29/08/2014

The Radical World of Ettore Sottsass

Of many great Italian designers of the past century, Ettore Sottsass is the most difficult one to grasp. Initially trained as an architect, throughout his life Sottsass has produced work that spanned many disciplines, media and types of production. From critical design developed with radical group Memphis to industrial design projects – among which stands out the timeless Olivetti portable typewriter Valentine – Sottsass has marked the discipline’s course and his work is still reflected in projects developed by contemporary young professionals.

Nevertheless, until recently, a comprehensive reading of Sottsass’ life and work appeared to lack. Bits and pieces of his work and thought were scattered around in different volumes, such as Barbara Radice’s “Memphis. Research, Experiences, Results, Failures and Successes of New Design”, which offers a critical reflection on the Memphis period, rather than Sottsass’ autobiography “Scritto di notte”, revealing his youth years and an unconventionally free approach to life. For this reason, Phaidon’s monograph on Ettore Sottsass was a highly anticipated and much needed work.

Edited by Philippe Thomé, this monumental volume aims at revealing the complexity and eclecticism of the designer’s work by dividing the book both chronologically and thematically. Therefore, each subsection of the book – whose complex and at times too bold graphic design reflects perhaps the density of its subject – is divided into different chapters based on the type of production – ceramics/glass, furniture, sculpture/painting, architecture, jewellery, etc. – offering a comprehensive and clear vision of the evolution of Sottsass’ thought. Thomé, a Swiss scholar who wrote his doctoral theses on Sottsass, complemented the meticulous research work with essays by Francesca Picchi, Emily King, Andrea Branzi or Deyan Sudjic, as well as with precious and utterly exciting inserts of Sottsass’ characteristic sketches. With more than 500 pages and 800 illustrations, the book’s sheer volume stands as a reminder of the depth of Sottsass’ achievement.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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26/08/2014

Testing Chairs

Designing a chair represents a staple for every aspiring designer. A chair, in fact, stands at the crossroad of multiple demands: its ergonomics is more than essential in evaluating the pleasure of its usage, and yet its iconic value needs to overcome its functional features and establish a special narrative dimension that, almost like an aura, surrounds every legendary seat in the design world. As in all complex tasks, this giant effort is not confined to prototyping, but includes testing as a tough but intriguing part of the job. It’s no coincidence that design history starts with a daring testing procedure: when presenting n°14 chair at the World Exposition in Paris, Michael Thonet launched his “chaise bistrot” from the top of the Eiffel tower. His goal was to demonstrate how resistant, besides being formally innovative, his bended wood creation was, and thus the result has legitimated the risk. Further to this spectacular demonstration, “the most elegant chair of all times”, according to Le Corbusier, won the Gold Medal and was finally put in mass production.

Another milestone among design chairs, Navy Chair by Emeco, shares another spectacular test practice. Commissioned by the American Navy in 1944 and basically confined to U.S. military submarines and ships till the ‘70s, this aluminium chair has always been celebrated for its resistance. Guaranteed for 150 years, it was previously tested resorting to the considerable weight of a bunch of muscular men who were meant to jump on a board laid on its legs. Nowadays the process has gone mechanical and includes numerous testing phases, which submit each piece to drop, impact, back and legs strength stresses.

However, advancements in technology change not only the way testing process is led, but also the target involved. For their R18 Ultra Chair, designers Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram created a public testing environment during 2012 Salone del Mobile in Milan. For this first crowd-sourced test in design history, visitors were invited to sit on the chair prototype and allow the sensors placed inside the seat to capture their movements and transform them into relevant data, used to optimize the final product.

Beyond technology and its digital progress, however, testing can be transformed into an award-winning issue. At the latest DMY in Berlin, the Czech company that has taken the reins of the manufacturing factories where Thonet chairs were first produced, Ton, won the Exhibitor Award for a special installation that animated its booth. On show, a slide on a chair – a clear reference to the way bent wood chairs were first tested- becomes not only a symbol of long-lasting handmade techniques, but also stands as a metaphor of the humble yet playful effort every innovation needs to support.

