined by Emily King as “an unfailing source of wit, elegance and inspiration. At over a thousand pages, it is a spectacular treatise on visual thinking, one that illustrates the designer’s sense of play and his broad frame of reference”, and is a conundrum of visual, literary, cultural and historical references that teaches us how to really look and see.

An opus of such depth and volume is surely difficult to grasp, especially knowing that Fletcher frowned upon the use of computers and digital tools throughout his life. For this reason, it is particularly significant the meticulous work done by his daughter Raffaella in publishing a digital archive
of his work, where Alan Fletcher’s creativity, intelligence and wit can inspire the future generations of designers and admirers.

Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of Alan Fletcher Archive. 
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24/10/2013

Design Runways by Famous Designers

Short but rhythmic, visually compelling, emotionally engaging: the recipe for a good runway is all about returning a memorable, breath-taking show. Thus, fashion catwalks have always been entrusted to visionary event managers – Etienne Russo, Alexandre de Betak, Thierry Mugler, just to mention few of the most revered fashion producers – committed to combine an out-of-the-box creativity with a flawless direction of a complex ensemble choreography.



However, a subtle but significant shift has recently revisited these implicit laws. That’s what has silently been changing: on tiptoe, industrial designers have been called to rethink the scenic space as a new architecture of objects and volumes. Today, their role in the overall fashion biz is that of back actors. Tomorrow, they could be transformed into main characters engaged to redefine the way we represent meanings and metaphors in the fashion world.

The first to burst on the runways scene was Studio Job, called to support the iconoclast genius of Viktor & Rolf for the launch of their 2009 “Cutting Edge Couture” collection. Thanks to a creative affinity that ties the two couples as a result of their long-lasting friendship, Nynke Tynagel and Job Smeets were set free to design a huge Swarovski crystal-covered globe, a mean to establish a new sense of proportions between clothes and items on stage and thus subverting the giant allure that models usually personify in this context.



Their collaboration hasn’t slowed down in the following years: in 2011, “Rebellious Sophistication” associated the issue of youth intolerance to a black and white backdrop showing withered flowers. Then, their latest exploit was Viktor & Rolf SS14 collection: openly inspired by Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, Studio Job recalled the issue of rebellion transforming it into a tiled, iconic scenario whose insurrectionary message is meant to be aggressive up to an metaphorical point break.

However, the conceptual affinity between fashion and design is not necessarily a matter of compatriots. In the last couple of years, Miuccia Prada committed to her trusted cultural think tank, Rem KoolhaasOMA/AMO, to set up an intriguing runway concept for her collection. First, an inedited exhibition offered a premise for this new collaboration: “Ex Limbo”, commissioned in 2011 by Prada/Koolhaas to the Belgian collective Rotor, redefined the space and the paths of Fondazione Prada in Milan through the use of dismissed catwalk platforms. Later on, in 2012, OMA got rid of the idea of catwalk reconfiguring it into an unstable, enlarged volume. Up to an apotheosis: the inclusion in Prada’s AW13 runway of the new OMA’s prototypes designed for Knoll and named “La Casa Ideale”: a true short circuit between fashion and design, calling into question priorities and mutual expectations from these two worlds.



The collaborations between designers and the fashion world are not limited to long lasting, conspirational friendships. Recently, the Japaneese cult fashion designer Issey Miyake chose an unexpected partner, Sir James Dyson, to set up a wind machine to inflate the catwalk of his “The Wind” collection. More underground, but highly spectacular, the suspended, looping catwalk designed by Gartnerfuglen-Arkitekter transformed a no-profit event celebrating emerging Norwegian fashion talents into a worldwide viral phenomenon.

Could design for fashion soon unveil its full potential? For sure, let’s expect it to gain a bigger role in transforming fashion events into an unforgettable – and brandable – opportunity.

Giulia Zappa 
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22/10/2013

A Note on Copying in Design

Jim Jarmusch, the famous film director, once said that nothing is original. In fact, the fifth (and final) point of his ‘golden rules’ manifesto goes as follows: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery. Celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.’”


But would Jarmusch have been right if he were speaking about design instead of film-making? If applied to design, where can this rule about copying take us to? The issue might be much more complex than it appears. On one side, the first things design students hear on their first day of school is probably originality and authenticity in their practice, on the other hand we witness every day pieces of historical design being embodied, in one way or another, in new ones. So how can we understand copying and originality in design? Does the concept of copying in design even exist?

Legally, at least in the United Kingdom, it does. In fact, deliberate copying has become a criminal offense in the UK and a bill to extend copyright protection on industrial design has already been passed, even though the extent to which it can be applied and the criteria of evaluation will surely be dubious, as will be the products, companies and designers it aims to protect. While it might be fairly easy to protect Herman Miller‘s or Vitra‘s rights against low-cost brands reproducing their furniture and bringing it to the masses (the once ideal consumers of their products), things might get a bit tricky with one-off projects and concepts, as can be seen in the dispute behind the olympic cauldron designed by Thomas Heatherwick, which saw New York-based studio Atopia claim they presented a strikingly similar project back in 2008.


