Design Exchange CHANGE edition

A GLOBAL NETWORK DEVOTED TO THE EXCHANGING OF IDEAS

#CHANGE £10.00

AUGMENTED REALITY i2o3d STEP 1

If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, go to the App Store. Alternatively, if you’re using an Android device, go to the Google Play app

STEP 2

Search for Design Exchange AR

STEP 3

Download the app to your device

STEP 4

Open the Design Exchange app, and hold your device’s camera over any page that displays the AR symbol - including the front cover

STEP 5 Enjoy!

ANIMATION Dirk Koy

MUSIC

Architects Of Rosslyn

Rosa Rugosa Alba

arriving soon on bradleybasso.com Section from acid embossed screens, doors and sliding walls of 12mm Low iron toughed float glass set into Mondrian frames. bradleybasso.com

MISSION DESIGN EXCHANGE IS ABOUT THE CROSS POLLINATION OF IDEAS. WE BELIEVE THAT THE FUTURE OF DESIGN WILL BE A SPACE WHERE THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN CREATIVE DISCIPLINES DISSOLVE. exchange with us.

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Masthead DESIGN EXCHANGE ISSUE 14 #CHANGE

£10.00

DES I G N EX C HAN G E PARTN ER

GUEST CURATOR Torange Khonsari curator@demagazine.co.uk

COVER IMAGE:

EDITOR Martin Guttridge-Hewitt editor@demagazine.co.uk

EDITORIAL BOARD John McRae (heads up the board) Annabelle Cox Charles Rattray Di Mainstone Jo-Anne Bichard Ray Bradley

FEATURE EDITORS Bettina Krause Constance Desenfant Jo Caird Josh Plough Joanne Shurvell Michelle Mason Phil Roberts Stan Portus

Augmented Reality by i2o3d Illustration by Dirk Koy Sound by Architects of Rosslyn

PHOTOGRAPHY Agnese Sanvito www.agnesesanvito.com DESIGN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE 366 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 0AH T: +44 (0) 20 7118 4319 FOR CREATIVE FILM IDEAS visit www.demagazine.co.uk

CONTRIBUTORS The Gentle Author ART DIRECTION/DESIGN LAYOUT Sarah Peters GLOBAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Diana Biggs FOUNDER/FILM MAKER/TRAVEL EDITOR David Morris david@demagazine.co.uk

© 2020 COPYRIGHT Design Exchange magazine claims no responsibility for the opinions of its writers and contributors contained within this magazine.

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission is strictly forbidden. Every care has been taken when compiling Design Exchange to ensure that all the content is correct at the time of printing. Design Exchange assumes no responsibility for any effects from errors or omissions.

DES I G N EX C HAN G E COLLABORATORS

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CURATOR’S NOTE I

gave a question to my first year Architecture students, predominantly aged 18-23, asking what worries them about the world today. Climate change and social inequality made up 95% of their concerns, less than 1% were interested in form of the designed object, and the other 4% pointed to the impacts of social media, wars and Brexit.

Yet all of them believed tackling those problems to be ideological and unrealistic. I found that more disturbing than the concerns themselves. We have created a social environment where issues of care are ideological, and those of economics real and concrete.

This absurd ‘reality’ needs to shift and foreground care where money is a means to make such projects and initiatives possible, rather than being the major driving force. This is not ideological. We are also being sold that competition is essential for productivity and is part of human nature, but competition in essence is a negative social relation.

Productivity does not have to be fuelled by competition but by big ambitions— currently those labelled as ‘unreal’ goals. Creativity does not have to be focused on the design of the consumer product but in the modes of practice that promote care. Once we prioritise equality and care over the product then I believe, as designers, we can innovate in services we create, methods of operation, and the structures of how we practice. Not just the products we make.

How much agency do we have as designers today? We are in an environment where civil society has lost trust in the experts. As Donald Schön described in his 1970s book, ‘The Reflective Practitioner’: if the experts don’t become critical and reflective in how they shape society and for whose primary benefit they produce, they will lose public trust.

My question today is: what would the design industry look like if we shift from the position of the ‘all-knowing’ expert to one that facilitates plurality of diverse knowings? What happens if authorship of aesthetic is plural and multiple? Do we become its curators? These are all thoughts I have spent 15 years practising, researching and teaching.

It is from this position I can be confident that with creativity, collaboration and daring to imagine a different future anything is possible.

This issue of Design Exchange is about hope, and practices and individuals who have helped bring about change. The majority of the content showcases projects and people who have not compromised their concerns. They did not allow themselves to be steered by the values of their monocultural disciplines or imposed ideologies of the elite.

From artists and photographers to architects and designers, the latest chapter in this magazine’s evolving story highlights the importance of experimentation around disciplinary boundaries to create new forms of practice, bringing society, climate and social justice to the top of the agenda. We need to create work environments, learning and teaching opportunities that enable change makers to develop and sustain themselves, rather than retreat, in turn confining our resources to situations that are only financially beneficial to the few.

TORANGE KHONSARI

| Guest Curator

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CONTENT features

014 CHANGING PERSPECTIVES The Cover 024 HASTINGS PIER Pier Pressure 034 PUBLIC WORKS AND THE SCHOOL FOR CIVIC ACTION Positive Placemaking

features

058 ARCHITECTURE OF RESISTANCE Forensic Architecture 066 URBAN RECIPES FOR A MORE SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE Santiago Cirugeda & the Spanish Network of Collaborative Architects 092 THE VALUE AND PRICE OF DEVELOPMENT Gentle Author

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024 features

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100 CHRIS DORLEY BROWN Future Documents

experimental film and motion graphics using our augmented reality app

001,015 THE COVER

120 BAIT Mark Jenkin Filmmaker

016,017,018,19,55,115,133 MOVING GRAPHICS

138 BETWEEN REALITY AND MAGIC Artist Lucy McKenna

023 DOCUMENTARY TRAILER: WHITE RIGHT- MEETING THE ENEMY

148 LONG LIFE, LOOSE FIT, AND LOW ENERGY Sustainable Future

032 HASTINGS PIER CLIP 091 BISHI MUSIC VIDEO

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CHANGE MAKERS 020 DEEYAH KHAN Documentary Filmmaker 052 BARBARA CHANDLER Journalist & Photographer 088 BISHI BHATTACHARYA Performer and Multi-instrumentalist 112 YOUSRA ELBAGIR Journalist & Channel 4 Reporter 130 DAMLA TURGUT Founder of Otto Tiles 158 D. N. W. (DEEDS NOT WORDS) 21st Century Suffragettes

066 DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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CONTENT 130

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THE REST 116 RESEARCH PAGES

116 Traversing The Sensory Landscape 118 Design For Cultural Commons

134 DESIGN FOR CHANGE

134 Partisan Collective

135 Wellbeing City Award

136 Lawrence Abbott

137 Design Exchange

more interactive pages

100,102 PHOTOS -SEE PAST AND PRESENT DAY

042

projects

042 NO1 NEW OXFORD STREET Orms Architects

137 DESIGN EXCHANGE #FUTUREFORECAST EDITION EXPERIMENT WITH OUR COVER USING AR

078 THE DEPARTMENT STORE Squire and Partners

LAST PAGE D.N.W. EXPERIMENTAL ART FILM

124 TIRPITZ BLÅVAND MUSUEM BIG

106 HARI’S SALON Clarisford

144 OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY BGS Architects 154 CLIF BAR & COMPANY Terrapin Bright Green

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IT’S OUR 10TH ANNIVERSARY! COULD YOU BE OUR WINNER? ENTER NOW

MOVING THOUGHTS

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES

Speaking to Design Exchange’s cover animator, Dirk Koy

D

esign Exchange’s issue animator understands that digital and analogue can co-exist, with phenomenal results.

Better yet, as the first pages of our Change edition prove, he knows exactly where the two should meet to create something functional yet innovative, creative but logical.

When was the last time you felt completely in sync with someone after mere moments in conversation? A meeting of minds in some shared theoretical or ethical hinterland; two worlds colliding over a shared love of pushing things forward. Whatever those things may be.

Design Exchange’s Change issue is not the first to implement Augmented Reality (AR). We were toying with this technology three years ago, with other magazines jumping on its potential between then and now. Nevertheless, this is our deepest dive into its possibilities, and to produce what’s in your hands we needed to partner with a practitioner who not only grasped what could be done but also understood why it should be done.

“I really like to draw, and that’s just one basic element in design.

It’s very important to make the first sketches,” says Koy. “Even if your product or the piece is digital you start with a pencil. This is a little bit cliched but it is like that, and it gives us a really nice open world of possibilities.”

Introducing Dirk Koy, the man behind the moving text and images filling the pages that follow, not to mention our multi-faceted cover. For him the greatest design marvel of the modern age isn’t the advancement of technology, but what happens when that advancing technology collaborates with analogue counterparts.

A teacher at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland, we can’t help but feel slightly jealous of his students. After all, their tutor fully embraces and manipulates the opportunities and jaw-dropping capabilities of 21st Century multimedia, often presenting those in a manner invoking post-modernity. His

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Above: Dirk Koy, Photo ©Stefan Jermann www.jermann.com

moving posters, for instance, inadvertently invoke the advertising hoardings of Philip K. Dick’s dystopias. Yet the platforms those looped images and text occupy, which we can literally reach out and touch, betray the equal value he places on physical media.

Above: Our stunning Augmented Reality [AR] Cover by Dirk Koy

“To experiment so much within things that you reach a moment when you surprise yourself,” Koy says of his overall professional goals.

“I like to combine analogue design with digital, so for me this drawing process at the beginning of a project is important but also it often comes into the end of the product. Not always but DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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often. So for me the analogue thing, the drawing and photographs, is kind of the soul of a work and the digital thing is often to transport the work or bring it further into something new. If you combine digital and analogue work there is huge potential with what you can do.”

Not quite preaching to the converted, even so there’s a reason why Design Exchange approached him for our latest undertaking.

In an era when we are constantly told the bell has long-since tolled for print, with the headless horseman’s canter audible from just over the next ridge, readers are faced with a strange predicament. We still long for physicality, and connect more with what can be held than what can only be clicked on. Yet while enormous value has been added for consumers in the world of online, real pages— paper and ink— have barely expanded their offering since first coming under threat.

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“I like to combine analogue design with digital, so for me this drawing process at the beginning of a project is important but also it often comes into the end of the product.”

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Physical media is reliant on its own zeitgeist. But what if we can do things differently?

“I think the possibilities are fantastic, working with 3D situations but working with this flat— not flat, obviously a magazine is not flat— but a paper magazine. It means you can think that the magazine is no longer on flat paper,” says Koy of using AR to enrich Design Exchange.

“Often if you look at magazines you have your smartphone there to check on what you’re reading about. I mean you do it anyway.

So when the connection is more direct— maybe you’re used to a QR code or the trigger image for AR— this is just more direct. To connect everything, especially if it’s about movies, 3D things, you have the possibilities to explore subjects in a much deeper way.”

Koy’s output is proof enough that on and offline can easily meet, not just to co-exist but embolden one another. Although clearly at home making pictures with his hands, he relishes allowing those to feed into and off digital— whether that’s an animation like ‘Ground’, which finds its basis in actual wood, projections to improve the immersive aspects of music gigs, or looped words on a poster. Like ourselves, he believes now is the time to experiment with these options.

“I was very interested in filming, in the beginning it was just video— you get a video camera and start experimenting. Then later, maybe also because of the design, using illustrator and In Design, in the 2000s, I started getting interested in animation,” Koy says.

“I was also starting to develop my skills in media and filming, so I started to make short clips and trying out things. And I was developing music, making electronic music. So I started to combine methods to express the music visually, and that was the moment I started creating more and more animations and visuals.

“Right now it’s a very interesting time. I think this work started maybe two years ago, and for me I discovered it for the first time within logos. Animated logo systems. And that was one of the first times I realised that clients were interested in having that type of design animated. Now it is also starting to come in to posters. It’s clear that if it’s moving and it’s outside in the public then it’s an eye-catcher. But still a lot of people don’t know it’s there, the technology and approach are not that common. You have to say to people that it’s there.”

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“I think the possibilities are fantastic, working with 3D situations but working with this flat— not flat, obviously a magazine is not flat— but a paper magazine. It means you can think that the magazine is no longer on flat paper”

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DEEYAH CHANGE MAKERS #1

Deeyah Khan is an award-winning documentary filmmaker of South Asian origin who was raised in Norway.

Her work addresses issues surrounding religion, extremism, cultural and societal expectations, questioning stereotypes, with the intention to educate, empower and inspire change. In addition to her efforts behind the camera, she is the founder of the two-time Emmy-winning and the twice BAFTA-nominated media production company Fuuse, which focuses on giving a voice to minorities, and established the magazine ‘sister-hood’, publishing writings from women of Muslim heritage, whether they actively practice the religion or not.

DE: What motivates you to do what you do?

I’m passionate about human rights, women’s liberation, inclusion, free expression, and I’m passionate about telling stories, especially stories that wouldn’t get told otherwise. I always want to better understand big problems in our societies and my filmmaking is my personal way of getting to the heart of the matter. I want to find out what people feel, not just what they say.

boring— I already know what they believe. What I want to understand is why they believe and do the things that they do. I am far more interested in getting them in touch with their emotions rather than having a superficial conversation. It’s always surprising how revealing that can be.

Going under the surface was how I created ‘Jihad’ and ‘White Right’. In both cases I have been talking to men involved in violence, which they justified with reference to these exclusionary ideologies. Some of these men were really scary, but it wasn’t necessarily the ideology that was driving them. They all had holes in their lives that they were filling up with this ideology, social problems that they were compensating for through being involved in these groups.

The other big theme in my work is around women and people who exist between cultures. Growing up myself as a South Asian woman in Norway, I’m aware of the different pulls of family and community and how it can clash with the mainstream culture of the societies that we grow up in. I’m very aware of how this impacts upon women, due to cultural taboos around sex, sexuality, self-determination, honour, shame culture and religion. The subject of my first film, ‘Banaz: A Love Story’ was about the strain put upon young people to live up to standards of ‘honour’— the values of their parents and their parents’ community.

I feel that we can’t necessarily change people by challenging their opinions directly, because there are often reasons why they hold those opinions that are often based in emotion, not fact. We have to think about what made those opinions important to them in the first place. Why would these men, whether white supremacists or jihadis, choose to identify themselves as part of what they perceive to be a superior group, and as the victims of another, ‘inferior’ group? What emotional need does this fulfil? I think these are far more important questions than asking them to explain why they think Islam means striving to live under a caliphate or why they think white people are superior to others.

I get them to put those arguments and their talking points to one side, because I find those arguments to be predictable and

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These values are in tension with any young person’s desire for freedom and self-expression, particularly when it comes to relationships. Disagreements on the subject of religion can be just as contentious. This is especially true in an environment where extremely reductive and restrictive interpretations of Islam are being violently enforced by some in the community. I explored this in ‘Islam’s Non-Believers’.

With each project, I’m motivated to explore a social problem that I think we need to understand more deeply and to talk about more openly, or that we need to think about differently. And I’m always hoping that I can make a positive impact on how we, as a society, deal with the issue.

Photo: ©Geir Dokken

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CHANGE MAKERS DEEYAH KHAN DE: Is there a landmark moment in your career that really shifted the way you see the world?

I was abruptly forced out of one lane and had to find another.

From a very young age, I followed my father’s career plan. I was brought up in Norway in what was, and still is, a very white-dominated society as a half-Pakistani, half-Afghan daughter of immigrants. It was my father’s perception that my natural talent for singing was the only way that I could make a career for myself in what he perceived to be a racist society with limited opportunities for people of colour. I loved music, but I never really enjoyed performing even though I was proud to share aspects of my South Asian culture.

As I became more successful, I became a target for some of the conservative elements within the local Muslim community, which was beginning to become influenced by extremist expressions of Islam. From being a celebrated symbol of multicultural Norway, I was suddenly in risk of my life, threatened by extremists in my parent’s community. My whole career was over. It was devastating and honestly, I felt lost and broken. But at the same time, I realised that it had finally freed me of being committed to music as an outlet for my creativity. Instead of following my father’s dreams for me I was finally able to focus on the issues that I personally cared about: around feminism, around multiculturalism, around problems arising in families that were caught between cultures.

These solidified in my first movie, ‘Banaz: A Love Story’. I’d really only intended this as a small-scale personal project. It became more popular and successful than I’d ever dreamed. I had found my lane. I finally found my own heart and my own passion, which is to tell stories through my documentary filmmaking.

DE: Who inspires you?

I’m primarily inspired by women. My mother is my greatest inspiration. Also there are so many women that I have had the honour to work with that it would be hard to name them all. Each and every one of them has inspired me and challenged me and supported me. I could not have achieved much without their support.

In the last year we lost two of my personal heroes, Asma Jahangir and Fahmida Riaz, which was very painful. Asma was a lawyer and women’s rights activist who spent her entire career challenging male-dominated laws in Pakistan. All Pakistani women owe her a huge debt. Fahmida was one of the greatest poets in the Urdu language, and an outstanding linguist who translated the poetry of Rumi, among others. I feel privileged to have met both of these women while they were alive, and will treasure those

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memories. I have been consistently inspired by the brilliance, the courage and creativity of Hina Jilani, Sanam Naraghi, Leyla Hussein, Safak Pavey, Nawal Saadawi, Gurpreet Kaur, Scilla Elworthy, Gabrielle Rifkind, Kim Longinotto, Yanar Mohammed, Diana Nammi— the list is endless.

I also find Mona Eltahawy’s passion and courage inspirational.

I don’t think there’s anyone who has popularised feminist ideas in the Middle East with such charisma. She takes on hordes of social media trolls with wit and humour, never losing her rage against injustice. She always seems to know what’s going on in the world and is tireless in campaigning and speaking across the globe. She’s fearless.

So is Maryam Namazie, the founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain when I was filming ‘Islam’s Non-Believers’. She’s been advocating for rights for ex-Muslims who face horrendous persecution from their families, from their communities and from radicalised Muslims for decades. She’s built a community of ex-Muslims and they campaign for the rights of ex-Muslims across the world. She holds it all together.

Also, I couldn’t do the work I do without the backing of my team at my company Fuuse. They are all amazingly talented in their areas and dedicated to the work we do. I value our working relationships very deeply. I couldn’t have done any of it without them.

DE: Gender imbalances continue to impact on almost all areas of life. Within your work what are the most important steps that need to be taken to try and level the playing field?