Giulia Zappa 
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15/08/2014

Disobedient Objects at the V&A in London

Design has many faces and can be discussed in many terms: it encompasses both craft and industrial production, one-off artefacts and mass produced objects; it can be technical, poetic, naïve or iconic, it can be futuristic or part of a broader historical narrative, it can be boring, repetitive or ground-breaking and original, it can serve the economy or work in function of broader cultural and social goals. This summer, the V&A museum in London has decided to explore the idea of design as a means of social change in a smart and vibrant exhibition titled “Disobedient Objects”.

“Disobedient Objects” departs from the idea that art and design can act as powerful tools for social change. From Chilean folk art textiles that document political violence to a graffiti-writing robot, defaced currency to giant inflatable cobblestones thrown at demonstrations in Barcelona, to a political video game about the making of mobile phones, Disobedient Objects demonstrates how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity. The exhibition showcases forms of making that defy standard definitions of art and design: the objects on display are mostly produced by non-professional makers, collectively and with limited resources as effective responses to complex situations, showing that often the most powerful designs come from those that would never consider themselves designers.

“Disobedient Objects” runs until February 1st 2015 at the V&A Museum in London.

Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of the V&A Museum, London 
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29/07/2014

Exemplary: 150 Years of the MAK

Biedermeier, Thonet, Wiener Werkstätte: all these iconic styles and objects have a common house in Wien. The name of their prestigious dwelling is MAK, an acronym for Museum für angewandte Kunst, which happens to be not only the local museum for applied arts, but also a worldwide leading institution in the field of design conservation and curatorship.

Founded in 1864, at a time when emperor Franz Joseph was about to guide vast portion of Europe under domain of the Hapsburg realm, the museum hosts one of the major worldwide collections of furniture and housewares, spanning from the Middle Ages to present, including art works from prominent artists like Donald Judd, James Turrell, Gordon Matta-Clark, not to mention Frank West’s celebrated twelve sofas.Nevertheless, we would be way off if we considered MAK as an institution that is mainly devoted to the preservation of its huge heritage. Since the arrival in 1986 of its penultimate curator, legendary Peter Noever, the museum has extended its mission to analysis of contemporary issues that interconnect design and art through a common Weltanschauung.

In this spirit, the exhibition “Exemplary: 150 Years of the MAK” – now on show for the museum’s anniversary celebration – is seen as a privileged means to explore the dynamics that are influencing design mid term scenarios. According to curators Tulga Beyerle and Thomas Geisler, the exhibition looks for a possible answer to an apparently simple question: “Who or what was exemplary in the past, and where can we find (role) models today?”. Nine leading intellectuals, chosen among designers, curators, and trend-setters (Jan Boelen, Dunne & Raby, Stefan Sagmeister, Lidewij Edelkoort, Konstantin Grcic, Gesche Joost, Sabine Seymour, Hilary Cottam, Hans Ulrich Obrist) have been called to offer their point of view by establishing a dialogue between the museum’s collection and their visions.

The result is unstable and unpredictable, as these types of speculative enquiries should always be. While Konstantin Grcic puts on display his own “cosmos of the exemplary”, including Philippe Starck’s Jim Nature television and Jasper Morrison’s Plywood Chair, Fiona Raby and Tony Dunne choose a radically different approach, and thus present a selection of consultation texts on science fiction and social fiction by critics Edward Bellamy and Margaret Atwood. Finally, these examples seem to demonstrate a double law: if innovation in design is better expressed by a subjective, qualitative research, museums – no matter if ancient or contemporary – should be more and more committed to encouraging the expression of these voices.

Giulia Zappa 
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25/07/2014

Museum der Dinge, A Libertarian Parable

How should we “awaken the gods that sleep in museums”, wonders Antonin Artaud. The question is still a living matter in the design field: we have come to a point when we take for granted the need to preserve our industrial production, but we are still uncertain about the museographical model that best suits this particular type of heritage. The Museum der Dinge in Berlin hasn’t hesitated to tune its own concept. Opened in its current location – the multicultural Oranienstrasse in the very heart of Kreuzberg – in 2007, the museum boasts a collection of more than 20.000 objects showing the evolution of material culture in the course of 20th century. The core of its rich set is the archive of the Deutscher Werkbund, the glorious German institution founded in 1907 that, according to the spirit of the time, was meant to favour the fusion between applied arts and mass manufacturing.