These two cases, completely different and particularly marginal to everyday design practice seem to highlight only a brink of difficulties that need to be tackled when discussing authenticity in design. On the other hand, this type of discussion should also take into account the very nature of design practice, which is to make our lives better through objects and services. If this means taking an existing chair and making it become more comfortable, then this should be a valid design project. Or if it means taking centuries old vases and contextualizing their design to contemporary use, this also shouldn’t be put discussed in terms of authenticity. So how far can we actually define copying in design? Probably, it is the very nature of everyday design practice itself that demonstrates it is an utter waste of time.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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16/10/2013

V&A – The Dinner Party

Good design is always a matter of innovation. However, its drive can change according to situations: sometimes it’s related to a product enhancement, sometimes to an unexpected imaginary suggested by a new form of styling, in other cases to a new perspective on interaction. In the latest Scholten & Baijing’s installation at Victoria & Albert Museum presented during London Design Week 2013, we have definitively found the sparks of an innovative work. Its title, “The Dinner Party”, perfectly reflects the intents of the two Dutch designers: injecting contemporary glamour to a traditional banquet, wonderfully set among the V&A empire boiserie (originally the Norfolk House’s Music Hall) by way of a mix and match of fluorescent colors and glossy food design.

Far from having run out their charm – and that’s still the main credit of the overall work -, tableware, seats and accessories had not been chosen according to any product innovation requirement. All the items, like “Color Platters”, “Color Stool” and “Color Wood” for the Japanese brand Karimeku New Standard, the “Color Glass Collection” for Hay and “Tea with George” for George Jensen, come from the designers’ portfolio and have already been previewed in recent Design Weeks.

On the contrary, the performative nature of the setting up was meant to engage through an inedited approach. Neither detached or contemplative, as it happens in all those design museums or festivals were pieces are staged through cases and platforms, “The Dinner Party” has proposed a scenario-related fruition of objects in use: cutlery on the plate, food had already been tasted, chairs distanced from the table… Thus, the suspension of timing, the identification of a specific context, and the absence of real users were supposed to provoke identification and generate an experience.

Nevertheless, the lack of a real immersive process didn’t shorten the distance between the stage and the public, and left people on the edge: a rope, in fact, marked the insurmountable limit of visitors’ movements in the room, and the make-believe assumption didn’t really mark the difference from the contemplative vision that museums generally impose to their visitors. It’s a pity, therefore, that the V&A policy rules prevented Scholten & Baijings from using real food as they had wished: in this case, in fact, synesthetic short circuits between vision and smell would have encouraged surprise and emotional participation.

Inaugurated in the same days as a multi-site installation across V&A halls, “God is in Details” succeeded to achieve what Scholten & Baijings has fallen to reach. Thanks to special Swarowski lens – the Swiss brand was the official supporter – this introspective project allowed the public to come really close to few pieces of the museum collection and observe in details the unforeseen perfection of these handmade chef d’oeuvre. Thus, engagement has been obtained not only through a magnified vision, but also thanks to the chance to overstepping the proximity boundary that culturally exists among museum collections and theirs visitors.

Giulia Zappa – Photos Giona Messina 
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08/10/2013

Close, Closer | Lisbon Architecture Triennale

If you are planning to visit the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in search for models, drawings and plans of buildings, this year, you’ll be in the wrong place. Titled “Close, Closer”, this year’s edition of the triennale curated by Beatrice Galilee with a team of international curators, has set itself a different goal. The official declaration of intents goes as follows: “Situating itself as an investigation into the expanding forms of contemporary architecture, and using the platform to position questions rather than presenting answers, “Close, Closer” presents five diverse poles of practice: Speculation, Intimacy, Dispersion, Agency and Pedagogy. Through a diverse, participation-driven programme, “Close, Closer” is considering the condition in which architecture is practiced and the way it is framed, expressed and understood today.”


In fact, “Close, Closer” is articulated through four main events, each examining a particular aspect of architectural production in unexpected ways. First among these is the exhibition “The Real and Other Fictions” curated by Maria Pestana. Set in Pombal Palace, which used to host the Spanish Embassy, among others, this exhibition consists of a series of projects whose goal is to examine the history of the building that gathers them. On the other hand, “Future Perfect”, curated by Liam Young, uses science-fiction as a model to engage in critical investigation about possible future developments of architecture. In fact, “Future Perfect” is an exhibition set in a fictional future city that invites visitors to wander through its hybrid forests and digital landscapes to explore possibilities and consequences of today’s emerging biological and technological research.


The third project, titled “The Institute Effect”, invites 12 different international organizations who actively deal with curation, research and promotion of architecture, to engage with a changing stream of activities held over 13 weeks, which will range from talks, debates and performances to exhibitions, hands-on workshops and projections. Lastly, “New Publics”, possibly the most challenging and yet most interesting part of “Close, Closer” is structured on an open stage placed on Praça da Figueira square in Lisbon as a physical platform designed to host presents a radically new programme of open-air sessions, speeches, workshops and guerrilla urban interventions. The programme frames voice as the main medium through which we create civic spaces and explores the theatrical public enactment of inspiring statements to reach broad and diverse audiences, whose success or failure will possibly also highlight the success or failure of “Close, Closer” itself.