Filmmaking is definitely a tough industry for women to get into. It’s also tough for people who aren’t white, and who aren’t middle class, to be honest. There’s a lot of elitism and it can be very cliquey as well. And this is bad for all of us, in terms of the media and creative works that we get to see. At the basic level, if the only people making films all look the same and think the same then we aren’t going to see more than one little corner of the world, through the same lens.

Once you broaden that field, once you get people with different experiences, then the range of stories will be broadened. But it’s not just as simple as helping talented people enter media careers. There’s also the culture of these organisations, a cultural legacy of decades of white, middle class, male control. So we don’t need just to make these stories from the margins more available, we need to push them into the centre. Internal policy changes can help, but there needs to be a change in thinking as well. This is part of the reason I started my own production company, Fuuse.

DE: If you had the power to make a change on a global scale, what changes would you make?

I would move the basis of power from men in offices to women in communities. It’s a small change but it can make a huge difference. For a long time I’ve been following the work of the organisation ICAN, which is headed by Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, a dear friend of mine and another deeply inspirational figure to me. ICAN promotes peace and tolerance using the vast, untapped resource of women. Women are often left out of government, and they’re left out of peace negotiations, even though as women and as mothers, they have a huge stake in peace. Women and children are tremendously vulnerable in conflict situations. Research suggests that when women are involved in post-conflict negotiations there’s a far greater chance of achieving lasting peace. So it’s not just in the interest of women and children, it’s in all our interests to involve women in politics.

Women tend to be more embedded in their communities. If, for instance, young people in the community are at risk of radicalisation in a community, then their mothers and other women in the community are the first to know. As well as detecting any potential for radicalisation, women know these people as individuals: they know their situations, their problems, and their personalities. This information can be used in ways that turn them away from violence. Women are a massively underused resource in

international politics, and involving them would cost a fraction of what we currently spend on military and security. We need to involve women more, and encourage those in power to take women seriously as actors in their communities, rather than constantly treating unelected men as so-called community leaders.

DE: Can you briefly summarise your professional plans and ambitions for the coming year?

My ongoing work is rooted in our online magazine, ‘sister-hood’, which I founded years ago. It publishes writing by women of Muslim heritage and that’s always ongoing and very important to me. It’s designed to make the picture of what it means to have Muslim heritage more complex. Too often we’re described as potential terrorists or subordinated in abusive households.

There are so many experiences between those poles, and ‘sister-hood’ publishes work by women from the very devout end of the spectrum to ex-Muslims and any woman in between the spectrum, on any topic.

In terms of filmmaking, I can’t give any specific details regarding projects I’m working on at the moment, but I am working on new film projects to follow up on ‘White Right’. Again, this will deal with the core topics that Fuuse has always explored, around the challenges we face with multiculturalism and how we can make it work. Look out for that.

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LOCAL OPINION

PIER PRESSURE

MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY AT ODDS WITH THE OWNER OF A PRINCIPAL LANDMARK, A PRIZED SEAFRONT PROMENADE SAVED FROM THE BRINK, ONLY TO FALL FOUL OF ECONOMICS. THE STORY OF HOW A VALUABLE HASTINGS TREASURE WAS UNEXPECTEDLY CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE POLITICS OF SPACE, THE VALUE OF PUBLIC REALMS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF PRIVATE OWNERS. WORDS MARTIN GUTTRIDGE-HEWITT

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hen a huge fire ripped through one of the most prominent coastal structures in East Sussex it tore a hole through the fabric of the town itself, with a source of civic pride reduced to little more than a skeletal shadow of its former self.

Of course when that blaze took place, in 2010, Hastings Pier had already been closed for two years. This great edifice in the English Channel was severely damaged by a storm in 1990, and piecemeal repairs only managed to stabilise, rather than fully restore, the historic asset— which, by that time, was 118 years old.

Nevertheless, there were hopes a saviour could be found, ideas sparking fundraising after the flames were doused. There’s nothing like devastation to inspire direct action, with the community keen to ensure they weren’t left with another West Pier in nearby Brighton, where an arson attack left only charred and rusted remains in the waves.

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Image: Hastings Pier, Hastings and St Leonards, UK Architect: dRMM Photo © Jim Stephenson

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Back in Hastings, a campaign to save the town’s pier was launched, securing £12.4million of Lottery Heritage Fund money for a full-scale redesign and restoration. Architects dRRM were put in charge of the rethink, working on behalf of a community group, with additional funds from private donors, many exchanging their contribution for shares in the business when the project completed.

The final results were impressive. A Stirling Prize-winning transformation of dereliction and ruin into a modern, maximalist structure that could be adapted to suit a variety of purposes, therefore offering plenty of potential. The Hastings Pier Charity (HPC) was created, with the vision to eventually host large-scale events on the deck, nodding to a heyday when acts like The Who, The Kinks and Jimi Hendrix graced the stage.

12 months after re-opening, the charity and pier fell into receivership. The Friends of Hastings Pier formed in a bid to secure ownership, find a private partner, and finally realise the long-term aims of the overall initiative. The crowdfunded campaign raised £475,000 of a £500,000 target needed to prove viability of the public bid, which included money for future investment. But instead Sheikh Abid Gulzar won the bidding war, owner of Eastbourne Pier, paying a reported £60,000 for the rights to privately own an asset that required millions to resurrect, not to mention significant community effort.

“Part of the problem that the pier had when it was run by the HPC, the Hastings Pier Charity, was that it never got beyond phase one, which was to repair the pier and get it into a state where it

could be re-opened for events with a cafe-restaurant,” explains Julian Norridge, of Friends of Hastings Pier.

“It never got to that stage, it would have cost another £1million and the Lottery had no more to offer. So it was never really commercially viable. It had a lot of bad luck, there was a huge storm that cost a lot more within the restoration process which was not part of the plan, and there were a number of events that would have been money-makers that were called off due to bad weather.”

In December 2018 the pier then closed to the public, with little warning. A series of confusing statements in March then suggested it should be operational again before Easter 2019, which changed to May Day and, finally (at the time of writing), 1st April.

While not technically, morally you could argue a landmark belongs to its community, and therefore any private owner should have a responsibility to keep that community informed.

A question compounded by the fact long-term plans for what is currently a blank canvas are still shrouded in mystery. Some believe Gulzar intends to return the structure to its original stylings— so penny arcades and sugared donuts, effectively reversing the work to date.

“We haven’t seen detailed long-term plans. In the short-term he has applied for additional retail space, we absolutely get the point that there isn’t much on there to make money,” explains Kevin Boorman, Hastings Council’s Marketing and Major Proj-

Image: Hastings Pier, Hastings and St Leonards, UK Architect: dRMM Photo © Alex de Rijke DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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ects Manager. “It was a minimalist design, which was great, but minimalist designs don’t create the revenue required to maintain and develop the pier.

“The bottom line is what the charity was trying to do was great but clearly didn’t work, otherwise it wouldn’t have gone into administration.”

“Piers generally are privately owned and built speculatively,” says Alex de Rijke, of dRRM Architects, who, as he puts it, knows ‘every millimetre of the megastructure’ by heart. A fact that would surely prompt any new owner to consult them on potential changes going forward.

“The outcome of the administration process couldn’t have been more of a surprise,” he says. “We haven’t been approached by the new owner, or asked to advise, which I find surprising given how much we know about the structure.

“I think the pier is, shall we say, a successful business waiting to happen. And I think that’s the point. The Hastings Pier Charity did not have enough time to get going with the project. The year that they ran it was not profitable, but on the other hand not many businesses are profitable in their first year.”

It’s a valid point, although according to the Take The Leap survey by Yell Business, which looked at the financial stability of 1,500 small companies in the UK, 79% did manage to hit a profit within their first 12 months of trading. Given the financial pressure of maintaining something on the scale of Hastings Pier, then, it’s perhaps not that shocking that the administrators had to be called in so soon.

As de Rijke puts it, though: “Economic success is the not same as social”.

“Given that it was a very long, careful and publicly funded process I think that the new owner should honour that amazing commitment by a great many people by recognising an opportunity to work with and engage with the local community, and also with the design team, to make sure the future of the Pier is even better,” says de Rijke.

“I think the big opportunities are in its capacity to host large scale music events, and this is why the history of the pier is [already] celebrated,” he continues. “The current ownership is not in line with that possibility. To make a commercial success out of shop sales or food or drink sales, on tourism, I think will be difficult. The 19th Century model of games and penny arcades is now surely superseded and that’s why we designed for the 21st Century.”

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Image: Hastings Pier, Hastings and St Leonards, UK Architect: dRMM Photo © James Robertshaw

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Image: Hastings Pier, Hastings and St Leonards, UK Architect: dRMM Photo © Alex de Rijke

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These sentiments are echoed to some extend by Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and MP for Hastings and St Leonards. While careful to avoid becoming embroiled in the debate over the ethical factors surrounding the buyout, she clearly has regrets that public ownership could not continue.

“I wish it would have been able to continue as it was, being run by the pier board effectively, who were working really hard to make it work, most of which were volunteers,” says Rudd. “It’s very sad that it went into receivership, it was a very disappointing outcome given the huge effort that was put into it.

“The bottom line is I want it open again,” she continues, before explaining that this isn’t necessarily just a case of clear divisions between the new owner and everyone in town. “I have just as many letters coming into my office saying ‘it’s beautiful, don’t allow anything on it’, as saying ‘for goodness sake, it needs to earn a living for itself or it will go into receivership again’.”

Another major question relates to the administration process itself. The Friends of Hastings Pier assumed purchase price would not be the only factor the receivers considered when choosing which bid to accept, believing recent history and the value and nature of the work undertaken would also be examined. We asked appointed administrators Smith & Williamson to explain how a decision was made.

“Following the appointment on 24th November 2017 of Adam Stephens and Finbarr O’Connell, of Smith & Williamson LLP, as joint administrators of Hastings Pier Charity, our instructed agents, pier and leisure specialists GVA, conducted an extensive marketing process of Hastings Pier.

“GVA received five firm bids and all offers were carefully reviewed in consultation with the Heritage Lottery Fund— which held a legal charge over the pier— before it was sold to Mr Abid Gulzar,” a statement from the firm says, going on to explain that selecting the party with the strongest track record was a requirement, therefore posing the least risk to the Heritage Lottery Fund’s investment.

“We were unable to delay the closing of the sale process any further than 15 June 2018 as this would have made the business less attractive to purchasers by reducing the beneficial amount of the core trading summer season.”

These reassurances don’t put aside all concerns over the way bids were prioritised, though. Gulzar saw two of his businesses liquidated in 2017 with substantial debt, including to HMRC. Hardly a clean record. And what about potential profitability going forward— not least given the pier’s closure went beyond the winter off-season, and widespread concerns surrounding the legitimacy of the business model going forward?

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Images: Hastings Pier, new owner Gulzar installs a selection fibreglass gold animals. Pier closed to public.

Photos ©Design Exchange

greater than that offered by the more traditionally-minded Gulzar.

Thankfully, an associate of the new owner was available for comment.

“Sheikh Abid Gulzar and the Lions Group are determined to make Hastings Pier one of the very best piers in the United Kingdom,” says Lord Brett McLean, a representative of Gulzar. “This can only be done by putting our heart and soul into the pier by further investment to ensure that development creates additional and improved revenue streams.

“Longer term plans include the construction of a new pavilion which will mirror the current Pavilion Restaurant and the reinstatement of the landing stage to allow boat trips connecting Hastings Pier and Eastbourne Pier,” he continues. “We are compiling the list of community-friendly and private commercial hired events aimed at the thousands rather than the hundreds.”

These proposals may mean good news for Hastings, if they come to fruition. But, after months of uncertainty, the pier’s unexpected closure and overall lack of clear information, it’s understandable members of the community are apprehensive about what the future holds. And, even in the best case scenario, events of the last year bring to the fore how private ownership of public spaces can create uneasy relationships, in turn accentuating the problems with concentrating solely on immediate returns, rather than obvious opportunities that could present themselves over time.

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Image: Hastings Pier, Hastings and St Leonards, UK Architect: dRMM Photo © Jim Stephenson

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Rethinking Education

PUBLIC WORKS AND THE SCHOOL FOR CIVIC ACTION

WHILE LOCAL AUTHORITIES SEE PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS AS THE ONLY VIABLE FUNDING OPTION FOR NEW PUBLIC SERVICES AND FACILITIES, EMPOWERING CIVIL SOCIETY AS COLLABORATORS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO RE-BUILD TRUST AND MAKE PLACEMAKING A REALITY RATHER THAN MERE BUZZWORD. WORDS MARTIN GUTTRIDGE-HEWITT

L

et’s say there’s this space in a city, which isn’t owned by any individual or company. Perhaps it’s a community garden, or a square, breaking up the surrounding density, acting as a recreational facility or meeting place— it doesn’t really matter.

Now let’s say that all this exists in a country gripped by a culture of austerity and funding cuts. The result of which has been a gradual loss of publicly-controlled spaces, particularly in urban areas with high land values, as councils look to maximise short-term revenue by handing control over to private interests.

It’s understandable that financial priorities should be placed on core services that directly impact on people’s wellbeing— healthcare, social services and so forth. Nevertheless, the fire sale of vital realms has a hugely detrimental impact on the areas they lie in. The cashback gained has an expiry date, after which the local authority is left with fewer of these assets which could have had more long-term benefits.

Where there was once an allotment, a green space or an adventure playground, now stands a new 25-storey residential building that may catalyse the wider displacement of those who used and enjoyed that original space. No slides or swings, no football pitch, and no potential for this to become a site that pays for itself.

In some instances, though, the change is less obvious. The Guardian published an article by Bradley L. Garrett in July 2017, which focussed on the growth of ‘pseudo-public space’ in London.

The point was privatisation of realms that were once controlled by local authorities doesn’t always mean the loss of the realm itself, but rather a wholesale alteration to its role, despite appearances to the contrary.

No longer there to act as a meeting point, a place for daydreaming or even protest, such locations become aesthetic window-dressing to ensure greater land value for those now in control. It’s only when you see a march blocked from entering an area, or, worse still, rough sleepers prevented from bedding down through the use of street spikes, that you realise the space isn’t public at all anymore.

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Below: The Common Room, Roman Road, a collective community space used as Civic class room Photo ©Public Works

Introducing Torange Khonsari— this issue’s Guest Curator and founding member of Public Works— and her colleague Andy Belfield. When we meet it’s in a blank room of an unassuming warehouse space, in the heart of Queen’s Yard, Hackney Wick, London.

The Victorian building would be dwarfed if it stood face to face with the UK capital’s evertaller skyline. Yet the site, or at least the activities within, have the potential for a far greater impact on the shape of the metropolis itself, and others, compared with any statement apartment complex.

To fully explore the history of Public Works as a collective would take more time than we can afford space, so cutting to the chase seems appropriate. Alongside their associates, Khonsari and Belfield are concerned not just with protecting public spaces and safeguarding them from invasive private interests, but doing this by helping educate communities in their rights and capabilities with which to fight for what is already theirs, but could soon be someone else’s if no direct action is taken.

In a capitalist society, that often means showing how maintaining public ownership can have a larger financial reward in the long-term than simply selling the land off.

“It has been said there are two genealogies to Public Works. Radical Political Avant Garde Spatial Practice, which is quite loaded, and the other making urban artefacts for change, events and community engagement,” explains Khonsari.

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“It has been said there are two genealogies to public works. Political Avant Garde Spatial Practice, which is quite loaded, and the other Situations, Events, & Community Engagement.”

When it comes to projects, Public Works has been involved with a huge variety, as one might expect when the very nature of the goal is as broad as land use itself. In Manchester’s Cheetham Hill, a district known for high levels of deprivation compared with many other areas of the country, a temporary cafe was established in an abandoned seating shelter opposite a park bandstand.

A natural Dye Garden was set up next door, clearly referencing the textile history of the location, and crab apples taken from a tree turned into sweets and preserves for the eatery. The idea being to develop a resource for sharing and creative production, ‘sold’ to the community as concept on the basis this was an extension of the site’s heritage. Something they owned, had a direct connection with, and could benefit from.

“Then there’s R-Urban, which was here in Hackney Wick but has moved to Poplar,” says Khonsari. “This project is really about ecology. It’s a recycling centre, an environment for learning and an energy hub creating energy from waste food through an anaerobic digester.

“I’m working on the Roman Road in Bow,” she continues. “This involves using neighbourhood planning made possible with the Localism Act as well as building social capital so we can evidence the social value of sites and their importance as community assets. Projects may end up a [physical] building, but what’s important for us is the ‘commoning’ process— that is the project really.

“Running workshops, cultural programmes, walks, making days, educational schemes. This is all part of the process- people coming together to make decisions, be it a masterplan or running a space. I think all of us, and the communities we work with, are developing our own bottom-up strategies.”

To put all that another way, the end product is less significant than the work undertaken to get there. Protecting the ‘common’, as the Public Works team call it, for the ‘commoners’ who live

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there is often a long process of first winning over interest from the community, then helping them understand for themselves why the asset is so vital, before nurturing ideas that can persuade councils to buy in.

“Deptford is going through a huge speculative house building process— around 10,000 new homes into an area with a population of 20,000,” Belfield moves the conversation on to one of his own schemes.

“So a lot of concerns surround things like gentrification. Or the impact of being forced out of the area. We are working with Deptford Neighbourhood Action, which is a forum that finds ways of strengthening the community’s role within their locality; how can they have more of a say.”

As he explains, Lewisham Council, responsible for this part of London, takes Deptford Neighbourhood Action seriously, meaning the current community’s presence is amplified and has more protection against what the future may hold. We are much more difficult to ignore or move on when we have shown how much value we add. Cynical as that may sound.

“Fundraising is part of the dialogue,” Belfield continues.

“Talking to people who would be involved, agreeing on the route depending on the area’s needs, interests, and demographics.”

If all this sounds overwhelming, Public Works’ biggest and most ambitious project is unarguably The School for Civic Action.

Put simply, this decentralised initiative would be based where active projects are found, and the focus is on taking the principles of how the organisation collaborates with communities and

Above: Photo ©Public Works

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applying these to a revolutionary curriculum in which individual disciplines are almost arbitrary. Students can cross subjects, with one fundamental goal.

it open. So on one hand we are thinking of students across disciplines, from numerous skill backgrounds, but also we are now developing short courses,” Khonsari continues.

“It’s about co-produced, co-operative city making. That’s what The School for Civic Action started out as. But there are different levels, and today we have many collaborators that are involved as both students and teachers within the school,” Khonsari explains.

“Our accreditation is now set up and running as blockchain certificates. These are called badges that students can claim when they complete the courses. These badges are in a wallet on your phone, which over time demonstrate your interest, skills and achievements.”

