16/07/2013

Minimal Housing Units: Diogene

How much space does one person need to live in? Since forever architects, designers, builders and engineers have asked themselves the same questions, offering different practical solutions to the problem, while implicitly also posing questions about the nature of human existence within four walls of a structure we might call home. From the nomadic lifestyles embodied in a caravan, to tiny tree houses, the secret refugees of any child, from Le Corbusier’s “Cabanon” to Jean Prouvé’s “Maison Metropole”, these minimal spaces seem to embody an enigmatic quality of a solitary life in retreat, without giving up on the most basic comforts of modern life.


Wheather Renzo Piano had this idea in mind when he started drawing his minimal housing unit, is only an assumption, but it might as well be perfectly correct hearing the name he chose for the project. Diogene borrows its name from Diogenes of Sinope – a controversial Greek philosopher who lived in a jar – and was initially designed by Renzo Piano as a self-initiated project for a “voluntary place of retreat”. It was only after meeting Rolf Fehlbaum, the mastermind behind Vitra, in 2010 that Piano’s dreams about a tiny house, that he cherished since his student days, were finally turned into a real project.


Diogene eloquently continues a long-lasting architectural discussion on the idea of a minimalist house, by developing an ultimately independent unit, where both the water and power supplies are produced by the house itself. With a surface area of 2.5×3 meters when fully assembled, Diogene can be transported and placed anywhere, providing a retreat and a space for reflection, while also functioning as a reminder of what is truly essential in our living environment.

Rujana Rebernjak – Photo courtesy of Vitra and Renzo Piano Building Workshop 
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09/07/2013

Collaboration-O: Let’s Stick Together

Claiming that the 5-year-old Great Recession we find ourselves in nowadays can have positive effects as well might be strange, but something that the members of Collaboration-O proudly admit. Whereas the creative sector faced a downturn in the market and drastic budget cuts of cultural supportive funds, Collaboration-O built up their collective workspace without a big bag of money from investors or a loan from the bank. They are neither a government-funded project, which means they are not being reliant on anyone but themselves and this makes them a sturdily collective-built and based on the principals of collaboration. This is also exactly what their welcome sign in front of their workspace in Eindhoven tells you: “Big Boys Work Together”.


“Big Boys” refers to the 14 starting designers – thirteen guys and one girl – of the Collaboration with the unifying letter O. In an abandoned industrial hall each member works as an individual designer in his or her own-constructed 2-level balancing lofts. But next to their focus on a personal career, they all benefit from their shared investments in the collective: they share a central kitchen, courtyard and co-own heavy-duty machinery, and most notable of all; they often team-up to enrich each other’s projects and divide orders that are coming in for the collective among themselves.

As independent collaboration, they all have their tasks to keep the organically grown collective running. “It’s my responsibility to take care of the machines here, together with Martin Schuurmans and Joost Gehem”, tells Daan Brandenburg, a designer with a passion for wood and mechanics, “and Jelle Mastenbroek is this year the collective’s chairman during our meetings”. Other members have the role of concierge or event manager, or run the financial or communication “department”.



The collective is sticking together for almost 5 years now, which is special since their individual paths are developing in quite different directions. Whereas some specialize in wood carpentry and interior furniture like Brandenburg and Kaspar Eisenmeier, other members like Paul Heijnen, Niels Hoebers or Sander Wassink create far more conceptual works that are (almost) pieces of art, and that were recently showcased in Rossana Orlandi’s Museo Bagatti Valsecchi in Milan and during Design Miami/Basel, respectively. But as long as Collaboration-O keeps its function as a beneficial “springboard to make a career in the creative field”, the members will stick together. Because, explains Brandenburg, “although the individual is central to us, as a group we are much stronger”.