Rujana Rebernjak 
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07/10/2013

Biodesign: A Cross-Pollination Exhibition

Now our light-hearted summer is over, and people have returned behind their keyboard devices again to post and publish tons of worrisome information about our planet’s state of being, it feels like the perfect timing for the exhibition Biodesign, on the Cross-Pollination of Nature, Science and Creativity. The exhibition opened recently and runs until January 5th at the The New Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.


The exhibition is curated by New York-based writer and teacher William Myers, who published his book BioDesign: Nature + Science + Creativity exactly one year ago in collaboration with Paola Antonelli, MoMa’s senior curator of Architecture and Design. Antonelli, in her turn, introduced the word ‘biodesign’ to a large online audience in her article for Domusweb, States of Design 07: Bio-design, in the fall of 2011. In short, biodesign stands for designers who utilise living organisms as essential components for the production of new materials and experimental projects.

Now, throughout this fall, Myers’ exhibition about biodesign lifts the described projects from the flat paper of his book onto the displays. Myers’ and The New Institute’s goal with this exhibition is to show us that nature can help us building up a better future by replacing industrial or mechanical systems – that now seem to antagonise us increasingly – with biological processes. On display are 57 projects that show us how lamps can shine without electricity, how snails and spiders can excrete new fibers, how mushrooms can replace synthetic foam and how microbes and algae can be used to grow textile, vases and shoes.

Yet, if we look further than these breathtaking projects, this exhibition is, to be frank, quite in line with the growing trend of exhibitions about design and healthcare, new-technologies and our future. Are all these courageous attempts to highlight design’s lifesaver-potential, because of our mens rea, our guilty mind? Can biodesign genuinely replace our own invented machinery, apparatus and systems to which we are so accustomed, with nature’s organically growing processes in sufficient quantities? Hopefully this exhibition provides not solely inspiration for “designers, artists and scientists in the form of varied, in-depth information on new materials and potential biological application in architecture and design” but also for the corporate, engineering and investor world in order to give this side of design a chance to gain solid ground.

Lisanne Fransen – Photo courtesy of The New Institute 
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02/10/2013

Errata Editions | Books on Books Series

There’s something funny, a little stubborn even, about the thought of a small photobook press cropping up in the midst of today’s brutal media landscape. But here it is: Errata Editions, a wonderful downtown New York publishing house dedicated to reissuing historically significant photography books that have fallen out of print. Their eloquent Books on Books series features modern reproduction of the original text, page by page, word for word. Their aim is to provide students and amateur photographers a snapshot of landmark works that have become increasingly hard to get a hold of.


Of course our first thought was: why go through the trouble of publishing a book? You can, after all, see all of the images from Alexey Brodovitch’s Ballet, or any shot ever taken by Walker Evans online, for free. But for Jeffrey Ladd, the photographer and writer behind Errata’s Books on Books series, the medium is the message. “It’s not just about the work, but the total package,” he writes on his blog 5B4. “And expanding the discourse on the photobook as a mode of fine art in and of itself and reopen them for study, making these treasures of the past available again, and to a new generation.” With history, context is everything.


Ladd conceived the idea for Errata Editions’ Books on Books series in 2008 with co-founders Ed Grazda and Valerie Sonnenthal. “The idea that young photographers just learning their craft couldn’t, without great effort or expense, experience what came before them was very disturbing to me,” he writes. “It begged the question of consequence: what if the greatest literature or poetry was not available for young writers to be informed by?”

The books are beautifully bound and laid out in their original sequence. Titles include Eugene Atget’s seminal Photographe de Paris, Paul Graham’s Beyond Caring, Walker Evans’ groundbreaking American Photographs, and William Klein’s bizarre magnum opus Life is Good & Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels. Klein’s frenzied photos of city street life in the late 50s convey a mood that echoes our own times: hurried, paranoid, the people slightly deluded and begrudgingly in the public eye. To see the images as they were originally presented on the page adds a dimension that can’t be found by looking at the pictures on a screen. The case being made is that photobooks are a work of art in their own right, in the same way that putting on a dusty old vinyl record is different than listening to a single on your phone.


“Again, it is a compromise in treading the fine line between a reprint and a study and keeping our books affordable for most everyone,” Ladd writes. “Will our books provide the same experience as the original? Of course not. Even modern reprints, unless they are printed with the same paper and technologies, would fail to do so. But Books on Books provides a full sense of the character and history of each book we feature.” Students can breath a sigh of relief at the thought of no longer having to pay $800 for a first edition of Chris Killip’s In Flagrante. Someday maybe all of the books will be available on your iPad. Then again, that would be somewhat beside the point.


Lane Koivu 
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