“It came about because between us we were working on different sites, and within these localities, despite some overlap, people had different needs,” Belfield interjects.

Ideological, no doubt, it’s plain to see that in an era of increasingly middle and upper-class focussed learning options, not to mention decimated local authority budgets, offering people from all walks of life the tools to defend their own area is a worthwhile venture.

“We noticed there was a lot of knowledge that could be shared.

So where one group had success, how can that experience be used to help another going through a similar process? Quite often the knowledge remains within the original group in traditional frameworks. The idea is to spread this more evenly.”

The plans may be big— if not monumental— and hugely daring, but the school is picking up momentum and now in the process of developing substantial courses to enable collaboration between civil society and the public sector, as well as training ‘low skilled’ residents to take on community management positions. This more structured learning then intersects with looser knowledge exchange settings involving more seasoned community groups.

“It started with us working with the people we know to see what kind of curriculum we could develop, and generally keeping

“In a way it’s the antithesis to the neo-liberal agenda. All of it is trying to challenge that.”

There’s a duality to The School for Civic Action, too. While it’s about empowerment, it’s also concerned with self-improvement and discovery. Students hone-in on active projects for more than just a context to rules, regulations, and prescribed values.

Through these initiatives they can also experiment with disciplines, adding to their skillset and finding out what they genuinely want to do.

“It’s also about situation. So a student is sitting in a part of London, let’s say Loughborough Junction, exploring whether they are an artist, a filmmaker… but through that site,” says Belfield.

“Our accreditation is now set up and running as blockchain certificates. These are called badges that students can claim when they complete the courses. These badges are in a wallet on your phone, which over time demonstrate your interest, skills and achievements.”

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Photo ©Public Works

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PURE LIGHTING PLEASURE

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“We now have around fifteen courses at different stages of development. Some are loose, so people can operate in different sites and develop their own learning.

Some of this learning, demonstrated through badges, has the potential to lead to a new Masters programme developed at London Metropolitan University,” says Khonsari, who has created the latter course, known as Design for Cultural Commons. “This gives a route from The School for Civic Action curriculum towards a higher education qualification should any resident, public sector worker or cultural practitioner want it.”

The phrase ‘making change makers’ springs up, and it’s not hard to grasp why. The highly vocational nature of The School for Civic Action means businesses can be born before courses are completed, enterprises based on a vastly different mindset to those effectively stealing vast swathes of many UK cities from their populations by simply handing spaces over to the highest bidder.

Although Public Works clearly functions on the left of the political sphere, Khonsari quickly points out that old parliamentary rivalries are less important in

“We need a counter-narrative. It’s a bit like ‘The Matrix’.

There’s a different reality that we have forgotten about.” the current situation. Conservatives came up with the Localism Act, co-operatives, Community Interest Companies, which can actually assist in the process, if they take an approach that emphasises collaboration rather than competition.

It’s a picture far-removed from the state of governance in 2019; when people are increasingly replaced by profits on the agenda, with the only beneficiaries major corporations, regardless of the cost to community.

“It goes beyond party politics,” she explains. “Your allegiance does not dictate the quality of your soul… … nobody thinks they have been conditioned to think in the way things currently work, but we have and we need a counter-narrative. It’s a bit like ‘The Matrix’. There’s a different reality that we have forgotten about.”

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#1

LONDON UK

No1 New Oxford Street Orms Architects

Standing proudly in central London since the 1930s, the building formerly known as Commonwealth House is a textbook example of the often unforeseeable challenges posed by refurbishing and re-imagining historic structures.

WORDS MARTIN GUTTRIDGE-HEWITT

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Photo ©Timothy Soar

Image: Artists impression of the new public piazza between St Giles Circus and Centre Point ©Orms Architects

Photo ©Timothy Soar

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The sharp, geometric shape of the building— invoking New York’s prized Flatiron in both look and street positioning— was first designed by architect and planner Henry Philip Cart de Lafontaine. A highly respected practitioner of the interwar era, his original vision for No.1 New Oxford Street was innovative and brave. But while much of that was finished, it fell on London-based practice Orms to fully bring this into reality, some eight decades on, securing RIBA’s London Award for 2018 in the process.

Above: Centre Courtyard, before.

Photo ©Morley Von Sternberg Left & Next Page: Centre Courtyard, today ©Timothy Soar

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Photo: Centre Courtyard ©Timothy Soar

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Below: Main Entrance ©Timothy Soar Next Page: Top, Main Entrance & facade.

Below, Interior of the Main Entrance

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“We had a number of the original drawings from back in the 1930s, so had quite a lot of information about how it was built.”

Wear and tear and rapidly changing office requirements had rendered the site no longer fit for purpose, and in need of an update.

Initial necessities included work on flooring, which had begun to come free, and a fresh reception area suited to what tenants would look for in a 21st Century commercial space. Invited to pitch by lettings specialist Blue Book, after starting to assess the brief, Orms soon unearthed major deficiencies within the fabric of the address.

“We very quickly saw that more floors were about to come free, which then triggered the idea to look at the feasibility of lightly refurbishing or redeveloping,” explains John McRae, Director of Orms. “So we undertook a feasibility study to look at all options of how to redevelop the site. The building is designated as a positive contributor to the conservation area.”

While positive contributor status does not afford the same protection as being listed, it does mean that demolition and wholesale redevelopment is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to gain permission for. As such it was clear from the beginning of the project that this would be a case of complementing and celebrating de La Fontaine’s concept, rather than creating something completely new on the same site.

Problems arose when it became clear that, despite the obvious craftsmanship and design prowess that had gone into the original build, there were serious structural issues hiding beneath the surface, creating obstacles to the proposals set out by Orms after they won the contract.

Image: Impression of how the Urban Gallery will be used.

Left Page: section through the former 12Bar showing the new grassroots music venue. ©Orms Architects

“We had a number of the original drawings from back in the 1930s, so had quite a lot of information about how it was built, the structural loads of the building,” McRae continues. “We also had photographs of it being constructed in the 30s. So we thought we had a good understanding of the building. But as always it’s only when you start unpicking what’s there that you get a clear picture of reality.

“The concrete was no way meeting the loads it was supposedly designed for. So there was reinforcement missing, or it hadn’t been well compacted. That was only found by taking samples and core drilling through the original structure and having that analysed.

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“What that meant is we had to stiffen the original structure more than we were anticipating. The other thing we found was certain down-stands and beams were not actually in the locations we expected them to be. So we ended up having to redesign the toilets and cores whilst it was under construction, which is always a challenge.”

La Fontaine’s original plans had also included bespoke green tiles on the exterior of the building, which had never come to fruition. It’s not clear on the exact reason why, although McRae says it could be a mixture of problems. The Advisory Committee was, at that time, run by Giles Gilbert Scott, who described the specialist materials as ‘innovative’, but was notoriously disinterested in bold colour palettes.

Meanwhile, the process of glazing either terracotta or faience would have been incredibly challenging given the technologies available at that time. It’s likely a combination of both issues eventually led to the decision to abandon this striking aesthetic touch.

“We discussed it with the planners, and they said it could work if we could replicate the pattern— there were a number of hexagon patterns throughout all the bays. That and the subsequent shapes below are the original pattern. So we were able to put in place the original idea,” explains McRae. “We looked at using faience for those green glazed tiles. But we actually moved away from that in favour of a product called Pyrolave, which is made from volcanic stone and extracted from a lake in southern France. It’s extracted in block form, then cut

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Above & Next Page: Bespoke Green Glazed Tiles on the Facade Photos ©Timothy Soar

into thin slabs and laser-cut into tiles. Then they glaze this by hand, with two or three artisans working on them, and then it’s fired in a kiln.”

The result is No. 1 New Oxford Street, and something truly unique within an urban environment dominated by statement buildings. Floors have been expanded, with a new ninth level topping the address, major undertakings that offer an additional 10,000 square feet of space without contravening limitations imposed by the positive contributor status.

There are tangible references to both art deco— strong geometry inside and out, the use of soft cove lighting internally— and art moderne’s bold horizontal lines. And nods to the past don’t end there, either. Finally realising La Fontaine’s dreams by using specialist materials elevates this well beyond a standard redesign. It has given a new lease of life to an icon by paying homage to its original creator. A refurbishment based on respect, rather than simply writing off what once was.

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ARBAR

CHANGE MAKERS #2 Journalist, photographer and all-round legend in the world of design, Barbara Chandler has been penning articles on furniture, decoration, interiors and more for over 35 years. A former-furnishing editor at Ideal Home magazine, and then contributor as a freelance to many national titles, she has held the position of design editor on the Evening Standard’s Homes & Property insert for more than two decades. Her photography has been widely exhibited, and in 2011 a collection of her images was published as a book, ’Love London’, testament to her reputation as the sharpest eye in the UK capital.

DE: What motivates you to do what you do?

Well, my work splits into two, journalism and photography. For writing, I think the start is a natural curiosity— I just love finding out about things.

Writing up the results— and dovetailing research, interviews, and observations— is a challenge, but I must have an in-built love of writing because I can work for hours at my computer, no problem.

Then there is the desire to share. It’s thrilling on a Tube train to see someone reading a feature of mine in the London Evening Standard on a Wednesday, when Homes & Property fills the centre of the paper. Recently quite a few of my stories have been flagged up on the cover of the main paper, and that’s a special accolade.

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I get a big buzz if I’m told there has been a strong take-up for something I’ve written about.

And I get the chance to see so many interesting things. Our capital leads the world in design, and I love telling people about that. We have fabulous shops, supercreative designers, new materials, gorgeous galleries and museums, brill shows, events and festivals. I also report from Paris and Milan; how lovely is that?

As for my photography I am never really sure of the motivation. I just know that when the light’s right, and often when it’s not, I have a compelling urge to get out there with my camera— even if it’s only to our local wood or riverside path.

In this somewhat old-fashioned genre of

Photo: ©Kathy Schicker

CHANDLER

CHANGE MAKERS BARBARA CHANDLER ‘street photography’— or happenstance— you have to take loads of pictures, chancing your arm over and over. But then every so often comes the wonder of something special. Composition and emotion in an image that you didn’t plan or orchestrate, but were able to capture and record. A magic moment that really happened.

Now, though, we do have a male editor at Vogue, and at Elle Deco. And there’s a good mix of writers when the readership broadens to embrace men and women. A lot of the new breed of influencers seem to be women, as is most of the PR business.

I don’t think it is a question of aptitudes or discrimination. It’s more to do with expectations, opportunities, and conditioning.

DE: Is there a landmark moment in your career that really shifted the way you see the world?

Yes, when I read ‘Design for the Real World’ by Victor Papanek in the early-70s, the scales fell off my eyes and I became aware that consumer journalism was really very shallow. I made an attempt to change careers, but was bringing up two children on my own, and got sucked back in.

Girls and boys starting out, or people changing careers, need to see that all areas of the industry are open to them. Females need to know at an early age that they can do supposedly male subjects perfectly well. So it all starts in childhood, family life and at school. Equally, those males that venture into markedly female areas have to be quite brave, I think. And possibly more boys should be encouraged to do interior and textile design.

Recently, I was privileged to see the Vitra Museum’s retrospective, Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design— still my hero. Now at least there is a chance to champion sustainability, new materials, and design for good.

Personally, probably thanks to my mother, a Cambridge first-class maths graduate, it has never occurred to me that I was not equal, and being female has never held me back.

DE: Who inspires you?

Being somewhat elderly myself, I feel inspired and encouraged by the older people in the design world who just keep going with undiminished creativity. Kenneth Grange, Rosita Missoni, Zandra Rhodes, Terence Conran, Richard Rogers.

DE: Gender imbalances continue to impact on almost all areas of life. Within your work what are the most important steps that need to be taken to try and level the playing field?

Just one in five designers in the UK is a woman, according to recent research by the Design Museum. You can see this imbalance most clearly in the fields of product, engineering and industrial design.

Of the current 200 Royal Designers for Industry (RDIs) at the RSA, just 27 (on my count) are women. Perhaps it’s even worse abroad, as of the 52 foreign designers invited as honorary members, only seven are women. However, when it comes to interior and textile design women appear to dominate. You can see this division very clearly when the annual New Designers show in Islington, for example, switches from Textiles and Fashion to Furniture, Product & Industrial Design.

In my area of specialist writing— homes, furnishing, decoration, design— the majority of journalists writing about interiors for the magazines are female, catering for a largely female audience.

@sunnygran

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DE: If you had the power to make a change on a global scale, what changes would you make?

I would ensure everyone had access to proper sanitation and clean drinking water. Whenever I write about the latest in basins, baths and loos here in the west, with their elaborate shower toilets and spa baths, I am reminded that one in nine people lack access to safe water and one in three people lack access to a toilet.

DE: Can you briefly summarise your plans and ambitions for the coming year?

I want to focus on my photography. I am thinking perhaps of another exhibition. My Love London show at Habitat on Regent Street was in 2008, and Joy of Design at designjunction was in 2013, with 2020 Vision at 100% Design in 2014.

I’ve developed merchandise digitally-printed with my photographs, and a batch of textiles— including tea towels, totes and aprons— have just gone into West Elm on Tottenham Court Road and at Westfield. I have also published six photographs as a London Mono series of tea towels with the Futon Company, which sold well over Christmas. Putting my photographs onto merchandise is a wonderful way of getting them out from a box under the bed into the real world. What’s the point of doing all that work if no-one sees it? I love my instagram account for the same reason, so do follow @sunnygran

EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND MOTION GRAPHICS DIRK KOY

@dirkkoy #level01 #carball #car #ball #game #drone #animation #3danimation #street #highway #sphere #motion #motiographics #art #motiondesign #dirkkoy

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Above: Rafah Map ©Forensic Architecture

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FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE OF RESISTANCE

FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE QUESTIONS THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITY OF ARCHITECTS IN LIGHT OF ONGOING AND INCREASING URBAN CONFLICTS WORDS CONSTANCE DESENFANT

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Left: Eyal Weizman Photo ©Forensic Architecture

“I love this land and I care deeply about both the people that live here and the architecture.”

W

hile terror attacks are nothing new in the UK, the perceived level of threat has never been higher. Planned, foiled and actioned atrocities have left more than emotional scars on the country, with sturdy barriers and concrete blocks long-since installed between driving lanes and pavements on London’s major bridges and other potential targets in the capital and beyond. The idea being to mitigate damage should history hit repeat.

It’s one of many signs that, surely and perhaps not that slowly, cities are changing in a way we could not have predicted just a few decades ago. More and more space is being lost to violence, even in locations we would not necessarily consider to be caught up in direct conflict.

Eyal Weizman, founder of Forensic Architecture (FA), is an expert on the subject. Israeli intellectual, writer, activist, architect and professor teaching Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University, London, he has developed an impressive understanding of the architecture of violence and occupation.

It might be difficult for some people to believe, but architecture can be used as a weapon, with its elements ammunition; tactical tools to implement pressure, domination, self-protection, or control over a population. As such, cities can be seen as live theatres for a new type of urban warfare, both in the literal understanding of that phrase and more subtle ways.

“The majority of civilian casualties occur in buildings so architects are the best-placed to offer their expertise in tracing how these events happened,” says Weizman. This is part of the reason why he created FA in 2011— to use his skills as an architect to compile evidence and defend human rights when they are violated.

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Today, there are some 30 people in the FA team worldwide with around half based in London. Their job is to produce evidence files in the shape of models, drawings, maps, web-based interactive cartographies, films or animations, allowing them to present information in a convincing, precise, and accessible manner in pursuit of accountability.

The team of passionate architects focus on cities struggling with war and unrest, but do not contribute to the construction of battlefields for new conflicts. Instead, they use their skills to re-question the purpose of their profession.

Talking about Israel and Palestine— arguably the world’s foremost frontline of architectural warfare— in the closing segment of Al Jazeerah-produced documentary ‘Rebel Architecture: The Architecture of Violence’, Weizman defends the approach and is clear on the position architects should adopt in certain situations: “I love this land and I care deeply about both peoples that live here. And I think looking at the landscape I see this kind of slow process of killing. I would have loved to practice my architecture free of the constraints and violence of this conflict, but I think that to be an architect is not only to build and to contribute to the destruction of the place I love most, but to use architecture as a way to both interpret, protest and resist.”

Design Exchange met with two professionals that have and continue to be directly involved in the FA team. Sarah Nankivell is the research agency’s current programme manager, and Omar Ferwati was project coordinator for work on the Al-Jinah Mosque in Syria— one of the most compelling cases in support of the use of this process. Like other members, past and present, they each have different backgrounds and interests, which contribute to expansion of the studio’s already-rich tapestry.

Both are Canadian, Ferwati originally hailing from Syria and trained as an architect, Nankivell schooled in Egyptology and concerned with how the past, architecture and archaeology can

Image: Sarah Nankivell & Omar Ferwati ©Forensic Oceanography

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be used to inform present solutions through new technologies and an understanding of heritage as a key proponent during conflict.

Beside them, FA also includes an extended team of collaborators and PHD students scattered around the world, from film editors to programmers and journalists. Most speak two or three languages, if not more, which, coupled with their varied skill set, means they can react efficiently in a broad range of situations.

“Most of us are architects so we have a certain spatial awareness and expertise of understanding spatial conditions and characteristics”, explains Ferwati.

Nankivell clarifies the origins of their projects: “[They] operate on two levels: some come from our own funders, the European Research Council or independent funding; for others, we are hired on a project basis by different NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.”

This was the case for the Al-Jinah Mosque, on which Ferwati worked for Human Rights Watch, in partnership with Bellingcat,

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Below: Al-Jinah Mosque ©Forensic Architecture Next Page: Al-Jinah Mosque ©Forensic Architecture

another investigative team. Their role was to prove the US deliberately targeted a functioning mosque, killing more than 50 civilians, despite official claims the location of the strike was regularly used for Al-Qaida meetings.

FA undertook an architectural assessment of the scenario. Statements were taken from witnesses on the ground, reporters, journalists, and hospitals where the victims were taken in the rescue operation. A local photographer was hired to document the ruins of the building and one of the contractors originally involved in construction was contacted, using social media platforms like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook to talk through the architectural plans, drawings and sketches.

From this they compiled overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the target was a functioning mosque, reconstructing a 3D model from the imagery, allowing them to locate each room and each victim found in the rubble.

“Through this process and methodology the architecture becomes a lens through which we can look at the scene where the event occurred and do a sort of reconstitution,” says Ferwati.