Lisanne Fransen – Photos courtesy of Lisa Klappe, Many thanks to Daan Brandenburg for showing us around. 
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09/07/2013

Monthly Reads | Graphic Design: Now In Production

What exactly is graphic design? Who are its most significant contemporary practitioners and why? What kind of activities does it engage with? How does it impact our daily lives? What is the range of human environments it deals with? Is it only a self-absorbed discipline that speaks to a few selected ones or can we all benefit from it? How can it tackle relevant social issues, and using which tools? This is an extremely limited list of questions that might come up thinking about graphic design, and this month’s carefully selected book answers quite a few of them.


“Graphic Design: Now In Production” is a book born as a catalogue of an exhibition held at Walker Art Center and Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum respectively, back in 2012. Edited by Andrew Blauvelt and Elen Lupton, two of the most prominent design theoreticians and critics, it results quite an appealing compendium of contemporary graphic design practices. Starting with a series of critical articles written by contributors such as Steven Heller, James Goggin, Michael Rock and Daniel van der Velden, it engages in discussion about different, but equally critical, evaluations about contemporary design practice. From the idea of designer as author (or writer), largely debated during the turn of the last century, to the role of research and critical investigation through the graphic design, to the idea of designer as entrepreneur proposed multiple times by aforementioned Heller, these short essays tackle and bring to life how design can become socially, culturally, politically and even economically relevant.


On the other hand, the second part of the book engages in an analysis of different outputs graphic design can be applied to. From the most traditional examples of graphic design excellency such as posters, through magazines, font design, film title sequences, to end with data representation and digital interfaces, it successfully, even though not exhaustively, takes into account the wide range of material artefact graphic design can give shape to. Even though this book might prove as tough summer reads for the not-so-into-design people, it should nevertheless be given a chance, since we might all benefit from a better understanding of what graphic design really is all about.


Rujana Rebernjak 
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02/07/2013

Visiting Franco Albini

The building stands in the district called centro storico, the old center of Milan. As we arrive on spot ten minutes before the appointment, we still have some time to appreciate the surrounding buildings from the last century. Ringing the bell with the name Albini on it, a female voice tells us to continue to the corridor, straight, until the door with the big windows and then take right. In this exact place, since 1970, Franco Albini, one of the most important architects and designers of Italian rationalism had established his studio.

The studio is kept as it used to be, and now since few months it has been open for the public audience to experience the atmosphere and learn about the working methods used by this brilliant architect. We are kindly welcomed by his son Marco Albini and granddaughter Paola Albini, who are guiding the visit themselves. While introducing the ideas and the historical facts, their talk imperceptibly melts with their personal stories, creating a warm atmosphere.

Trying to better understand each piece of design or architecture, it’s inevitable to discover the creative process as well. Especially in the work of Albini, who continued to improve his design objects according to the needs in the context of their times: the very idea of rationalism itself. For example, if a coffee table or a lamp can stand on three legs, why put a fourth one? “To question each little detail”, tells the architect’s son Marco Albini, “was my father’s working method – a belief that the good result is achieved only after a long and patient work.”

After exiting the place we feel like leaving behind a space where all the furniture, objects, tables and chairs are almost like levitating. One of the main approach of the work of Franco Albini was indeed to give every piece as much lightness as possible, leaving only the essential, the soul of each object. A good example is a famous bookshelf created for his home, in which he lets the books to almost float in the air and become more important than the design object itself.

Fondazione Franco Albini is open on weekdays, by appointment.

Agota Lukytė 
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02/07/2013

What’s For Breakfast?

Design has the incredible ability to inquire nearly any aspect of human life. From communications to transportation, from health to sports, from housing to everyday life and its habits. Yet, when it is shown to the public in museums and galleries it somehow remains abstract and disconnected from its daily functions. A show on display in Tbilisi, Georgia, eloquently integrates design and its material artefacts in a broader narrative about our everyday life, our national identities and the symbolic meaning each object carries.