Nevertheless, the curatorial vision that distinguishes the museum doesn’t cling on the beautiful legacy that best embodies the quintessence of the German way in domestic design – that is to say the idea of a product as a “silent servant”, a discreet yet performative tool accompanying everyday life with a compliant and shy touch. Instead, it has found the courage to enlarge its boundaries to all plebeian objects that, beyond the strict requirements of functionality, often support the symbolic sphere of our domestic landscape and contribute to strengthen our sense of identity.

Thus, it’s through a process of accumulation that Museum der Dinge displays its anonymous yet familiar crowd of things. The idea to cage objects into a case, as if we were in front of an antiquated anthropology museum, is intriguing: squeezed into congested yet eye candy cabinets, organized in categories running among the others from “packaging” to “housewares” to “early plastic” to “imitations and quotations”, the collection finds an engaging balance through the juxtaposition of its diverse elements.

Can good form go along with kitsch? By all means, if everybody respects the same sense of integrity and respect for the other. This liberal parable, which also reminds us of Alessandro Mendini’s «Quali cose siamo» exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan in 2010, seems to confirm the virtuous potential of mix matching, and perfectly reflects the spirit of the city where it is based.

Giulia Zappa – Images courtesy of Florian Hardwig 
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22/07/2014

Pierre Charpin for Appartement N°50

Designed immediately after the end of Second World War and built between 1947 and 1952, Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille is an imposing building: 137 meters long, 24 meters wide and 56 meters high, with 18 stories set on massive piloti that can house up to 3000 people. Structured as a rigid architectural grid based on a single, carefully proportioned, apartment unit, Cité Radieuse represents the synthesis of Le Corbusier’s thought, a monument to the Modern Movement and a concrete utopian dream. Unlike many similar large housing units, Cité Radieuse remains popular with its residents, mainly upper middle-class professionals and intellectuals. One of its residents is Jean-Marc Drut. Since 2008, Mr. Drut has asked Jasper Morrison, Erwan and Ronan Boroullec, Konstantin Grcic and now Pierre Charpin to furnish the interior of his n°50 apartment.

Bearing witness to a particularly visionary moment in design history, apartment N°50 sets a challenging background for any object placed within its walls and it is particularly difficult not to draw comparisons between the original Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé-designed furniture and its contemporary counterparts. At the same time, it is also difficult to view apartment N°50 as a regular residence, rather than a house-shaped monument. Aware of the building’s significance, Charpin said “For me, it was clear that I didn’t want to propose just an exhibition of my own objects in a famous apartment. I wanted to do some kind of arrangement with my own objects in a way that respected the lives of the owners. The challenge was to be present but not invasive.” Differently from his predecessor Konstantin Grcic, whose choice of punk-zine prints transformed the apartment in a sterile gallery, Charpin opted for a more subtle and homely touch. By mixing limited edition objects, such as his Série Écran vases with industrially produced furniture (Desa table lights, Via shelf, Chaise Empilabile chair, Stump side table), Charpin created a visually rich project – colorful, slightly lived-in and far more authentic – silently acknowledging the apartment’s past – though bold use of colour reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s facade and rich drawings –, and its present everyday use.

Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of Philippe Savoir 
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14/07/2014

Makers Biennial at MAD in New York

What was the last time you made something from scratch? The art of making has, to some extent, become the art of contemporary living and chances are, you might be making or planning to make something – a loaf of bread, a new scarf, pottery or even furniture – at this very moment. Craft or, rather, crafting is the focus of “NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial” at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. The first exhibition to open under the new director, Glenn Adamson, needs to be read as a statement of purpose for museum’s future developments. Founded as Museum of Contemporary Crafts in 1956, since changing its title in 2002 the institution has lost some of its former focus, which Adamson, a craft specialist and former director of research at the V&A in London, is intent to bring back.

“NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial” surveys New York’s creative community through a selection of 100 makers, unlimited by disciplinary boundaries. Nominated by a committee of 300 cultural leaders and subsequently selected by a jury led by Adamson and the exhibition’s curator Jake Yuzna, the artefacts displayed vary from more ‘traditional’ crafting practices like fashion and pottery making, to food and avant-garde technology. Through the idea of craft and making, Adamson presents a new approach to creative discipline, where art and design are brought together by “making, skill, knowhow and expertise”. This exhibition, in fact, celebrates a diverse field of creativity, “trying to espouse an egalitarian understanding of art, design and craft, and presenting many different types of people on an even playing field.” Therefore, “NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial” presents a sweeping cross-section of the cultural production of these inventive individuals, living and working within a single city: from deliberately important names like Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson and Gaetano Pesce, to small and relatively unknown businesses like the tattoo artists Amanda Wachob or Flavor Paper wallpaper company. “NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial” runs for 100 days, until October 12, 2014.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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08/07/2014

Design Parade 9 at Villa Noailles, Hyères

During the last century, Villa Noailles in Hyères, France, was an evolving experiment in International Style as well as the home of many Mondrians and Brancusis, Giacomettis and Lipchitzs, Dalis and Rays. Designed in 1923 by Rob Mallet-Stevens for Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, prominent ‘art collectors and modernism enthusiasts’, the villa went through many changes, following the eccentric taste of its proud owners. Nevertheless, after Marie-Laure’s death, it was sold to the town of Hyères and nearly abandoned for almost 30 years, before it finally became a temporary home for contemporary international talents, like Viktor & Rolf, Raf Simons, Dries van Noten, Walter Pfeiffer and Scheltens Abbenes.

In 1996, after nearly 30 years of slow decay, Villa Noailles was put on disposal of the Association of the International Festival of Fashion Arts. Honouring the villa’s heritage, the Association used the space to nurture new talents in fashion, art and design, eventually setting up a rich cultural program it now hosts. Besides the initial fashion competition, Villa Noailles is known for its annual photography and design festivals, the latter of which took place last week. Design Parade showcases a selection of 10 product designers, offering assistance to young professionals in realizing their projects and developing their careers by a residency program and research scholarship, creating lasting bonds with the laureates.

The 9th Design Parade appeared to have broken with the festival’s past. Usually showcasing carefully crafted and formally refined objects, this edition offered nuanced reflections and conceptual research rather than well-defined products. Starting from the winner of this year’s edition, Laura Couto Rosado, the selection favoured a sort of a new wave of ‘critical design’, displaying projects on the “extreme perfection of this technological revolution” with a series of blown-up doll house furniture produced with a 3D printer by Silva Lovatsova, “manifestation of technology in design” with a new printer concept by Axel Morales, rather than “the process of design conception” with a series of imaginary furniture by Malak Mebkhout.

Laura Couto Rosado’s winning project developed a technical enquiry into properties of quartz crystals. Often used for high-tech components, the crystal’s piezoelectric properties were exploited by connecting a frequency generator to an amplifier and a transformer, turning quartz into a 21st century musical instrument. For the author, the project is “magical, not because it is technically advanced, but because it reveals the poetry inherent in existing technology.” Conceptually elegant and formally intriguing, this project seems to signal a new era for design where technological evolution should possibly become ever more concerned with issues of historical continuity, meaning and humaneness inherent in any object, material or production process.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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04/07/2014

Gaetano Pesce, a Kaleidoscope of Diversity

It’s such a surprise when a city that has never called itself a design capital has suddenly something to say about it. The reason for this unexpected vitality is offered by two exhibitions that Maxxi dedicates to Italian designers gone abroad. After “Design Destinations”, the showcase exploring the creative outcomes of young Italian designers migrated to Eindhoven, the Roman museum focuses on the previous experience of radical design to celebrate one of the undisputed maestros of that fortunate, unconventional season: Gaetano Pesce.

The exhibition, emblematically called “Il Tempo della Diversità” [“The Time of Diversity”], offers the opportunity to dive into an inventory of projects, sketches and products documenting Pesce’s huge yet transversal production. Born in La Spezia and based in New York since the 80s, Pesce has always preached the deconstruction of boundaries between architecture, art and design, expressing through his artworks the breaking up of vertical and monolithic knowledge.

However, it’s when it comes to political dimension of his works that the exhibition unveils unexpected connections and intensity. Each piece of art, in fact, explores in its own way the concept of difference, starting from the critique of rationalism in architecture (“Pugno all’architettura”), to the reconsideration of home partitions (“Manifesto per una casa elastica”), to the celebration of female equality as the most urgent political issue (the historical “UP 5&6” series, but also the re-contextualization of Malala Yousafzai’s speech at the UN in Maxxi’s courtyard).