The three organisations and research agencies involved published their report in a bid to unveil the truth. The US responded to Human Rights Watch by revising the findings of the official investigation. Through the process of projects like this, FA’s team members become archaeologists of recent atrocities and upholders of the law in the present, furnishing prosecutors with evidence to be used in court cases and international tribunals. The ultimate goal being to bring human rights violators to justice.

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FA does not only focus on conflict zones and wars. The team also acts in many different realms where violence challenges basic human rights. Environmental battles represent another aspect of the work conducted by the research agency. The team tries to demonstrate how extraction of natural resources, and the resulting global warming, has led to the destruction of both ecosystem and people.

Kivalina is an Alaskan Inupiaq village of around 400 residents, situated on a barrier island in the Arctic, which had to seek relocation due to climate change— in this instance erosion and flooding of basic infrastructure. In collaboration with ReLocate, FA fought alongside the village. The final report stated that 24 of the largest oil and gas corporations should be held responsible for the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore had a duty to contribute to any relocation costs.

The tools and skills FA gathered over the years allow the team to register past and present forms of violence in different realms or ecosystems and to extract evidences. A new form of public truth, technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically produced, which can help make calls for transformative politics more audible.

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Another team of the research agency uses FA’s mapping skills and surveillance technologies to support a coalition of NGO’s demanding accountability for the deaths of migrants in the Central Mediterranean Sea— a tightly monitored NATO maritime area. Their aim is to show how Western powers often use the complex and overlapping jurisdictions at sea to ignore the pleas of stricken boats, avoiding their responsibility to rescue people in distress.

In one example, FA’s team was able to precisely reconstruct how events unfolded when a vessel was left adrift for two weeks in March 2011, leading to the death of 72 migrants.

The resulting report formed the basis for a number of legal petitions filed against NATO member states.

Below: Kivalina, Alaskan Inupiaq village ©Forensic Architecture

This particular instance is now more relevant than ever given hysteria surrounding the European refugee crisis has reached deafening volume, with the UK yet to clarify what role it will play in tackling this post-Brexit. Meanwhile, countries across the Mediterranean Sea continue to sidestep humanitarian duties of this kind.

The Aquarius rescue boat— chartered by SOS Mediterranee and Médecins Sans Frontières— is another case in point. Carrying over 600 asylum seekers including 123 unaccompanied children, in June 2018 the vessel was refused permission to dock in both Italy and Malta, before finally being offered a safe port in Spain. FA acts in such situations to confront institutions or governments with their legal obligations, attempting to ensure they meet these or face the consequences.

There appears to be no limit to the range of scenarios where FA intervention could, and should, be used. Similarly, the roles that can contribute to these cases and help defend human rights abuses are wildly varied.

“No matter what your skills are and what your profession is, there may be opportunities in which you can apply them to defend human rights or seek truth. It’s just a matter of repurposing your skills to tackle different issues,” declares Ferwati, who is keen to promote the practice of architecture in different contexts, as well as encourage universities to prepare future architects for input in a wider range of situations.

On the question of academia, Nankivell also has her view.

“I think what is really important about what we are doing is how academia and conceptual work can be really relevant in some situations, because so often things taught at university are disconnected from the real world. That’s what is so powerful about what we are doing with FA; we are taking academic knowledge and perspective, as well as our practical skills, and combining them in this whole new way that is very relevant and inspiring. It can have a real impact.”

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The Romantic view of an architect leaving a mark or legacy for the future has much relevance here. After all, this is a place where job satisfaction stems from attempts to defend human rights, which in turn can lead to lasting changes to policy, regulations and laws. But questions remain about the role and responsibility of architects within this.

Their expertise and knowledge of the built environment, the powerful analytical tools and efficient visualisation techniques allow architects to react quickly, whether explaining how a tragedy happened or— when possible— inventing solutions to prevent events occurring again. It’s about proactive architecture and practitioners using the tools at their disposal to restructure their surroundings, in turn redefining their profession.

But what will the cities of tomorrow look like considering the clear increase in urban violence? Could security infrastructure ever completely remove the risk of terror attacks?

The US, Israel, and the UK are among the nations that have led the thinking on protecting public spaces with the development of measures ranging from large robust barriers to incredibly subtle, barely noticeable changes to the street scene. But is this the right way forward? For architects and city planners, what is the correct attitude to adopt? Within the design, should they prioritise safety and security over prime urban qualities like accessibility, inclusiveness and openness?

Another question that arises from this investigative practice of architecture focussing on human rights violations relates to mediatisation. The FA team worked on a 3D video of London’s Grenfell fire, in which 72 residents of a tower block perished amid an uncontrollable blaze. The goal was to better understand how the flames spread through the building, and began shortly before the practice was shortlisted for the 2018 Turner Prize, the UK’s most prestigious art award.

While praised for “developing highly innovative methods for sourcing and visualising evidence relating to human rights abuses around the world”, the FA team and the art and architecture worlds seem sceptical about the nomination.

Phineas Harper is a critic, designer and Deputy Director of the Architecture Foundation think tank, and raised his concerns by declaring: “FA winning the Turner Prize would risk turning sensitive investigative work into insensitive entertainment”. Weizman himself said the nomination was “bittersweet… ….more bitter than sweet”.

The collective’s most recent undertakings can be questioned with regard to potential exhibitions in galleries and at special events.

Grenfell Tower, for example, has not contributed to any conclusions within the official investigation at the time of writing, while the work could easily awaken traumatic memories for those directly or indirectly affected.

FA is very conscious of this, though, and appears to understand when discretion is more important than mediatisation. Their work remains primarily meaningful and relevant, rather than being reduced to eye-catching commercial art. Looking ahead, the organisation foresees new opportunities in the way technologies evolve, making new tools and techniques available.

“A lot of what we do has benefited from the availability of technology, it facilitates communication with potential witnesses thanks to social media,” Nankivell explains. “Technologies like cameras, digital recording equipment, satellite communication and drones can really make a big difference on the research and practical side of a project.

“We can also benefit from a massive portal of images flooding in from conflicts. Assembled piece-by-piece, they create a bigger picture and a better image of what is actually going on there,” she continues. “The software or communication platforms we use drive us towards more accurate results but it can also bring new issues, like the saturation of images that need to be filtered out.”

The conflicts also become more complex with technology— new networks are created and webs of information become widely available which can be interpreted or transformed quickly. A sort of secondary conflict seems to occur in the background of these battles, as we try to assess the authenticity of interpretations that take place in the news and on social media.

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Image: The ‘left to die boat’ project ©Forensic Architecture DESIGN EXCHANGE

This combined process of urbanisation and ‘mediatisation’ of war makes forensic architecture an urgent and indispensable practice for human rights investigations. Put simply, it is something we must discuss as an alternative approach to architecture if we are to work in a more responsible and human manner.

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lifespa.dornbracht.com / aquamoon

SANTIAGO CIRUGEDA

Urban Recipes for a more social architecture

Santiago Cirugeda & the Spanish network of collaborative architects WORDS CONSTANCE DESENFANT

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Image: Lafábrika_detodalavida (Cement factory in Los Santos de Maimona, Badajoz), 2010 @ recetas urbanas

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Image above: Santiago Cirugeda, founder of Recetas Urbanas @ recetas urbanas

Image: La Escuela Crece (‘The School Grows’, self-build school project), Madrid, 2015 @ recetas urbanas

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“This isn’t a space for boring people. The development and evaluation of any of the urban prescriptions listed here went through complex processes and were born from rich interrelationships. We continue interchanging political negotiations with urban illegality.”

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antiago Cirugeda cuts straight to the chase with a clear warning when introducing the work of his practice. Put simply, it’s not for those who insist positive change is achieved within the confines of rules, regulations, or indeed laws.

“This isn’t a space for boring people. The development and evaluation of any of the urban prescriptions listed here went through complex processes and were born from rich interrelationships.

We continue interchanging political negotiations with urban illegality,” he explains. “And, of course, constructing together the network of collective architecture that offers the information and protocols to the collectives and individuals who want to assume responsibilities.”

Born in Seville in 1971, Cirugeda created the Urban Recipes architectural studio in 2003 as a response to the Spanish government’s oppression of and control over architects, which prevented them from building ‘outside the box’, forcing business to be prioritised over people. Still based in the city, the studio’s activity mainly consists of reclaiming abandoned urban locations and turning them into public spaces for everyone to use, despite the fact self-building and urban takeovers are illegal.

Their structures are often fast-build, mobile, and made from recycled materials. All serve social interests.

Urban Recipes has also been a war-horse in the battle against the construction crisis which hit Spain and the rest of Europe in 2008. Added to the existing Spanish legislation, the crisis has left many architects without a job and clients without projects for more than ten years. Public projects simply stopped halfway through completion as purses emptied, preventing architects from providing services and being able to practise their profession, resulting in many leaving the country altogether.

Cirugeda did not join the exodus. Instead, he has remained in Spain, fighting for his profession, for his territory, and for the people living there. Critical about his country, or rather the approach authorities have taken to this issue, he is clearly outraged at the current situation— from the perspective of both architects and citizens— but still sees hope, believing the power of solidarity can overcome what has been a long-lasting economic catastrophe.

“Spain is a total disaster because of the crisis, the people have been abandoned by the state,” he says.

“The government is unable to help or even guarantee basic rights so the people are doing things their own way. The most important thing is to keep our spirits up, which they usually are when we are building together.”

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The impact of the financial crisis on Spanish cities cannot be understated, leaving gaping holes in their hearts. At the time of writing, more than 500,000 new homes stood unfinished across the country— urban skeletons craving investment and crying out for occupants.

Even cities like Barcelona, appealing to foreigners and their money, have suffered, with thousands evicted from their homes for falling behind on mortgage payments. Ada Colau, Barcelona’s first female mayor and former activist, shares most of Cirugeda’s views on the current situation.

“Spain is a total disaster because of the crisis, the people have been abandoned by the state.”

“The economic crisis in Spain is closely linked to real estate and the mortgage market,” she says. “Instead of rescuing people the state rescued the banks, which had cheated people with abusive mortgages and interest rates”.

Colau used to lead protests where human chains were formed around properties to prevent the city authorities from evicting homeowners. She is now trying to adapt to life as an elected politician, but faces many challenges. Promising to control the tourism industry by different measures such as limiting the number of visitors, banning licences to build new hotels and increasing taxes on vacation rentals, the task of reclaiming the city for its residents quickly became a headache, as tourism accounts for around 14% of the local economy.

This suggests that joining institutions of power might not be the most efficient way to have a real impact on things. Perhaps it may be easier to change policies from the outside, when people mobilise to fight back with civil disobedience.

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Image Above: Aula de convivencia para el Colegio Público de Educación Infantil y Primaria Europa de Montequinto en Dos Hermanas, Sevilla (‘Mediation Room’ self-build lunch room for a primary school), Dos Hermanas, 2015 @ recetas urbanas

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Images: La Carpa - Espacio Artístico (The Tent – Artistic Space head office of Varuma Teatro and future Andalusia School of Circus Arts) Seville, 2011 @ recetas urbanas

In the previous issue of Design Exchange we looked at the Tower of David in Caracas, another example wherein the state failed its people, who then found solutions themselves. A large community, unable to afford average rents in Venezuela’s largest city at the time, occupied an unfinished skyscraper, turning it into a home.

Cirugeda is aligned with this approach, and his work in Spain can be compared to the work of think tanks in Latin America, performing research and advocacy on topics such as social policy, political strategy, and culture. He does not consider himself the ultimate artist, whose gracious gestures on a piece of tracing paper decide the future face of a city. Instead, he’s usually in the thick of things, onsite, working with communities and people, rather than specific clients.

In many parts of the world, pop up spaces and urban interventions by collectives are becoming more common. These attempts to provide key services and liveable places compensate for the dead facades and desolate areas delivered by developers once intended to ‘regenerate’ cities, which eventually came close to killing them off.

“Local planning authorities and developers who work on shaping the new skyline of the U.K. capital seem to live on another planet- many places they design won’t be affordable for most of the city’s residents.”

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Taking advantage of a loophole in Spanish law, he manages to build projects for the benefit of a community. He calls himself a social architect, which is appropriate considering after 17 years working he owns nothing. Cirugeda lives in a rented house that used to be a brothel and drives a second-hand van. Anything he makes from projects goes towards wages, or is invested in the vision he has for a more social architecture.

One of his alternative school projects, technically erected unlawfully, saw the team invent a self-building workshop to justify their position— not a construction site, but a hands-on educational institution. Legal advice afforded the team enough confidence to develop the project while it was in legal limbo. Eventually it had to be dismantled, but the experience proved worthwhile for everyone involved, from architects to families.

The impact of these redevelopment projects on communities can be hugely damaging, and the phenomenon is evident across Europe. In London for example, where land value comes at a premium and the property market is notoriously inflated, despite the crisis not hitting construction as hard as Spain local planning authorities and developers who work on shaping the new skyline of the UK capital seem to live on another planet. Many places they design could never be affordable to most of the city’s residents, even though they may have lived in the area for years, long before big money investment arrived.

As is addressed in this issue’s feature on Public Works [page 34], the question of public/private ownership and urban policy seems to be central to cities like London. Yet in Spain, the debate is much more complex. Through his work Cirugeda questions state decisions, the responsibility of the government and the way public money is invested and used. Shouldn’t local authorities draw lessons from the expensive projects that initially claim to be capable of breathing new life into an area, but in reality drive communities from their homes, ‘affordable rents’ proving to be anything but?

Cirugeda’s strategies when working on similar situations are very often subversive. But at the same time it is difficult to consider him a criminal when most projects use sustainable techniques such as self-building and the recycling of materials, while also promoting education and creativity.

Their first project followed the same approach and was born out of the will to decentralise cultural venues and events, rejecting traditional city centre locations in favour of suburbs to help in situations where local authorities had failed their communities, leaving them without appropriate infrastructure. The result was a sociocultural and artistic centre, self-managed and independent from public funding, which was used as a collaborative space for artists to store materials as well as entertain people.

The spider system, self-built with recycled materials, presented a very fast way to occupy a space, and it was re-used in different places where a building prosthesis or extensions were needed. These structures could have different functions and their main advantage is that they can be put up in a single day, by just two people. Taking up no floor space, leaving the ground beneath free for people to use, this can be seen as another trick to avoid the need to apply for planning permission.

More than circumventing the law in order to deliver a project to a community, Cirugeda has also managed to change urban and social policy through his architectural interventions. This is the case with his Mediation Room in Dos Hermanas, just south of Seville, where his intervention urged the local council to sponsor a project they first rejected, authorising self-building for the first time in the city, albeit only within this specific context.

The project was born from a small group of mothers calling for a lunchroom for the public nursery and primary school, Europa, in Montequinto. For eight years, the pupils had to eat in the library during lunch shifts or in the playground, which compromised the use of the library and raised questions over the conditions in which the kids were growing up.

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A platform was created to raise the issue, seek support, and generate awareness of the project within the educational community. This is when Urban Recipes stepped in to help build a collaborative and self-building project in which the whole community could get involved, and the students could learn some fundamental values needed to become future-committed citizens; teamwork, and the importance of public services being just two examples. The project was finished with the support of the council, which finally managed to allocate funds and legalise the process.

Urban Recipes can be seen as a lifestyle, rather than simply an organisation people work for and with. It is not only focussed on promoting what critics might label ‘hippy ideals’; the architects involved also raise important fundamental questions about architectural and social situations.

The urban development of the Spanish coastline has been one of the most significant in the country over the last 50 years, and yet it is not considered successful. For Cirugeda, the architects, developers and planning authorities who took part in this statescale project clearly lacked a sense of taste, not to mention respect, when they proposed and then realised their vision of massive concrete blocks on Mediterranean shores. What outrages him the most is the fact these resorts and promenades were mostly built for tourists or foreigners who would use the facilities less than six months per year.

Questioning territorial principles and ‘right to soil’, he raises a compelling point: shouldn’t people give some sort of landuse justification before developing with potentially disastrous implications for the landscape? Why do planning authorities grant permission for such builds when they are not supportive of the alternative, for example social projects that could benefit the local population?

The answer obviously relates to profit, but it shouldn’t. In many countries, this is one of the major problems regarding urban policy— the focus should be on improving the lives of permanent residents, rather than creating benefits that can only be measured in currency.

Cirugeda is not an easy person to get hold of. We met him several years ago when he presented his approach to architecture in London and it has been hard to track him down since. Frustrating for a journalist, nevertheless it says plenty about who he is; less interested in promoting work, fame, and column inches, more a field practitioner committed to realising positive outcomes and aims.

While publicity may not always work in his favour (there’s a risk he could be kept under even tighter surveillance by the government), we thought it was important to discuss what he has achieved, and what he hopes to accomplish going forward.

Strategies and projects that seem to provide far more in terms of social impact on communities than most that are endorsed

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Image: La Escuela Crece (‘The School Grows’, self-build school project), Madrid, 2015 @ Juan Gabriel Pelegrina

“Our projects are portrayed as the solution to the financial crisis, but we have to be clear on our position, this isn’t just a quick fix for the crisis, but an alternative model.”

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Image: La Carpa - Espacio Artístico (The Tent – Artistic Space head office of Varuma Teatro and future Andalusia School of Circus Arts) Seville, 2011 @ Ana Belén González

by authorities, it’s proof, perhaps, that architecture needs to be reformed, with its role and responsibilities re-thought.

“Our projects are portrayed as the solution to the financial crisis, but we have to be clear on our position, this isn’t just a quick fix for the crisis, but an alternative model,” says Cirugeda, who now has designs on creating an alternative university to teach new principles and processes to future generations of architects.

He is not the first to voice concerns about the limitations of conventional architectural practice and education, with both primarily serving the world’s most privileged. Cirugeda and the Spanish network of collaborative architects are interested in extending the boundaries of both practice and education. The role of architects in addressing the emergence and growth of informal settlements is yet to be redefined with the urban poor in mind, which would help empower communities.

Values, knowledge, and skills are needed in order to understand the challenges facing the profession, and the resulting

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implications for education should also be looked at. All of this calls for a transformation of the balance of power between architects and their clients in the design process, as well as a change in the relationship between tutors and students, to promote a reflective educational practice and encourage community members to collectively act for themselves.

Cirugeda tries to prove that moving to more buoyant cities like Barcelona, Madrid, or elsewhere in Europe, is not the only choice for people living in the shadow of a crisis that has left them without work and trapped in lifeless territories. Instead, there is an opportunity to fix the places that have been decimated by economic decline. Portable homes, alternative schools, illegal social centres, or takeovers of factory warehouses, Urban Recipes does not appear to be running out of ideas, just as Spain’s economic problems remain far from resolved, pointing to a busy, if potentially volatile future for the studio-cum-movement.