Titled “What’s for breakfast?”, this show intends to inquire into eastern-European habits and way of life through the lens of design. The idea that guided the creation of this exhibition was to create a global discussion about the ways of life in different countries by merging design objects with their precise function. Hence, the question that forms the title has also guided the creation of different settings: each table represents a country through a meticulous display of its morning habits. “What’s for breakfast?”, presents a starting point from which the representatives of each country involved (namely Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Georgia), responded with a selection of objects, materials, settings, dishes and, ultimately, habits, that subtly speak about their national identities, qualities, affinities and preferences.


From the severe Austrian breakfast to the open Georgian feast, each table not only pinpoints the different customs, but also demonstrates how design can effectively penetrate each aspect of our lives, form the most simple and trivial ones, like a breakfast, to complex and articulate issues of national identity and shared culture.

Curated by Anna Pietrzyk-Simone, Kasia Jeżowska, and Miśka Miller-Lovegrove, “What’s for breakfast?” is on display until the 3rd of July at Writers’ House of Georgia in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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25/06/2013

Konstantin Grcic Plays With Unité d’Habitation

More than 60 years ago the grand master of Modern architecture, Le Corbusier, designed his Cité radieuse in Marseilles. Conceived upon the geometric repetition of single housing units, called Unité d’Habitation, the enormous complex is seen as the starting point of Brutalist architecture, due to its large size and the extensive use of béton brut (rough-cast concrete). Even though usually these kind of utopian social architecture projects have a negative appeal and the living conditions significantly deteriorate through time (like Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, demolished in 1972), Cité radieuse is nevertheless highly regarded by its inhabitants, mostly upper middle-class professionals.



In fact, Giò Ponti describes the success of the project on Domus’ pages with the following words: “Le Corbusier’s premise? Locate a building in a beautiful place (like ancient Romans with the sites of their monasteries, and the aristocratic their castles and villas – also “unité d’abitation”) which, with green space, air, sunlight, perfect orientation and day- and sun-lighting, acoustic insulation and perfect visuals (freedom), creates carefully designed and independent housing units in a complex offering all kinds of services and facilities (garage, kindergarten, schools, physical culture, guest rooms, infirmary, medical and pharmaceutical assistance, restaurant, shops, postal service, etc.) All of this is done by using the modern means and methods, both in terms of design and construction, used (in a purely industrial analogy) for the realization of the great ocean liners, other “unitè d’abitation.””



Even though years have passed and even a destructive fire has damaged the building last year, one of the apartments, namely unit number 50, has been almost entirely preserved in its original setting. Privately owned, this apartment is open to the public during the summer months and has, for this year, been entirely furbished by Konstantin Grcic. Following a project that initiated in 2008 with Jasper Morrison’s designs and continued in 2010 with the Bouroullec brothers, Mr. Grcic has used exclusively furniture designed by him in creating a contemporary vision of Le Corbusier’s vibrant project. Grcic’s utterly functional furniture has been complemented with large prints of pages taken out from a punk fanzine. The designer himself explains this powerful visual ambivalence: “The punk motifs are tempting a slightly devious link between two completely unrelated worlds: Le Corbusier’s architecture and punk rock. Without forcing the idea of common grounds, I find that both have a rawness and uncompromising spirit which I have always found compellingly beautiful,” ultimately proving that Le Corbusier’s visions won’t yet fade away.


Rujana Rebernjak – Photos courtesy of Philippe Savoir & Fondation Le Corbusier/ADAGP 
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20/06/2013

Open The Gates!

Last April 2013 an unusual newcomer appeared on the stage of the Salone del Mobile in Milan. Not a new design studio nor an exclusive brand, but the prestigious 200-year-old State Museum of the Netherlands. After 10 long years of renovation this museum of art and history finally reopened its doors and, surprisingly, during their persistent period of absence the museum not only rebuilt the brick walls to house their 100.000 objects; they also developed a unique virtual project. The museum presented the “Rijksstudio” project as part of Droog’s 20+ up to a beautiful future exhibition in Milan, to a, for them, new audience: the design world.