Pesce’s quest for originality represents, first of all, a celebration of the psychical diversity that imprints us all, and finds in figurative language a spontaneous and immediate means of speaking to a wider public. And when it comes to design, originality cannot but rediscuss the idea of series, offering a cue to reconsider the heritage of recent trends in international design, with a particular reference to Dutch design – and here is an intriguing connection with “Design Destinations” – which recently reintroduced the seed of craftsmanship into contemporary design.

Organized around seven thematic sections – Not Standard, Person, Place, Flaw, Landscape, Body and Politics – the exhibition distinguishes itself for an innovative set-up. All the projects, in fact, are distributed on 40 mobile panels that can ideally be moved from one section to the other, calling into question the cataloguing made by curators Gianni Mercurio and Domitilla Dardi. Pesce himself invites the visitors to accomplish a small subversive gesture: “You are kindly asked to liven up with your physical presence Gaetano Pesce’s elastic objects, to impress your impulse, to watch them while they auto-determine”. Which is nothing but another tribute to diversity and its means of expression.

Giulia Zappa – Images courtesy of Cecilia Fiorenza 
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03/07/2014

The Architecture of Katsura Palace

Set in wooded surroundings within the ancient perimeter of the imperial capital, Kyoto, the rikyu, or separated residence, of the Katsura Palace is the finest product of a secular and unofficial tradition. It was built in the 17th century by Kobori Enshu, tea ceremony master and architect, who sought to express his ideals of rustic simplicity and picturesque nature on a larger scale than had been attempted before. Katsura is not attributable to a single architectural style, nor to a unique project or to a single author, with its extremely heterogeneous mixture of compositional elements, but at the time perfectly integrated one with one another.

The villa of Katsura has been the focus of many different theories of interpretation on the part of the most powerful representatives of modern architecture. They, as architects, have focused their investigation of Katsura as architectural work; the analysis of Katsura is the analysis of the “space”, since it is the space to establish the extent of the architecture. The modernist architect Bruno Taut made a critical and utopian analysis, which he expresses through the language of architecture, with the search for “unity, simplicity and transparency”. So Taut read Katsura, as a place in which every element is in perfect harmony with the others, but at the same time perfectly independent, “as in a good society” thus giving the villa a symbolic political connotation. Katsura was seen as an “ultimate meaning of world through architectural form”, a “totality” in which they identified significance of higher order and conceived to unify man with nature. The carefully balanced environment considered the fragility of a human and caged its experience within proportions a man could relate to. The next western architect to comment on Japanese architecture, Walter Gropius, reiterates Taut’s earliest interpretations calling the simplicity, modularity, and indoor-outdoor relationship, “many of our modern requirements”.

Kenzo Tange was among the first in his “Tradition and creation in Japanese architecture”, in 1960, to speak of “symbiosis” of elements and stylistic tastes in villa of Katsura, analysing the evolution of architectural styles and showing how these in Katsura combine in a harmonious way. But although still admiring the villa to a degree, Tange expressed criticism of the tradition of Katsura. Tange claimed Katsura draws Japanese architecture away from reality and into a passive and contemplative space, rather than a progressive one engaged with progress and technique. But contemplation is not passive. If Katsura has hidden tensions, then is not a purely passive sanctuary, it is very much in a state of progress and a state of living, and one finds an acknowledgment of the vitality of Katsura in its unfinished character and its openness to expansion, not simply a machine for living in but an ever-changing living space as yet unclosed.

Tange tries to trace the characteristics of Japanese architecture in the villa that he will define Jomon and Yayoi, respectively “energetic, violent and popular” force and a “serene, refined and aristocratic” force. These two forces, popular and aristocratic, in Katsura collide, creating a strong spatial tension. Arata Isozaki did the latest, updated, interpretation of the villa; it contains a summary of the various interpretations so far attempted and thus provides a vision that leaves open the question of interpretation of the architectural space of Katsura talking about “ambiguity of space”. The purity of the materials used, the precious dark Hinoki wood, the rigour of design principles, the simplicity of structural elements – columns, architraves and balustrades – make it the ultimate expression of classical Japanese style.

Giulio Ghirardi 
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