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#2

BRIXTON, LONDON UK

The Department Store Squire and Partners

When an architectural firm needs to look for its own new office you can bet there will be some pretty demanding boxes to tick. The space needs to be completely bespoke in order to accommodate the particulars of the practice, high-impact to showcase what the team can achieve, without being overblown or superfluous— the benchmark of good design.

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Above: Pre Construction Below: Current day The Department Store, Squire and Partners Photo©James Jones

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S

quire and Partners headquarters, in the heart of Brixton, London, is an excellent case in point. Having walked away with both a RIBA London and RIBA National Award in 2018, we’re clearly not the only ones who think the project is worth trumpeting.

Taking a dilapidated department store first finished in 1906, since left to the ravages of time, and nursing it back to prime, the finished article is a striking example of what can happen when you lovingly restore antiquities, while adding a 21st Century edge that neither detracts from the original grandeur nor tries to recreate it.

Basking in its own neglect, to some extent at least, The Department Store now boasts historic features such as the stunning grand tiled staircase, exposed brickwork and marble

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details, alongside fresh additions such as a beautiful roof terrace complete with oak framed pavilions and crafted glass dome. Workspaces are designed to suit various disciplines, effectively giving each department a purpose-built area, and additional creative and retail units have been created.

“Focussing our search on the Victoria line, which has an excellent service connecting to virtually all other London Underground lines, we found ourselves looking for affordable workspace outside of central London, in Vauxhall, Stockwell and Brixton. We came across The Department Store, which was actually owned by one of our clients,” says Maria Cheung, Interior Design Director at Squire and Partners, when asked how the hunt for a property brought them to this corner of the UK capital.

Left Page: Reception & Interior.

The Department Store, Squire and Partners Above: Workspace Left: Pre Construction Photos ©James Jones DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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“The fact that the building was formerly a department store resonated with us as a practice, as we are also made up of departments, incorporating architecture, interior design, CGI, illustration and model-making. So it gave a lovely sense of the building coming full circle,” she continues, explaining why the address appealed.

“We also loved the notion of the space being used for display; showing and retelling the story of our work to ourselves, the work being our products on display. The large open floorplates of the building were attractive in turning it into workspace, as well as the existing high quality materials and beautiful detailing.

“A year later, we can now display our own products in the window, which feature designs that were borne out of the aesthetic of The Department Store, and are sold online at www. thedepartmentstore.com/shop.”

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Although plenty has been preserved, profound re-imaginings have also taken place. Connecting walls between central office and wings have been removed, aside from a first floor section containing graffiti left by squatters who occupied the address in the 1990s. Deemed too important within the context of the building’s history, this was preserved, dictating an entirely different approach to completing this level and accentuating the overall intended feel of the place. A ‘salvaged’ look that was harder to accomplish than many may assume, considering the state of the site when work began.

“A challenge during the restoration process was conveying to the builders the level of rawness we wanted in the building and the aesthetic we wanted to achieve,” says Cheung. “When they were in the building all day every day and we were offsite, we had to make clear when to stop sanding the walls by putting up signs saying ‘This is finished!’”

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“A challenge during the restoration process was conveying to the builders the level of rawness we wanted in the building and the aesthetic we wanted to achieve.”

Left Page: Upstairs Bar & Restaurant Right: Pre Construction Below: PureVinyl Record Shop Photos ©James Jones

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Photo: ©James Jones

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In our opinion, the results speak for themselves. London is currently flooded with new commercial developments, from off-the-shelf bores to towering statement properties.

Whether tenants of the future will deem these worthy of painstaking resuscitation and bring them back from the brink of despairing demolition when their time comes remains to be seen. A reality that makes any project aimed at safeguarding the kind of spaces that are considered invaluable more than deserving of attention.

Top: Patterns, Inside Tower Below: Pre Construction Photos ©James Jones

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ISH

CHANGE MAKERS #3 Bishi Bhattacharya is a London-based musical tour-de-force of Bengali heritage, whose credits include singer-songwriter, multimedia performer and multi-instrumentalist. She first gained recognition as resident DJ at experimental club night, Kash Point. Most commonly known simply as Bishi, she is the artistic director and co-founder of WITCiH— The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, which provides a platform to increase the visibility and recognition of female and non-binary artists working across music, creative technology, science, engineering and maths.

DE: What motivates you to do what you do?

On a personal level, I would probably end in a madhouse if I wasn’t being creative. On a more important and less-selfish level, I believe that creativity is the seed of everyone’s soul. It helps inspire people’s personal journeys, invents new languages, creates intimacy, expands our horizons and brings communities together.

DE: Is there a landmark moment in your career that really shifted the way you see the world?

These moments have come from a diverse range of experiences— headlining Queen Elizabeth Hall, sharing a bill with Yoko Ono and Siouxsie Sioux, working with [David Bowie’s producer] Tony Visconti on Daphne Guinness’ album, very private walks in Brompton Cemetery and on the beaches of Barcelona and Lisbon. You can’t fake these moments, they come to you in beautiful and unexpected ways.

Image: ©Zuzanna Butkiewicz

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CHANGE MAKERS BISHI BHATTACHARYA Also, last year I raised the money to curate The WITCiH Festival with seven new commissions, all on my own. It was a massive step in understanding myself, both as an artist and entrepreneur.

DE: Who inspires you?

My parents, friends and colleagues— all renegades and rebels. I’ve been inspired by everyone I’ve ever worked with, including everyone I have curated at WITCiH, the women in technology creative industries hub. This is a platform that promotes women in tech at the intersection of music, science and creative.

DE: Gender imbalances continue to impact on almost all areas of life. Within your work what are the most important steps that need to be taken to try and level the playing field?

To be honest, I’ve had to forge a unique career stemming from being a statistical anomaly in my industry. The percentage of women of colour over the age of 35 is so low a figure wasn’t even released in a major industry survey in December 2018.

I’ve also been on the end of dodgy race-related remarks throughout my career, and I’ve decided to stop being quiet about it. I have trained rigorously as a musician, educated myself as a cultural producer and created an artistic ecosystem on my terms. I can honestly say that I am the change I want to see in the world and I am trying to hold the door open for other people to flourish alongside myself. The odds are stacked against me and if it hadn’t been for the love of friends, family, community and collaborators, I’d have given up a long time ago. In short: be the change you want to see.

“I can honestly say that I am the change I want to see in the world and I am trying to hold the door open for other people to flourish alongside myself.”

@bishi_music

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DE: If you had the power to make a change on a global scale, what changes would you make?

Climate change at the top of every social and economic agenda. This is the single biggest threat to society.

DE: Can you briefly summarise your plans and ambitions for the coming year?

I’m going to be releasing my new album, ‘Let My Country Awake,’ inspired by a collection of essays called ‘The Good Immigrant’, launching a series of WITCiH live streaming events, and curating another WITCiH Festival. Expect sights, sounds, podcasts and videos galore. 2019 is shaping up to be a very exciting year.

Above: A still from the video‘Who Has Seen The Wind, written & arranged by Bishi.

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*

NEVERTHLESS, we felt the finished article warranted a right to reply on the part of the developer. What follows is a blow-by-blow account of the steps we took to make contact and publish counterpoints to represent those behind the Glacier Point project, which includes the Duke of Cambridge. In

LOCAL OPINION

Image: The Duke of Cambridge in Felix St, Bethnal Green © Design Exchange

THE VALUE AND PRICE OF DEVELOPMENT

turn, this timeline gives an insight into our journalistic process, while asking serious questions about transparency in the 21st Century UK property market.

In early-2018 Design Exchange contacted the Glacier Point developer, Heath Holdings Limited, a company behind several other London sites of a similar size, accounting for around 200 flats in the area.

We discovered no head office or active administrative address. The only registered place of business was a farmhouse in Sandbach, Cheshire, where two company directors were listed. All additional information led us to Jersey, a notoriously difficult territory for indepth research into corporate activities.

WHEN DESIGN EXCHANGE ASKED THE GENTLE AUTHOR TO PEN AN OPINION PIECE ON THE SUBJECT HE’S BEST KNOWN FOR— THE POLITICS OF AESTHETIC AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN EAST LONDON— WE OFFERED FREE REIN ON FOCUS AND ANGLE. HE DID NOT DISAPPOINT. WORDS Gentle Author

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t is rare that you cannot believe your eyes, yet that was my response at first seeing this East London chimera. When I initially examined the proposal for facading the Duke of Cambridge in Felix St, Bethnal Green, part of the planning application for a larger housing development by Heath Holdings, designed by Guy Hollaway Associates, I was astonished and appalled at how a new building appeared to have been forcibly inserted into an old structure. A kind of hybrid monster.

At the time, I dismissed this as dystopian fiction because I could not imagine it would ever be built, but the reality is so much worse than that proposal. Such is the ugly conflict between old and new, you can almost feel the humiliation and pain of the original. The experience is akin to your dear old grandpa with the Father Christmas physique having his trousers stolen, and you find him wandering bereft in the street, tricked out in a pair of garish lycra shorts because they were the only option available.

It makes you wonder how anyone could have thought that this treatment of a gracious 19th Century pub was sympathetic, or how the finished results would be acceptable as architecture? It stretches my imagination to grasp the aesthetic which permits an architect to arrive at such a disastrous compromise.

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Image: Left top: The Duke of Cambridge, Bethnal Green, 1997 ©Chris Dorley-Brown Left below The Duke of Cambridge, Bethnal Green, façade converted into Flats, current day ©Design Exchange

On his website, the architect describes it in these terms: ‘A dynamic glazed box of ‘reglit’ glass tubes juts out of the top of the brown and red brick facade of the original building, creating a relationship between old and new.’

“It makes you wonder how anyone could have thought that this treatment of a gracious 19th Century pub was sympathetic, or how the finished results would be acceptable as architecture?”

This statement got me thinking about the precise nature and quality of this relationship, and it is my consideration of this dynamic which forms the substance that follows…

THE CULTURE OF THE PUBLIC HOUSE The earliest record of the Duke of Cambridge public house is when the land was purchased by William Brown, in 1825, for £2,200, including the ‘newly-erected tavern’ which was ‘being built in December 1823’. The Regent’s Canal had just been cut through East London and, a quarter mile to the north, the Imperial Gas Works— powered by coal delivered by barge— opened in the same year.

Today, the Duke of Cambridge exists as one of the last vestiges from the early-19th Century in this neck of the woods, when the East End was transforming from a string of rural villages into an extended urban landscape.

Through the centuries in London pubs, taverns and inns have provided invaluable social spaces where people from all walks of life could congregate, in which the commerce and culture of the city has thrived to the degree that a greater part of the capital’s identity has arisen from its drinking houses. In the East End, these establishments constituted an extension of the domestic space as a focus of community life, where neighbours and members of extended families could rely upon meeting.

In terms of the urban landscape, each street corner formerly possessed either a pub or a local shop and these twin locations were the foundations of neighbourhood society, followed closely by the church. You could argue the current increase in binge drinking, which links to alcohol being separated from its social context, and the fracturing of urban society into faceless anonymity may be directly attributed, at least in part, to the demise of London’s pubs.

We then contacted the architectural practice, Guy Hollaway Architects, to ask if they were willing to answer our questions. At this time the project was mentioned on their website, a reference removed shortly after our inquiries. They explained this particular project was only with them until the council granted planning permission, and they had no further involvement.

Wider research revealed this is often a standard procedure, with many architects providing developers with help only until their application is successful. Should this really be the case?

Commonly, such watering holes carry the history of the neighbourhood where they are situated and their persistence is essential if London is to retain the distinctive character and quality of life which makes it an attractive place to reside and to work, and which constantly brings visitors from across the globe DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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“Across London it has become all too common for pubs to become the prey of opportunistic developers, and their lack of protection is explained by the lack of appreciation for the cultural value they represent, both historically and in the present day.”

to experience its uniqueness. Two pertinent examples are The White Hart in Bishopsgate next to Liverpool Street Station, and The Marquis of Lansdowne, on Cremer Street, Hoxton.

The White Hart was originally a coaching house and tavern which dated from 1240, positioned just outside the gate of the City of London. Rebuilt in 1470 and then 1827, it retained its medieval cellars and was constantly busy, until Sir Alan Sugar’s company, Amsprop, bought the site, reducing it to a facade with a cylindrical office block surmounting the entire edifice. A grotesque monument to one man’s ego was created, indicative of a lack of respect for culture.

The Marquis of Lansdowne in Hoxton dated from 1843 and became the focus for workers in the cabinet-making industry that flourished in the surrounding streets, and which led to the creation of the Geffrye Museum as a celebration of the furniture trade. In 2013, the director of the museum acquired Heritage Lottery Fund money, and announced his intention to demolish the pub and replace it with a concrete cube.

Dismissing the contradiction of the Geffrye Museum (which describes itself as ‘the museum of the home’) setting out to destroy an historic building that constitutes an extension of the domestic space, the director justified his decision by explaining that he had ‘no interest in the culture of the labouring classes.’

Top: The White Hart was originally a coaching house and tavern which dated from 1240 Alan Sugar’s company, Amsprop bought the site reducing it to a facade with a cylindrical office Below: The Marquis of Lansdowne in Hoxton dated from 1843 Next Page: The Duke of Cambridge, Bethnal Green, façade, current day ©Design Exchange

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Fortunately, in this instance the scale of public objection prevented the demolition of the pub, which is now being restored with cash from the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of the museum’s regeneration, masterminded by Wright & Wright.

Across London, it has become all-too-common for pubs to become the prey of opportunistic developers, and their lack of protection is explained by the lack of appreciation for the cultural value they represent, both historically and in the present day. Yet pubs are necessary oases of civility in the chaotic urban landscape, rare public social spaces that permit the opportunity of fellowship. We lose them at our peril.

Having hit dead ends with both developer and architect, we reached out to the estate agent responsible for selling flats at Glacier Point; Bridge, based on Shoreditch High Street, since sold to East London’s Stirling Ackroyd. They agreed to pass our questions on to Heath Holdings Limited and send us any reply.

Sadly, after several emails with questions we received nothing back. By

THE FACADING OF THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE: AN ARCHITECTURAL CRITIQUE There are several ways in which the dominance of this new structure, crouching like an incubus on top of the old, expresses antipathy for the building it inhabits and denies the potential of any resolution of the diverse elements into a satisfactory architectural whole, which ought surely to be the object of the exercise.

Firstly, the scale, proportion, colour and idiosyncratic placement of the windows in the extension ignore the form of those in the Duke of Cambridge, which now have clunky new frames inserted that differ significantly from the originals, dividing the windows in half laterally and compounding the inelegance of the configuration.

late-September 2018 we were calling Bridge on a weekly basis but were unable to illicit a response.

Following this we looked to Gareth Gwynn, Development Manager for Tower Hamlets London Borough Council, where Glacier Point is located. We asked if he could answer

Secondly, the reglit glass tubes, with their strong vertical emphasis, give the extension the effect of being extruded from the building below. The industrial modernity of these glass tubes is alien in this context, disregarding the traditional brickwork of the pub and mitigating further against any integration of the different elements into a whole.

some questions about Heath Holdings

Thirdly, the former mansard roof of the Duke of Cambridge was raked, tilting away from the vertical walls beneath and held in place visually by the symmetrical flourishes of the Dutch gable on the front of the building, but the new extension does not resolve the form of the building below. Instead, by avoiding any acknowledgement of said gable, this crudely disproportionate rectangular box exists in conflict with the rest of the structure to discordant effect.

a response, as is the case with similar

There is no reason why an architect could not use overtly modern materials in such a project, if the proportion and form of the building unified them within the design.

Similarly, I can see that by using traditional materials an architect could extend a building successfully in a form that contrasted with the pre-existing structure.

This issue of Design Exchange is con-

The problem with the Duke of Cambridge is that the choice of form and the materials for the extension are both at odds with what is already there. These manifest deliberate decisions by the architect not to engage with the old building, delivering a visual eyesore.

I feel disingenuous pointing all this out because I hope that architects are blessed with a sensitivity for these essential concerns of their trade. I would like to imagine that the architect who chose to use the glass tubes on top of the Duke of Cambridge believed the luminosity of this material might impart a levity to the extension, as if it hovered above its predecessor like a cloud of light, or the beacon of a lighthouse. Yet, even if this were the case, they have failed for the reasons outlined above.

Limited. Disappointingly, he explained the development was not open for discussion, but—conversely— invited us to email him. We are still waiting for messages sent to Tower Hamlets case officers Colin Wilson, Justin Carr, and Matt Christie.

cerned with the idea of change. We can think of few better ways to highlight the need for fundamental amendments to the laws, rules and regulations surrounding UK property developments than highlighting how easily a build can complete with no clear framework to hold those involved accountable once the scaffolding comes down.

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CONCLUSION The explanation of why The Duke of Cambridge has been degraded in this way must lie with the two huge new buildings which are part of a larger development by the same architect and developer on the other side of Felix Street, where from a total of more than two hundred dwellings, it is intended that only around 25% will be ‘affordable.’

These vast curved blocks, which are the shape of irregular lamina, possess no meaningful relationship in form or scale with the brick terraces of the Hackney Road or the dignified Guinness buildings constructed as social housing a century ago on the opposite side of Felix Street.

Such is the generic nature of their design, they could equally be placed in Minneapolis or Milton Keynes. Stylistically they do not belong anywhere, raising the suspicion that the form is dictated solely by an imperative to maximise volume and financial return, rather than entertain dialogue with the existing urban landscape.

It is profoundly disappointing to witness how the current housing shortage has delivered a field day for exploitative development across the capital, rather than impetus to address the real needs of Londoners.

Which brings me back to the Duke of Cambridge— because the anachronistic materials and forms which blight this formerly elegant structure, the reglit glass tubes and the idiosyncratic window placing, are prominent features of the development across the road. In other words, the Duke of Cambridge has been adulterated in an attempt to unify it with the new housing blocks resulting in a dysfunctional conversation between two incompatible languages.

Although the Duke of Cambridge closed in 1998, I am reliably informed that there were those who wanted to reopen and give it new life, which would not have been impossible in this increasingly fashionable neighbourhood with a burgeoning cultural life.

A shining example of such an endeavour is The Marksman, just a half mile down Hackney Road, which has managed to maintain its traditional customers and bring in young professionals with the promise of classy cuisine. It has achieved a Michelin nod and a healthy turnover, while fulfilling the traditional role of the public house in London as meeting place where diverse members of the local community can share time together, relaxing in a social space that is common to all.