In Milan, the presentation of Rijksstudio was inspired by the domestic interior scenes of painter Johannes Vermeer and set up in a small room of approximately 30 sq m. Yet, the idea behind the digital project is much bigger than the one room we saw in Milan. The Rijksstudio is namely an online database, a platform packed with ultra high-resolution images of 125.000 collection pieces, from masterpieces to unknown artifacts. All images are free to download, collect and share and moreover of perfect quality to zoom in on details, print on big scale, sample or manipulate and all of this copyright-free.

The museum’s goal with their digitalized collection and big launch during the Milan Design Week is to reinterpret “century old works in contemporary shapes, techniques and materials.” And in order to plug the Rijksstudio project firmly into the international design field, they approached the Dutch design label Droog to set the first examples. One of the most striking outcomes is how Droog turned the classical art painting Still Life With Flowers and Glass Vase of Jan Davidsz de Heem into a body tattoo. Another eye catcher is the lavishly decorated Center Piece by German silversmith Wenzel Jamnitzer (1549) that is now re-decorated with 3D-printed magnetic miniatures of the Rijksmuseum collection. Besides 3D-printing and tattooing Droog applied other highly modern techniques combined with material such as rubber, titanium, plastic or glass to create new designs such as distilling the Irmari décor motif of a historical plate onto four glass plates, which recreate the original motif when you stack them.

Of course the Rijksmuseum is not the first museum that shows its face during the Salone, but unlike the others, this time it’s not a one-off museological presentation of limited editions that makes the critics claim that “design is art”. And whereas one usually tends to write about what the eye can perceive, in this case the prototyped outcome displayed by Droog even seems of inferior importance to the story. It is foremost the museum’s initiative that must be noted for its experimental approach and creative usage of the Internet to cross historical art with contemporary design. Hopefully they have fired the starting gun for an equal footing relationship with a benefit for both the disciplines: collection pieces get a new (technical) boost out of the oblivion and designers are allotted the role of the new bearer of our cultural history.

Lisanne Fransen 
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19/06/2013

Sou Fujimoto’s Serpentine Pavilion

If design and architecture are bound to comply to a precise function, it is somewhat difficult to judge any Serpentine Pavilion. Conceived as a platform for architectural experimentation offered to widely known international architects who haven’t yet had the chance to build in Britain, the project, besides offering the setting for Hans Ulrich Obrist’s marathons and a pricey café, appears to be utterly useless. Nevertheless, much can be said about this year’s project, designed by Japanese architect Sou Foujimoto, who, unlike his 12 predecessors (among whom we can count Herzog and de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Peter Zumthor, Alvaro Siza, Sanaa or Jean Nouvel), hasn’t yet reached the starchitect status.


Maybe precisely this fact allowed Fujimoto to build a pavilion that, even if not presenting a critique or an alternative to the apparent meaninglessness of the project, at least offers a fresh insight on the relationship between people and their surroundings, the natural and the artificial. Fujimoto’s pavilion is made of delicate white steel poles forming a grid, which at the same time appears geometrically rigid and organically fluid, scientific and natural, structured and malleable. In fact, more than building a precisely delimited structure, the Japanese architect has designed a system that translates in an architectural landscape, blending with the surroundings in a delicate synthesis.


Sou Fujimoto explains his intentions: “Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two. It will form a semi-transparent, irregular ring, simultaneously protecting visitors from the elements while allowing them to remain part of the landscape.”

Even though, like its author when speaking about his work, this project politely bypasses questions about the social role of architecture and objects, nevertheless remaining one of the most charming pavilions that London’s citizens and their architecture-hungry guests might enjoy.


Rujana Rebernjak 
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18/06/2013

Multiple Facets of Limited Edition Design

Our times seem to go through a paradox: whatever looks “limited” has never been so hype. If, on one side, the design community seems to lose its faith for the universal ambitions of serial mass production, on the other it endorses niche consumption as a loyal expression of its fragmented taste. In this scenario, smallest enterprises are those who gain the greatest advantages, at least in terms of visibility. Differently to big furniture corporations, which are refrained by their organizational routines, small firms are ready to transform flexibility – a primary effect of the supply chain impossibility to absorb new design jobs – into a new creative attitude.