An equal opportunity existed with the Duke of Cambridge, which might have functioned as the place where residents of the Guinness social housing buildings and the inhabitants of the new development could meet. But the opportunity of providing a social space for fellowship, as the pub had done for the previous

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175 years, was denied by the developer for the sake of a few more flats, thus consigning it to the past, while retaining the original facade’s lettering as a mere historic relic.

A reminder of life as it was, but is no more.

Rather than imposing a generic style upon the neighbourhood, the two new housing blocks would have been more sympathetically realised if they paid attention to the form and materials of the surrounding streets, treating the existence of The Duke of Cambridge as a functioning pub in its unaltered state as the keystone of their conception.

This approach proposes a more integrated social landscape, rather than isolated blocks of new residents without any means or venue for direct connection to the existing community. Which brings me to the knotty question of how the financial imperative driving such ill-conceived developments may be reconciled with our need for a city we want to live in. One which serves the many, not just the few.

The treatment of the Duke of Cambridge incarnates a metaphor of this conflict vividly and the ugliness of the outcome is a pertinent slap in the face, reminding us how often any concern for quality of life or good architecture is blatantly sacrificed for the sake of greed. This disastrous hybrid is an unfortunate totem of where we are now, an object lesson for architectural students of what not to do, and I’m sure future generations will laugh in horror and derision at the folly of it.

“But the opportunity of providing a social space for fellowship as the pub had done for the previous 175 years was denied by the developer for the sake of a few more flats.”

The Gentle Author writes daily about the culture of London and the East End at www.spitalfieldslife.com, is the author of several bestselling books including ‘Spitalfields Life’ and ‘The Gentle Author’s London Album’, and is one of the founders of the East End Preservation Society.

Image: The Duke of Cambridge, Bethnal Green, Current Day ©Design Exchange DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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FUTURE DOCUMENTS

CHRIS DORLEY BROWN

“I now think of my work as an archive—making images for people who haven’t been born.”

WORDS MARTIN GUTTRIDGE-HEWITT

Above: Whites Row Car Park 2009, Nr Spitalfields Market, E1 London.

Point DE app at photo to see in present day Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown

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Below: The White Building, Hackney Wick, London, 2011.

Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown

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he passage of time is a reality humans have obsessed over since the concept of time was conceived. We are grains of sand in the wind, and considering this is both fascinating and uncomfortable. It emphasises both the progress of civilisation as we know it, or lack of, and the mortality of individuals. Here today, gone tomorrow.

After photographing life in East London for the last three decades, Chris Dorley-Brown’s oeuvre offers an invaluable visual example of just how quickly things can change. Street-level

snapshots of lifestyles and communities as were and can never be again.

“Even though I’ve been a photographer for all my life I’ve never been a journalist, or a photo journalist. I’ve never had an urge to go down that route. And I’ve never considered myself an artist either, I thought the term was too ponce-y and I’ve never been trained as such,” Dorley-Brown explains. “I didn’t go to art school, I just kind of self-taught and fell between the two conventions, and wound up basically creating an archive.”

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Above: Spelman Street, London E1, 2009.

Point DE app at photo to see in present day.

Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown

His early inspiration to pursue a career as seen through a lens came from his father’s love of home movies. Rare and irreplaceable documents of a specific time, place and experience, these reels could create memories of situations he was never actually party to at the time they happened. A strange trick of the mind that questions the legitimacy of recollection, and highlight’s visual culture’s powerful ability to give first-hand insights to absent spectators.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 masterpiece, ‘Blow Up’, only added to Dorley-Brown’s intrigue. Setting its scene in a heady London fuelled by drugs, alcohol and social change, the movie centres on a fashion photographer who becomes convinced he has accidentally snapped a bloody murder. A hallucinatory plot unfolds where both viewer and protagonist are forced to consistently second guess the truth. “[The film] delves into that area of taking a photograph where you think you have seen something and grow to trust the image more than the reality of the event itself,” says Dorley-Brown.

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Rather than opting to explore surrealism and illusionary art, which could easily have been the logical next step, he instead chose another route altogether. Raised on England’s south coast by parents that had left the UK capital behind, despite the decision to move from the Big Smoke their son was keen to ‘return’ to a city he considered home, even before ever having lived there.

Securing tea-making duties at the studio of acclaimed photojournalist Red Saunders in the early-1970s, a creative apprenticeship and political education followed. A Britain divided and polarised on race, class and ethical lines was laid bare in front of him.

“The whole photography scene in London then, for me, was dominated by what was going on down the Roman Road, a lot of lefty men and women who were involved in journalism and motivated politically rather than by their own careers and making money. They believed what they were doing could drive some sort of genuine change.

“Even though I’ve been a photographer for all my life I’ve never been a journalist, or a photo journalist. I’ve never had an urge to go down that route. And I’ve never considered myself an artist either, I thought the term was too ponce-y and I’ve never been trained as such.”

Below: Victoria Park Library 1998-Housing 2012 Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown Old King Johns Head 2004-Housing 2014 Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown Poulton Close 2003-2013 Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown

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“But then if you look at the work now it has shifted, and it has become a document of change. I’m interested in how the purpose of a photograph can shift over time, the pictures repurpose themselves automatically. It’s a bit like the John Hinde postcards— these pictures of seaside holiday resorts. That collection has been re-assessed as documentary, the negatives have been re-scanned, the colours taken back to their original, much more subtle state.”

The notion that, while very much a still image, a photograph’s raison d’être is in flux couldn’t be clearer than in Dorley-Brown’s work, presented over the last few pages. Born from realism, what once showed the present has become a relic of all that has been forgotten, invoking feelings of nostalgia, sadness and loss. The images also encourage debate around development, the politics of space and upward social mobility, while giving us an opportunity to fantasise freely, build narratives as we see fit.

Who were these people? What were they doing? Where are we going?

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People stuck in traffic jams during the middle of the summer, mid-1980s in East London Previous Page: the knowledge 1987 Photo © Chris Dorley-Brown This Page: Top: MG Metro 1987 Telecom Van 1987 Renault 30 1987 Rings and Chains 1987 Ford Van 1987 Photos © Chris Dorley-Brown

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#3

FULHAM ROAD LONDON

HARI’S SALON CLARISFORD

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ll creatives understands the value of an interesting client. People with such strong personalities it transcends their personal and professional life, ensuring what could otherwise be a relatively run-of-the-mill fit-out will be anything but.

This is the situation London-based architectural practice Clarisford found itself in when initially approached to work for Hari Salem. A prominent character on the London fashion and style scene, over the last 40 years he has garnered an enviable reputation for hair craftsmanship, building a mini-empire of high-end salons across the city.

The firm’s first job was on Hari’s own house, in South Kensington. Success on that then led to not one but two further commissions, where the team applied what was learnt about the client himself to his business. First on a premises in Notting Hill, and most recently Fulham Road— the latter replacing the old flagship address close to his home.

“You can think you have Hari cracked, then realise you don’t.

Everything has to be different and quirky,” explains Ultan Foley, Senior Architect at Clarisford. “Working on his house, that is how we got to know what he wants. From that we could expand to a larger scale, and a different typology. But when you actually look at it the ideas are quite similar. The materials for the house and the salon are on the same lines.

That range of materials is deceptively complex when you walk into the latest addition to Hari’s world. In many ways there’s not a huge amount of individual aspects. But thanks to the talent behind its design, and their sharp attention to detail, there’s plenty to take in when you examine things a little closer.

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“He loves industrial qualities. Nothing pristine,” says Foley.

“Rustic, but good materials. For the salon we did a lot of research into rusty metals, acid-washing metals, and then he also wants it to be quite contemporary. He loves Indian furniture, too, so we had to bring that into the mix as well, adding a lot more depth to the finished product.

“First of all it needs to be functional as a hair salon. So we started with an approach to do something quite contemporary, with a muted backdrop. The lighting was really important for this. We used Delta Light on the first of Hari’s shops we did, in Notting Hill, and that was quite successful.

“Obviously lighting is so important when cutting hair— the quality and also the colour rendering has to be as true as you can possibly get, so when the customer walks out of the shop it has

to be as close to the same as it was when they were at the work station getting a trim.

“That’s why we approached Delta Light again, for the backdrop lighting. The fittings are quite contemporary, but also muted.

That then followed onto the flooring, I guess we chose something modern— concrete effect. The walls are also understated, but then we introduced depth and variation with Indian furniture, a lot of the workstations are made from acid-washed white steel, which gives a very industrial quality. And it gives a bit of richness as well.

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evident throughout Fulham Road, a newly refurbished unit and therefore completely blank canvas when this project began.

“Hari’s brand is about him, really. He’s very quirky, really into art, particularly sculpture. But you couldn’t just associate him with one type of art, say modern,” Foley explains. “A lot of the joinery, the timber work is untreated. So it’s just bare oak, which goes back to Hari not wanting anything polished or pristine.

“I guess the functionality dictated a clean aesthetic, then we added textures throughout. In this shop we also had a good opportunity, it was a new shop. So when we went in it was just a box. At the back we just filled it with a huge roof light, which became kind of an atrium. We then used green walls around the edge, creating a little oasis of colour.”

“It was an honour to be asked to supply the lighting for a second salon of Hari’s,” says Alfie Dixon, Project Manager at Delta Light.

“Hari is renowned within the design world, a unique character who everyone admires, so being part of his project team is always an exciting challenge.”

“It was vital that we found a solution to perfectly align design and function. Lighting is crucial in a hair salon to ensure clients are given a true picture of how their hair will look when they leave the salon, particularly when it comes to colouring,” Dixon continues. “So not only did Delta Light need to deliver this, we also had to embrace the design of the salon and provide fittings which would add to the look and feel of the space.”

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The final results are at once pared-back and outstanding, then. Minimal modernism underpinning nuances that truly represent the guy paying the bills, while still keeping the focus on commercial purpose. It’s eccentric, wholly original, and eyecatching enough to ensure any passer-by will immediately take notice, from the head of L’Oreal Worldwide— who declared Fulham Road one of their favourite salon designs in the world— to the next customer searching for their own fresh and vibrant look.

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YOUSRA

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ELBAGIR ELBAGIR

Photo © Idreesy Adil

CHANGE MAKERS #4

Born into a family of hugely-respected journalists, it’s no wonder Yousra Elbagir’s own portfolio name-checks some of the most influential media organisations on the planet. Her work has been commissioned by the likes of Financial Times, Vice and Channel 4’s ‘Unreported World’, and she is currently a reporter for Channel 4. An expert on Africa, and specifically Sudan, her passion for telling stories that may otherwise have been overlooked or, worse still, completely ignored guides many of her undertakings.

DE: What motivates you?

My parents are journalists and I grew up watching their newspaper sort of get ripped apart, and we also moved around the world based on my father’s newspaper getting banned and his political affiliations. So I think from a very young age I saw the importance of journalism and the importance of information, in terms of dismantling the systems and allowing people to be aware of the world they are in.

So that was the initial intrigue for me, but now what I think motivates me, coming from a country that has a pariah status, I understand the role of the media in building these narratives and giving gravity to certain situations and stories.

I think it’s crucial there are people from a variety of backgrounds involved so a variety of stories can be told. And it’s not just a diversity thing, it’s about a variety of perspectives in every newsroom and at every publication to allow for nuances to come through, for stories to be told that wouldn’t even be on the radar of mainstream media outlets.

CHANGE MAKERS YOUSRA ELBAGIR

Was there a landmark moment in your career that shifted your perspective?

I think each period ends and I have to recalibrate and consider why I’m doing this. Most recently that recalibration moment came in Sudan when I was covering the uprising. That feels like a moment that I will carry with me for the rest of my career.

I have reported in Sudan for a long time, I left university in 2015 and went back to Sudan to train in the field and was working there for a year and a half, but this time felt different because it felt like impact journalism, you know? I knew that if I reported on a hospital emergency room being attacked by government forces that could impact on whether or not it happened again.

summarise then, my family are my role models in the way they have supported my coverage and my sister’s coverage and created a foundation of love and unending support.

DE: Gender imbalances continue to impact all areas of life.

What are the most important steps that need to be taken to try and level out the playing field?

Obviously, other than hiring women, I think it’s important even within our own storytelling not to speak for women. Muslim women particularly have been spoken for over a very long time but women in general are often spoken for.

And that was the first time that I really saw coverage that I contributed to having an impact on the ground, and I think that’s when I sort of realised that you can actually make a difference with what we do, it’s not just a dream.

And so even as a woman, in my coverage, I try to let women speak for themselves. Just because I’m a woman does’t mean I can speak for them, because my experience as a woman is very different to theirs, even if we are both from Sudan, even if we are both Muslim. So I think it’s important to let women speak for themselves in the work environment but also in every arena.

If you do a story, and do it well and you report on something that would otherwise not have got any media coverage then you can change things on the ground. But obviously it’s a huge team effort, it wasn’t just me, there was an amazing producer called Darius Bazargan and obviously the Channel 4 News team who were consistently supportive in giving space to the story in Sudan.”

If you did have the power to change things on a global scale, what changes would you make?

It’s a difficult one. I think moderation in all its forms in all sectors is crucial. I think we suffer from extremes in the world and polarity. So moderation, from the economy to political ideals, is crucial. For me balance and moderation would be pivotal in changing a lot of things with one stroke of the brush.

DE: Who inspires you?

Quite a few people. It shifts. My ultimate role model was my sister, Nima, she’s a senior correspondent for CNN and I grew up watching her build her career as a journalist in international media, but after spending time in Sudan with my parents as journalists I’m now adopting them as the ultimate role models for how to cover news and how to cover stories in the most ethical and effective ways possible.

Nima looked up to them when she was training and building her career, and I looked up to her. Now I look up to all three of them.

And also my brother is a media manager. So honestly, just to

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Because I think that polarity breeds conflict, it breeds hatred and inequality. You know, even with the climate, our consumption, if that makes sense? And minimalism as well, if we just became more minimalist in our consumption and attitudes.

What do you have planned for the coming year? Any ambitions?

I think just to tell stories as authentically as possible. To tell as many stories as authentically as possible, but also to find ways to capture the humanity that we all share through storytelling and journalism. Not just speaking into an echo chamber of like-minded individuals, but penetrating these barriers and boundaries and allowing messages to be transmitted to people that may never have heard them before.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND MOTION GRAPHICS DIRK KOY

@dirkkoy luftraum #vimeostaffpick #drone #droneflight #2danimation #motiongraphics #motion #art #air #space #drone @dronestagr.am #composition #street #highway #basel #concrete #cars #dirkkoy DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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RESEARCH

TRAVERSING THE SENSORY LANDSCAPE

Smell is a sense that is all too often taken for granted. We watch, feel, taste, and listen to our immediate environment, yet all it takes is a whiff of something to stop us dead in our tracks. It’s this hugely influential and eerily invisible world that Amsterdam and London-based design research studio Thought Collider are intent on exploring. For nearly ten years Mike Thompson and Susana Cámara Leret have been investigating the molecules that trigger memories, emotions, and conversations.

WORDS JOSH PLOUGH

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W

hat’s fascinating about the research and projects undertaken is the dedication to everyday smells, like rainfall or freshly-cut grass. These innocent and (almost) universally-loved aromas aren’t, according to Thought Collider, what they seem. They are in fact necromantic, or death odours. They communicate the event of death to us, although not explicitly.

As humans we associate them with memories, fact or fiction.

But to other organisms, as the studio explains, smell “signifies the death of water micro-organisms. When they die, they release Molecules that compose what we perceive as the smell of rain”.

It’s this inverting of perceptions and iconoclastic approach to the senses that makes what Thought Collider does so integral to furthering our understanding of the world’s odours, and their significance.

Rain Rain Go Away! is a project that harnesses this way of thinking and applies it to the management of disease transmission.

While being based within a larger investigation, The Institute for the Design of Tropical Disease (IDTD), the study experiments with air as a ‘design material’, and aims to communicate the necromantic smell of rain to mosquitoes.

The reason for doing so is because it’s widely believed the insects don’t fly during rainfall. Trick them into believing the heavens have opened, then, and it could offer an alternative to fumigating cites or aerially spraying chemicals, as happened in Puerto Rico to try and curb the Zika virus. Put simply, research like this may help governments solve future epidemics.

Understanding these death odours and what they communicate to other organisms changes our relationship with them. They are no longer innocuous smells that transport us somewhere else, but networks and channels that connect us with previously disregarded worlds. Thought Collider describes this meaning and the way it defines relationships as the ‘hyperlink nature of smell’.

It is the thread that runs through a single molecule, into the nose, before entering our brains where it triggers a reaction or change in behaviour.

But could the influencing nature of smell be used to nefarious ends? While researching the sensory landscape within a community clinic, Cámara Leret started thinking about sense data. This information is important because it starts the discussion about the way smells can make people talk.

As she explains: “molecules in that context are valuable because they are able to trigger specific responses or emotions, which can be used for specific purposes… …I think we are very aware of the fact that the experiential data currently being generated can also have the potential to be instrumentalised.

“So there is always the ethical question of how this information is being used, and the fact that smell triggers people to talk is not something we should just necessarily take for granted. It should be discussed because they are so pervasive, they’re everywhere; we are constantly relating to them and this can also be utilised for specific effects.”

Whether it’s the influential nature of smell or its hidden relationships to other organisms, Thought Collider are pioneering the way in which this research is undertaken. The studio often works within cultural or scientific institutions, and introduces a novel way of thinking that produces results and ideas that would have not been possible otherwise. Design thinking is a trope at the moment, but Thompson and Cámara Leret provide excellent examples of what creative brains can do when placed within such rigid organisations.

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RESEARCH

DESIGN FOR CULTURAL COMMONS

The Commons is informed by an idea that has existed for centuries. In a world of widespread inequality, it moves us away from creating assets for the few by facilitating the sharing of resources with the many. Torange Khonsari, founder of a new MA that teaches and provides a platform to further this discourse, expounds.

The dominant debate around this thinking focusses on how shared assets are created, governed, used and distributed without overuse and abuse. Initiatives range from cooperative models, independent digital platforms and alternative financial systems, to localised methods of resource management and production.

At the European Commons Assembly the scale of this global movement became clear, as did its diversity and capacity to cause significant change. But a major challenge remains— how can we switch to structures of horizontal governance, rejecting hierarchies in favour of more pluralistic models, on a large scale? .

In the book, ‘Defining Cultural Commons’, Enrico Bertacchini explains such assets are ‘cultures expressed and shared by a community’ . These include beliefs and rights of ownership, techniques, artistic movements and even our image of cities and places. Culture, unlike natural resources, can be limitless. It is not a depleting resource. So what mode of production and sharing of culture as resource can lead to modes of cooperation rather than competition? More so, how can we ensure cultural assets of varying types and heritage co-exist, and are seen as equally valid?