Nevertheless, we should not be mistaken about the eclectic identity that limited edition design has shown in the last decade. Its complex phenomenology, in fact, puts together different players that prove to have little in common: design galleries trading expensive XX and XXI century furniture with the most sophisticated collectors (the insight behind Design Miami’s success), little maisons d’éditions, makers involved in 3D printing, as well as young designers choosing self-production as a chance to combine personal research with a new form of intellectual bread and butter capitalism.

In addition to that, there is also a new avantgarde that highlights the links between design and craftsmanship. That’s the case of Pietro Russo, set designer converted to industrial, long-run collaborator of Pietro Lissoni and now freelance designer devoted to custom-made furniture. His talent in old manufacturing techniques and his passion for precious woods and metals are clear in his pieces like Piuma table, Voliera shelving, or Otto lamp. His work doesn’t begin with a sketch on a piece of paper, but instead is the result of an established professional assignment and is developed as a dialogue with a specific space, mainly a private house under refurbishment. Thus, his approach develops along the legacy of one of the biggest Maestros of modernist Italian design, Gio Ponti, guardian of the value of handicrafts who used to curate with an obsessive care the furniture design of his Milanese homes (Casa Laporte, the house in via Brin and later Casa Dezza), and who, at the same time, would have never designed any piece of furniture without an established commitment.


At the last Salone del Mobile, Pietro Russo showed his work in a collective exhibition that was paradigmatic to understand the development of limited edition type of production in contemporary design. The exhibition, entitled Juice, was curated by Cristina Morozzi, Michela Pellizzari and Federica Sala, and gathered together small design companies devoted to “limited” excellence: young editors (like Secondome Gallery, Colé), new web-based brands (One Nordic), and self-promoted design authors (like Form Us With Love or Massimiliano Adami). Its goal was to suggest us that these blurring boundaries are an unmistakable symptom of the vitality. And that innovation may be driven by the cross pollination of these different attitudes.

Giulia Zappa 
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11/06/2013

Monthly Reads | The Italian Avant-Garde 1968-1976

Even though design is usually all about materiality and useful objects, it nevertheless both gives form to the books we lose ourselves in, as well as presents itself as quite an interesting subject to read about. This is why a new project by one of the most socially and politically engaged art publishing houses, the German Sternberg Press, should be particularly well appreciated. Titled EP, this project poses itself between a bi-annual magazine and a book series, with the goal of analyzing relevant topics in a way that resembles an EP – a musical recording that contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as an LP.





The first ‘issue’ of this particular project is dedicated to “The Italian Avant-Garde 1968-1976”, discussed in a particularly engaging but breezy manner. The publication of this book is particularly interesting in the current period of profound political and social crisis, as it contextualizes a moment in Italian design history when its most interesting and thought-provoking projects did not actually relate to its widely renowned industrial excellence, but to its social role and moral duty. Offering (often contradictory) proposals for a new way of confronting our material environment, Italian radical movements have installed a constructive debate and fierce criticism, contributing in evaluating the role of objects in our everyday life.


Even though it relates to a subject that often appears in contemporary design discourse, the editors of this book were nevertheless aware of the impatience of contemporary readers. Hence, the book contains different types of content – interviews, bulletin points, short texts, essays – building a contemporary dialogue about the subject: connecting past and present, history and theory, practice and imagination, with illustrious contributors ranging from Paola Antonelli to Martino Gamper, from Joseph Grima to Michelangelo Pistoletto. 
Even though the subject might not be the most simple one, the particular structure of the book (and its delightful graphic design by Experimental Jetset), might actually qualify it for an excellent pre-summer read enjoying a spare ray of light and positivity offered by both our (currently) shy sun as well as the courageous radical designers of the past.



Rujana Rebernjak 
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