In an era where information made available through technology has effectively open-sourced crafts, rituals and other once-

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secretive cultural assets, where does real creativity now exist?

Quite possibly in the models of production, co-production, and the way we incentivise the works being created. Creatively becomes more about how the relationship between participants functions, rather than the end result itself.

Cultural Commons promotes moving to a point where assets are no longer vulnerable to commercialised cul-de-sacs. This has been the situation for much of history, and it has created an inequality of cultural wealth. Indigenous cultures are appropriated without tangible benefits for the original creators, let alone consent.

They are misused by tourism, and stolen by corporate interests.

We may feel a sense of belonging to something outside the homogenised, globalised story of consumption, but incapable of connecting with that ‘other’. The Cultural Commons can draw a counter-narrative, which doesn’t stop at physical access. Instead, it also takes into account the need for intellectual, social and economical access to production and use.

Walter Gropius and his Bauhaus School aimed to deal with the economic inequality of art and design by using then-cutting edge technologies of mass factory production to create items that could be available at comparatively low prices. You only need to look at IKEA to understand how this idea became mainstream.

In the years since, different barriers have been erected, though, so we must still be aware of the need to overcome economic obstacles, and also think beyond those. Social differences bring about varying beliefs, values, and traditions. There is no consensus, but that shouldn’t create boundaries between different forms of culture or creativity. The more complex our tapestry of commonalities the more surprising new modes of operation and production can emerge, if we allow them.

Considering how and who produces meaning in products, neighbourhoods, buildings and artwork helps use this mosaic of commonality and difference to its full potential. Clearly, we can’t ask a new chair design to have such a huge impact, or even socially-minded redevelopment of city districts. But as a community of cultural producers together we can better position ourselves to deal with the challenges of over production, coproduction and imposed meaning.

Everything you have just read, and 20 years of practice, has led to the creation of the Design For Cultural Commons MA course at The Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design, London

Ethnic identity Knowledge commons

Localism policies Cultural policy

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Digital commons

Festivals and events

Social policies

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Design for Cultural Commons MA A postgraduate course in the field of cultural and urban commons

In a contemporary context of much inequality, this course introduces models of

on which states are built. Lip service is paid to democratic modes, Metropolitan University. The idea being to create a platform for sharing. The Commons are assets that belong to everyone, forming resources but those words are usually muted when it’s time to put ideas into knowledge and exploration of these topics, which is applied as that should benefit all, rather than being restricted to these just circumstances a few. practice. Within an educational platform such opposed to theoretical. The course being practice and projectas Design For Cultural Commons should not just be considered a based allows for new tangible initiatives to emerge within the You’ll learn about how these shared assets are created, used and that supports welcome alternative, governed, but an essential one. Teaching Cultural Commons discourse. distributed without overuse and abuse. Beyond to initiate your students inteaching developing you their own commoning projects, and an experimental giving fresh ideas questions room to It’s 2019, and by this point the public have beenpractice, consistentlyyou’ll learn commons projects and how toplatform finance and how toand make develop, be tested and networked. promised and then let down by the system for longer than your practice sustainable. anyone can remember. A record stuck on repeat. Distrust, For further information, contact Torangeat Khonsari: mistrust and scepticism dominate, be that of please corporations, a For more information, contact course leader Torange Khonsari t.khonsari@londonmet.ac.uk current government or the established governance models

t.khonsari@londonmet.ac.uk.

londonmet.ac.uk/PMDESCOL

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MARK JENKIN FILMMAKER

BAIT

Mark Jenkin’s latest film presents economic conflict in one of Britain’s most remote corners through narrative, aesthetics and the production process itself.

WORDS STAN PORTUS

C

ornwall seems trapped at a kind of perpetual crossroads. Much of its identity is understood through industrial history, with mining existing in the county for almost as long as memory itself. The same goes for fishing, but for some time now both have been competing with another business; namely tourism.

Mark Jenkin is a Cornish filmmaker, based just outside Penzance, who is eager to show this economic conflict’s muddy complexity. Through the microcosm of a coastal village and two brothers’ fishing business, Jenkin’s new feature, ‘Bait’, considers how these sectors struggle to coexist.

Jenkin is keen not to favour one side of the debate, and stresses that although the characters in the film “argue until they’re blue in the face with one another… …nobody’s got a bad intention”.

Comparing ‘Bait’ to a Western, that position becomes clearer: “It is a frontier story, it’s about the settlers arriving, and imposing order and civilisation on a bunch of natives who are living off the resources that are there.”

This mistrust of new, invasive culture is reiterated through Jenkin’s cinematography. Like his previous film, Bronco’s House – which similarly looked at the gritty life of a Cornish coastal village – Bait is shot in black and white on an old Bolex16mm film camera that Jenkin tells me is older than he is.

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Above: Bait BTS – Director Mark Jenkin operating the Bolex camera. Photo ©Thom Axon DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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Above: Photo ©Early Day film

Although he takes a strong stance against modern filmmaking, it would be wrong to call Jenkin nostalgic. He is not sentimental about the past, rather he is aware of the weight the past pushes on the present. Cinema, for him, is really a young art, and film has not been outmoded by digital. Instead it has just suffered from a certain form of neophilia.

Jenkin hand processed the film shot for ‘Bait’, methodically treating it with a variety of chemical solutions. The result can forever tie practitioner to medium. “[I]f you put your finger on the actual frame of the image, your fingerprint will be there forever,” he explains, calling to mind the joy a craftsperson takes from their work, rather than slick director. The imperfections created in this developing stage are very much part of the final piece.

He offers two more frames which contain another blemish.

Taken from a scene in which a woman is shown walking in the

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rain, lit by a single lamp, one of the frames is solarised, a direct effect of Jenkin exposing it to light to check if the roll of film was developed correctly. The section was permanently altered.

Due to how little film Jenkin usually shoots for each title (‘Bait’ is made from just five hours of footage, give or take), and the fact each roll of film in the Bolex camera runs to a mere two-and-ahalf minutes, solarised sections of film may be the only images he has for a certain line of dialogue, and therefore could make the final cut. But this doesn’t concern him.

“I love that,” he says. “They’re the mistakes that create amazing randomisation and individualism in the image.”

As much as there is a fight to get the material to do what he wants, there is an acceptance of what the material determines too. This imbues Jenkin’s films with a magical, raw life of their own. Fitting, for the subject at hand.

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#4 BLAVAND Denmark

TIRPITZ Blåvand Musuem BIG

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Photo: ©Rasmus Bendix

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W

hat is the core role of a cultural institution? To provide a valuable asset with which visitors will be attracted to a particular location? To educate the public on a specific discipline, or range of disciplines? Or cement a greater connection between what is now, and what has been before?

These days the area is known for its wildlife, rugged scenery, and rural serenity. Offshore islands such as Fano still offer postcard-perfect thatched-roof cottages and traditional inns, the waters home to seals and oyster catchers hunting for recordbreaking molluscs, with wild samphire sprouting from the mudflats. All is calm and peaceful.

The answer, of course, is all three. But what if a cultural institution also served an even more poignant purpose? For example to hand ownership of land back to the people it was taken from, and finally lay to rest decades of invasive occupancy while ensuring that period of colonial disruption will never be forgotten.

This tranquility was disturbed during the Second World War, though, when Nazi Germany arrived, and quickly set about constructing colossal fortresses along the sea front, ready to defend the newly-controlled territory from Allied attack. Known as the Atlantikwall, the project stretched more than 3,000miles.

Few buildings could truly claim to achieve the latter, and the Blåvand Bunker Museum, which sits on the weather-beaten Wadden Sea coastline of Denmark, is one.

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The largest of these defensive sites was the Tirpitz Bunker, a megastructure spanning 7,500 square feet, named after an equally gargantuan battleship, some 400 uninterrupted miles— as the crow flies— from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. This

Left Page: Photo: ©Rasmus Bendix This Page: Top: Photo: ©Rasmus Bendix Middle: Photo: ©Colin Seymour Below: Photo: ©Colin Seymour

part of the Atlantikwall was eventually abandoned in 1945 before completion, as the Third Reich collapsed, but the core building survived, with its 3.5-metre thick concrete walls and surrounding scarred earth. By 1991 it had been converted into a small museum by the municipality of Varde, dedicated to the memory of its Second World War use.

In 2012, the local council, with financial backing from the A.P. Møller Foundation, opted to expand the institution significantly, developing four separate areas— one of which was the original fortress, with a further three built into, and under, the ground itself, connected by tunnels to the concrete edifice, offering an elegant counterpoint to the main structure. Whereas one section is clearly visible, a stark blotch nodding to darker days, the remainder attempts to avoid disrupting the panorama, hiding out of sight to all but those at the front door, or within the exhibition spaces.

Completed and opened in July 2017, the work undertaken by revered architects BIG— Bjarke Ingels Group— represents the final phase in a lengthy process of reclaiming land stripped from the Danes by a foreign power and, even after that aggressor had gone, never truly returned to the local population. It remained the site of a German bunker.

“In terms of the museum design, the main priority for TIRPITZ was to not only expand the historic German WWII bunker into a cultural complex, but also find a way to integrate four independent institutions within a single structure while preserving the sand dunes of Western Denmark,” explains Finn Norkjaer, partner at BIG. DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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“TIRPITZ consists of a series of four single-story rectangular concrete boxes, half-submerged into the coastal landscape,” he continues when asked about particular materials involved in the build.

Beow: Photo: ©Rasmus Bendix Next Page: Photos: ©Colin Seymour

“Each box is formed from a reinforced concrete base slab, two RC walls and a post-tensioned concrete roof. We had arranged two walls at right angles to each other, supporting the roof along only two edges as well as acting as earth-retaining structures that face outwards from the centre of the site.

“In order to accentuate the sense of transparency and allow light to filter through the underground spaces, we had the roofs cantilever from the walls at the back of the box, thus extending them to the glazed elevations without the need for additional structural elements such as walls or columns. Finally, the entire roof is post-tensioned to allow roof deflections and cracking of the concrete to be carefully controlled.”

Perhaps what’s most impressive, though, is the way challenges specific to both the historical use of the site, and its location among the protected wilderness, were overcome to ensure the new structure sits in harmony with its surrounds. A complete contrast to the original building’s militaristic destruction of wildlife in favour of function.

“For TIRPITZ, there were many constraints that had to be considered in the building’s design: the climate, the four museums in one building, the nature reserves, and the historical components of a bunker. These challenges were all factored in

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and ultimately shaped the final design. Four simple incisions in the topography not only preserve the surrounding protected landscape, but also allow TIRPITZ to appear as a natural dune,” says Norkjaer.

“Visitors are led to a sunken, central courtyard where they can access the four underground galleries that, though carved into the sand, get an abundance of daylight and connection to the outside from 6.2-metre tall glass facades.”

The innovation continues within, too. Nodding to the coastal locale, the interiors, conceived by Dutch experience design and production agency Tinker, emphasise the natural rhythm of the place— high and low tide, man and nature, darkness and light, good and bad. This idea helps bring the single temporary and three permanent exhibition areas to life, from West Coast Stories, telling 100,000 years of local history; to Army of Concrete, dedicated to the Atlantikwall, and Gold of the West Coast, which looks at the region’s famous relationship with amber.

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DAMLA CHANGE MAKERS #5

Born in Turkey and trained as a lawyer, disillusionment at both her country and choice of career, alongside a love for creative design, led Damla Turgut to turn her back on the legal profession, relocate to the UK and establish Otto Tiles. A specialist in hand-made ceramics, she travels extensively to research and source new materials, patterns and producers, giving her a keen understanding of regional business practices and the significance of different aesthetics within the context of global cultures.

DE: What motivates you to do what you do?

As I answer this question I’m currently on a sourcing trip to Morocco to find new designs to launch later this year. I am very passionate about what I do and I love discovering a unique shape, pattern or material. I want to offer something different, something exciting, that’s what drives me, to be a market leader in bespoke handmade high-quality tiles.

I was going to interview after interview and hearing the same answers from the all the biggest global law firms. Everyone was cutting back and reducing their team size and I should apply again in seven months. I felt disappointed, angry, hopeless, and I was getting depressed. The last interviewer— who was a very senior, very wise man— told me I should take a break and reassess my options after he saw the tears in my eyes.

When I see a completed project for the first time, be it a restaurant or bar or a residential project and I see our tiles, it gives me amazing satisfaction. I’m always proud to have been a part of the team that made it possible.

So I did. By December 2013 I felt very lost, with no sense of purpose or direction. One thing I knew was I didn’t want to live in Turkey anymore.

The experience of working with award-winning interior designers and architects from all around the world continually motivates me. I particularly love to be involved in projects that require the creation of new designs or the challenge of uniquely specified products that no one else can do, such as sand-blast finish cement tiles, reclaimed-look cement tiles, pattern inserted terrazzo tiles, Scarpa-Olivetti tiles.

Receiving a phone call from a client or a designer saying that they love Otto Tiles makes all of the hard work worthwhile and drives me to keep pushing onwards, to be the most successful I can be.

DE: Is there a landmark moment in your career that really shifted the way you see the world?

I began my career training as a lawyer. I studied law in Turkey, practising for three years and came to London to do my Masters Degree in a specialist financial sector. I instantly fell in love with London but the legal world there did not feel the same. Having a Turkish passport and visa proved difficult, and eventually I had to return home to Turkey with a heavy heart. This was in 2013, when Turkey was in the middle of a big financial crisis and a lot of foreign investors were pulling out of the country due to the high political and economic risks.

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My family is in the publishing business. Things were not going well for them either so my father made a decision to change industry. Our neighbours own a ceramic factory in Turkey.

Thanks to them, my father set up an export company to sell their tiles. I saw an opportunity there and knew my father would not be able to succeed without some help as he did not speak English and had no experience of the export business. After just a few weeks I went to Nairobi for an exhibition. After the staid world of corporate law I loved the new contrast— travelling, selling and working for myself. The only problem was what I was selling; the tiles were dull.

I decided to create my own tiles in the patterns and colours that inspired me, selling to a new worldwide market led by a more fashion-forward interior style. That for me was my moment, when everything fell into place. My brother and I established Otto in 2014 in Turkey. I moved back to London in 2015 and founded Otto Tiles.

In Turkish we have this saying, “her şerde bir hayır vardır”, which is something like “every cloud has a silver lining” in English.

DE: Who inspires you?

I admire successful and determined women, women who follow their dreams, women who are afraid of nothing, women who

TURGUT

CHANGE MAKERS DAMLA TURGUT

are unique. I especially admire women who have children and continue to work. I admire self-made women who work to make a difference, improve and rise-up.

at times be difficult. I have experienced flirting and at times have found it difficult to separate those who might be trying to help and those who had other motives.

I admire and am inspired by my female competitors such as the owner of Jatana Interiors, Popham Design, and the owner of Cle Tiles. And, of course, my mum inspires me. She believes in me and supports me every single day.

All of this has dented my confidence and made me feel that I would do better and could be more successful if I was a man. But I’m very proud to be a woman and challenges relating to gender imbalance will never deter me.

DE: Gender imbalances continue to impact on almost all areas of life. Within your work what are the most important steps that need to be taken to try and level the playing field?

In the UK, I think people are more aware of the gender gap and some actions to improve it have already been taken. The next generation will have the biggest impact. I think once we succeed in raising our children to believe that genders are equal and all careers are available to all, duties can be performed by all, then the gender gap will close. Successful new role models in these new positions will help catalyse this change. I am hopeful about this and think we are in an age where it is happening and will continue to improve.

The tile business can be a man’s world. I have not met a female factory owner and dealing with producers is a major part of my job. There is also the installation end on construction sites, which is still a very male-dominated area. But I want to answer the question from Turkish and UK perspectives.

Many men in Turkey objectify women. I myself have experienced this from many producers. Some of them did not take me seriously and would not work with me because I am a female.

Some even went so far as to refuse shaking my hand.

A lot of my clients in Turkey are men. In the past it has been difficult to open up a conversation wider than that of the project and tiles as I am not a man and they will not engage with me. It leaves me feeling at a disadvantage.

I really have no idea what can be done in Turkey and I really worry about its future. There are other major problems in fundamental areas such as freedom of speech and application of basic democratic principles. Gender inequalities are everywhere but before basic rights are obtained there is no hope of these being resolved in full. However, there are probably more women working and this can only give more freedom of choice in the end.

My clients here in the UK are generally women from the design sector. However, I would say that meeting with constructors can

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DE: If you had the power to make a change on a global scale, what changes would you make?

I would change two things. Firstly, I would make a world where all the races, religions and sexualities are treated equally.

Secondly, and this is rather utopian and futuristic, but I would like men to be able to carry children. So while they are getting all swollen and tired we could continue leading our lives.

DE: Can you briefly summarise your plans and ambitions for the coming year?

I really want this year to be the year of Otto Tiles. I am already working on new collections which include new 3D ceramics, marble mosaics, bejmat, zelliges and terracotta.

I have my sights set high and I have a seven-figure turnover target. This month I will be busy opening our first showroom in Cukurcuma, Istanbul, and I plan to open our first showroom in East London.

I am also developing a new sub-brand, Terrazzotto, aimed at providing airports, rail stations and large-scale residential projects with high quality terrazzo products.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND MOTION GRAPHICS DIRK KOY

@dirkkoy #line #kinetictypography #motion #motiondesign #motiongraphics #design #graphicdesign #red #black #2danimation #animation #typography #typeinmotion #animatedtype #dirkkoy DEMAGAZINE.CO.UK

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DESIGNING FOR CHANGE Ideas for a better world

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PARTISAN COLLECTIVE By holding these members’ meetings, anyone from the wider community of Manchester can contribute to the space and feel ownership over it. We provide affordable office space for individuals and organisations. The revenue from this— along with membership fees, earnings from events and our café-bar— helps subsidise a free-to-use meeting space for our user groups.

Our user groups have included campaigns for a range of social issues, community groups, and independent festival organisers.

As we develop, and demand for our space increases, members of Partisan will make collective decisions about space usage.

Not-for-profit groups will be prioritised. We hope user groups will become members of the collective and shape for themselves how the space is used and shared. The permanent address, in Cheetham Hill, was officially unveiled in July 2017 with a series of open weekends. www.partisancollective.net

Partisan Collective formed with the aim of creating a space for independent, DIY, cultural and political activities in Manchester.

After 18 months of fundraising— our crowdfunder raised nearly £15,000— we secured a permanent space in the centre of the city.

Our goal was to transform this venue into an organisational and creative hub, consisting of a music and arts venue, café-bar, and a flexible social space. Partisan’s business model is inspired by DIY spaces across the country, such as DIY Space for London and Wharf Chambers in Leeds.

At the core of Partisan is a workers’ co-operative, who oversee day-to-day running of the space. As a co-operative, the workers in the space have control and direction over their own work. The wider Partisan Collective, a members’ club, meet regularly with the co-operative to discuss the direction of the space. Tiered membership pricing keeps the collective open to all, regardless of economic circumstances.

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NEWCITIES - WELLBEING CITY AWARD “As such, we recognise the importance of placing the wellbeing of our citizens at the centre of our policies and sharing best practices to help foster new ideas. We encourage cities all around the world to participate in this great initiative launched by NewCities.”

More than 100 cities from 27 countries and six continents were considered for its first year. The finalist cities for the Wellbeing City Award, in their categories, are:

Last summer saw The NewCities Foundation in Montreal, Canada launch a Wellbeing City Award, the first international prize to recognise cities that place residents’ wellbeing at the centre of their policies.

The award creates a global standard for urban wellbeing by putting cities that are committed to wellness and quality of life on the international stage. Cities from around the world are invited to apply. Individuals and organisations will also have the possibility of nominating cities that clearly demonstrate a commitment to wellbeing.

“More than ever, cities play a key role to ensure a better tomorrow for future generations. As North America’s top university city, Montréal is a progressive city open to the world, culturally rich and known worldwide for its exceptional quality of life,” says Valérie Plante, Mayor of the City of Montréal.

Community: Bogotá (Colombia), Milan (Italy), New Haven (USA), and Santa Monica (USA) Economy and Opportunity: Amaravati (India), Chicago (USA), Ljubljana (Slovenia), and Pune (India) Public Health: Gothenburg (Sweden), Kigali (Rwanda), Los Angeles (USA), and Vancouver (Canada) Sustainable Environment: Avià (Spain), Curridabat (Costa Rica), Lisbon (Portugal), and Moonee Valley (Australia) This exciting annual award is something Design Exchange will be supporting and keeping our readers informed of as the initiative progresses. Our hope is that, in the not-too-distant future, a UK city will follow by example.

The award has been developed by NewCities in partnership with the Novartis Foundation, the Novartis US Foundation, and in collaboration with the City of Montréal, Toyota Mobility Foundation, Transdev, and the US Green Building Council.

It is supported by HuffPost Canada, OpenGov Asia, Design Exchange, and Icons of Infrastructure. www.newcities.org/wellbeingcity-award.

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and spiritual phenomena; word salad, disorganised speech, perseveration, neologisms (acting as the main influence behind ongoing typeface Gerald) and glossolalia (speaking in tongues), I input said auditory examples into the computer.

LAWRENCE ABBOTT

Though communicatory devices such as word salad and glossolalia are often associated with schizophrenia or religious pentecostalism, by converting them into ASR/STT software, I’ve orchestrated the necessary apparatus to render and invert the predetermined idea of said occurrences being incomprehensible into something far more fathomable.

The asemic typeface Spirit was generated during a performative study. For 15minutes I immersed myself in and exposed myself to auditory recordings of rhythmic utterances, chants, murmurs, and the cries of those claiming to have experienced the divine, angelic language. Bordering between the ritualistic and self-awareness in an abandonment of rationalism, I retaliated to the excessive overload of sound with the idea of automatic writing, or psychography— scribing neither letters nor text, but twisted, erratic and scrawled indications of language. Each mark made, was then assigned to a key of the QWERTY keyboard to allow the computer to generate an asemic visualisation, or realisation of an asemic voice.

When asked to discuss the processes that I undertake to realise a typeface, I am reminded that my involvement with typography is almost totally detached from an involvement with design. It’s perhaps more appropriate to address my position as an artist whose practice hybridises spoken word and text to spawn an instability between (un)meaning and the (un)intelligible.

Assuming the position of the mediator-facilitator within generative-art performance, I influence an anti-orchestration of language residing in ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and STT (Speech To Text) software in an attempt to extract information from vocalised exchanges. Recognising the computer’s (in)ability to consistently convert the spoken word into text as an exact representation of speech became the catalyst for asemic typefaces such as Spirit (2016) and Gerald (2017) .

I visualise textual unfoldings between (mis)interpretations. Generative discrepancies or (in)accuracies in language influence my making of asemic typefaces rather than opting for a legible form of text. Drawing parallels between neurological, psychological

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As the computer generates jargonized-pseudowords and phrases bordering between disorganised speech and babble, the collapse of language (as seen in word salad and speaking in tongues) gives birth to, what I consider, a reformation of type. www.instagram.com/lawrenceabbott

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short entitled ‘Parametric Expression’. Set to a simple-yet-emotive, not to mention futuristic and minimalistic soundtrack, the clip focuses on two humanoid figures, which expand, morph and distort into myriad forms, with an emphasis placed on facial movements and reactions. Startling, compelling, and astonishingly natural, it’s at once terrifying and serene.

DESIGN EXCHANGE

We asked Mike to transform his efforts into our first Augmented Reality cover animation. This is what he had to say about the final results: A GLOBAL NETWORK DEVOTED TO THE EXCHANGING OF IDEAS

#FUTUREFORECAST £10.00

#AR

#VR

#TECH

#FILM

#DIGITAL

#DESIGN

#SCIENCE

#INNOVATE

#ARCHITECTS

#COLLABORATE

#BIOTECH

#FUTURISTS

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#SHARING #IDEAS

#ART

AUGMENTED REALITY

FUTURE

For the back cover of the Future Forecast edition we asked Delta Light to supply us with a 3D model of their Butler light. Point our app at the image below to see what happens. These examples laid the foundations for this current issue’s marriage of digital and physical media.

i2o3d

ANIMATION

FORECAST SEE OUR COVER IN 3D DOWNLOAD THE APP

“The Design Exchange cover art was an adaptation of another piece of work, only this is more of a loop and more interactive. The original project stemmed from playing around with this 3D character generator software, called MakeHuman. A programme specifically designed for making characters, which has a library of pre-set expressions— happy, sad, whatever.”

Mike Pelletier

SOUND

“ALONE WE CAN DO SO LITTLE; TOGETHER WE CAN DO SO MUCH” - HELEN KELLER

Architects of Rosslyn

A few years back we decided to do things a little differently here at Design Exchange. Call us innovative, or just plain eccentric.

Either way, we love the results that have come from our endeavours.

If you missed the Future Forecast edition here is another chance to see what we did with our Augmented Reality app, none of which would have been possible without Mike Pelletier.

A professional animator based in the Dutch creative capital, Amsterdam, a background in media arts and technology— both at degree level in Calgary, and at world-renowned research and creative institute, the Banff Centre— should give some idea as to exactly where his specialisms lie.

Combining computer engineering, art, design, and at least some degree of experimentation, among his projects is a stunning

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LUCY MCKENNA

BETWEEN REALITY AND MAGIC IF YOU HAD TO COMMUNICATE WITH AN ALIEN SPECIES, WHAT WOULD THE LANGUAGE LOOK LIKE? IS IT POSSIBLE FOR AN ARTIST TO COLLABORATE WITH THE DEAD? WHEN WE DRAW SOMETHING THAT HAS ALREADY DISAPPEARED, AT WHAT POINT IN TIME DOES THAT OBJECT EXIST? WORDS MARTIN GUTTRIDGE-HEWITT

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hese are just some of the questions posed

by Lucy McKenna’s work. The Dublinbased artist marries science with creative thought. Or to put that another way, her oeuvre is concerned with one of the key totems of visual culture; re-appropriation, here within the context of information.

The Facebook Air Programme, at the tech giant’s EMEA HQ in the Irish capital, saw her employ data visualisation software normally used in medical practice to map genetic information. Inputting information provided by various departments of the company, the final product was a work of art and aesthetic realisation of actual office output. It also served as more than mere window dressing.

“The people involved got something practical out of it- they were surprised to see data visualised like that. They were surprised how quickly they could read the data in this way, compared with a bunch of numbers,” she explains.

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“My work is, I guess, kind of in the space between art and science. Where they speak to each other.

It’s really thinking about our constant quest for information, answers, how we came to be, why we are so alone in the universe.

“So it’s sort of treading the line between reality and magic, what we understand and what we don’t understand. Trying to pull answers out of what we’re seeing or what’s around us. So I’m kind of using visual art in a way that’s useful. To collect information or data or present data, layer it up to find new conclusions.

“I think it can have a very practical use, alongside science and maths, in terms of discovering more about the world we live in. Which I don’t think is being explored that much in art anymore. I wouldn’t say art is too abstract now, art is very broad. But the aspect I’m interested in is the functional side of things.

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Left Page: top, The Darker Wood Photo ©Lucy McKenna Below, Nexus, Photo ©Lucy McKenna Below: Astronomical Mashup, Photo ©Lucy McKenna

“I’m fascinated by how art can be used to discover information.

Science is a bit stuck at the moment, in terms of a lot of the big questions that it has been faced with. I’m interested in how art could provide a different way of dealing with those questions.”

Despite what all this may suggest, McKenna’s background is no more scientific than the staff at Design Exchange, with formal training in textiles still evident in her regular use of physical objects and materials. 2019’s Nubecula, for example, again visualised data— this time from spreadsheets relating to recent work undertaken by Kilkenny Education Centre— and realised this in acrylic of different shapes, sizes, opacity and colour. Meanwhile, in 2017 her residency at Brooklyn’s ISCP New York resulted in a series of woven drawings that utilise light to convey the qualities of quantum particles.

A year or so earlier, in Spring 2016, The Artist Observatory saw McKenna based at Armagh Space Observatory. Intrigued by the largely forgotten practice of dry plate astrophotography, her investigations led to the construction of a dry plate camera to fit the facility’s 131-year-old Grubb Telescope. Capturing images of the moon, stars, and planets, she also conducted research into the 19th Century Irish astronomer, Charles E. Burton.

A collaboration which, in her own words, stretched “across the boundaries of time and death”, the pair then ‘worked together’ again for Astronomical Mashup, which took Burton’s observations of the Mars canals and developed them into contemporary images, retaining the Red Planet’s allure that has captivated humankind for so long.

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In Perpetuity, on the other hand, involves the development of a form of communication humans could use to send messages with, which extra-solar civilisations might understand. Based on the particle wave phenomenon in quantum physics— whereby particles behave differently when they are aware they are being observed— the outcome is a language that could alter depending on the conditions and recipient. Another example of how McKenna’s work exists almost outside time, and yet is relevant to the great questions of our era.

“I suppose time is a key element- a kind of a flattening out of time. Drawing galaxies that are such a long distance away, or photographing stars onto glass, but the star died 500 years ago.

Or collaborating with a deceased astronomer. These ideas can coexist at this one point, even though they seem quite separated.

Everything is layered on top of itself,” she says.

These pages cast some light on exactly what McKenna means, while presenting examples of work removed from their context, in turn paying homage to her desire to take that which is, or was, and change our understanding of what it might be.

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Above: Dublin-based artist Lucy McKenna, Photo ©Lucy McKenna Left page: Orrery, Photo ©Lucy McKenna

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#5

CLERICI BUILDING OXFORD

Oxford Brookes University BGS ARCHITECTS Competition to win the attention of prospective university students has been growing for a number of years, as the value of higher education comes under intense scrutiny. Now institutions increasingly put their ambition to provide a holistic and transformational experience at the centre of their plans for new starters, and it’s this ethos that guided a recent redevelopment of the Clerici Building at Oxford Brookes.

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The Clerici concept involved taking the University’s former main entrance building and transforming it into a new hub for teaching, learning and studying. This would provide a home for the institution’s Business School, various teaching rooms and the Sir Kenneth Wheare Hall— a flexible space for classes, events and graduations.

“It’s been absolutely fantastic to see students move in so quickly and use every inch of the building, particularly the social learning spaces,” says Tracy Panther, Associate Dean of Student Experience at the Business School. “You walk around and see happy smiling faces. Students are spending more time here because it is homely and comfortable, and that means they’re spending more time engaged with their studies.”

Modular flooring manufacturer Interface’s Concept Design team worked closely with the staff at Oxford Brookes to create multi-functional spaces which are both welcoming and conducive to learning. Some of company’s sustainable and nature-inspired collections were used to bring that vision to life, and these work in harmony with furnishings, such as soft woods, fresh colours and patterns, reflecting biophilic design principles.

“It’s important that students have access to different settings, whether that’s somewhere to study or to socialise,” explains Laura Light, Concept Designer at Interface. “Being able to create different designs which enhance that aspect is really important. We knew we needed to be flexible and adaptable with our plans, while maintaining the impact of the flooring across wide spaces.

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Interface’s Human Nature range has been used across Sir Kenneth Wheare Hall to help create a flexible and beautiful space which can be used for a number of purposes. These products are ideally suited to this main auditorium, which acts as both a high-traffic walkway linking the hall with the building’s Gateway, or main entrance, and a light and airy venue.

The structural link between these two areas is reinforced by Interface’s Composure range.

Combined with the Human Nature products, the result is a subtle way-finding route between two parts of the building, creating an eye-catching but functional journey for students.

“The Sir Kenneth Wheare Hall is where our students get inducted and also where we host their graduations. Their whole cycle starts and finishes in that one room, so the design and feel of the space really help bring that together,” says Drew Hardie, Head of Space Planning at Oxford Brookes. “Clerici is a key building off our central courtyard which is used for social learning, teaching, meeting academics and research. If they can stay here because they like being in spaces at the university then we’ve done our job.”

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SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

LONG LIFE, LOOSE FIT, AND LOW ENERGY

Far from a compromise, small homes may lay the foundations of a more sustainable future in UK housebuilding. We explore the possibilities for tackling a very British crisis by making every square-inch count WORDS DEBORAH TALBOT

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n the futuristic blog, ‘The Nearly Now’, Alex Steffen described a new generation of Generation Z change makers, inhabiting the declining inner suburbs and high streets of San Patricio, CA, circa 2025, where they experiment with new shared, technology and sustainability-driven agendas. Planning regulations were relaxed to allow for affordable backyard bungalows and tiny houses; a recognition that as growth stalled, priorities changed.

agency specialising in self-build and other community-led housing projects.

The new generation wanted somewhere to live, for sure, but they didn’t mind living differently. The new economic conditions had provided an opportunity (or necessity) for experimentation in sustainable ways of living. But is the UK ready for this?

The small house movement also has implications for rural settings, as evidenced by Mike Waghorn, of Mike Waghorn Designs, which is part of the One Planet movement in Wales. The One Planet principles, he says, focus on “growing your own food, dealing with waste, and getting resources and energy on site.” It’s all about sustainability.

Increasingly, as more people are being shut out of the British housing market, demand for radical solutions is becoming more urgent. Westminster’s response is private developer-led building en masse, with— as a result of the Brexit vote— vague targets. Many local councils are choosing to create new settlements, ‘garden villages’, rather than adding to urban sprawl. There is little evidence of a radical rethink in how we create human settlements.

This is where the small house movement comes in. A desire to do more than build houses; it seeks to change the foundations of the way we live.

Anna Hope is Director of Training and Consultancy at Ecomotive Ltd— an award winning architectural design

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“The young people who came to us wanting to set up a small home community in Bristol were not just interested in affordable homes, they wanted to live well. They wanted to live more simply, with less clutter, conserve energy, and more sociably,” she explains when describing one project they led on.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, millennials are leading when it comes to uptake of this overall ideology. According to Ginny Shiverdecker, Executive Director of AbodShelters, who designed small home emergency shelters: “Millennials are struggling to see the ultimate benefits of the ‘bigger is better syndrome’ our society has embraced for so long— the burdens are many, and many times outweigh the benefits in tougher economic times.”

“Previous generations have experienced an overstimulated and over-indulgence hangover. We have too much stuff, and have to place it in storage lockers we pay a monthly fee to keep, and never use.”

Image: Abod and Lake from distance

“The young people who came to us wanting to set up a small home community in Bristol were not just interested in affordable homes, they wanted to live well. They wanted to live more simply, with less clutter, conserve energy, and more sociably.”

The trend for miniaturisation in architecture, or at least significantly shrinking floorplans, is far from universal, though.

People are understandably resistant to smaller homes, and there’s a tendency to believe that small homes are only for single people, or those in difficult circumstances. In the UK, for example, small homes have a bad reputation, invoking images of micro-flats, squalid bedsits, and rooms that are not big enough for furniture.

The architects we spoke to, though, say this is a design issue, rather than size problem. So what are the core principles involved in making a small house work for individuals, couples, families and communities?

There are many different approaches to the tiny home quandary.

Leafing through Lloyd Khan’s 2012 book, ‘Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter’, and talking to architects, the overarching agreement is that small homes need plenty of outside space, and should be based on a need to maximise mental space.

Kim Lewis, of Kim Lewis Designs, was responsible for developing the Austin Tiny Home, and also stresses the importance of room beyond the front door.

“Our brand is all about people living outside of the home.

Exploring life and not being held back by their own mortgage.

Your home should be part of your life journey, not your whole life.”

Hope, who’s firm Ecomotive designed the Snug Home, says “What’s important is good quality outdoor space, which may be shared or individually owned. There’s a buffer between the private and the public.”

It’s a notion perhaps best achieved— albeit by default— in Waghorn’s designs. Both the caravan and mono pitch home are made with rural settings in mind, and so naturally utilise the Great Outdoors.

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Image: AbodShelters Next Page: Concept, Waghorn Design ©Waghorn Design

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The Japan Dome House, built from expanded polystyrene with the basic model at 22ft in diameter, is one example that seems to buck the outdoor trend. The suggestion being to use within densely packed communities (albeit in a rural setting). Other Japanese prefab designs butt directly onto the street, a result, Ecomotive argue, of the price of land in urban centres.

she argues. “For more affluent couples or larger families, it is more about alternative ways to expand one’s lifestyle. With our AbodShelter, you can create a studio space, a room of one’s own to decorate as you please, a motorcycle man cave for the Harley as a place to hang out and tinker, or a cool beach house that can be built and rebuilt, or move on wheels.”

Aesthetics are important, says Waghorn. “It’s important to keep forms simple. One of the problems of modern houses is they are too complicated and they create visual knives in the landscape.

The other thing is use of materials, timber cladding, and even corrugated iron, which are all part of the rural vernacular.”

It perhaps goes without saying that internal space in a small home is at a premium. Waghorn points to the need for ‘best’ and ‘ingenious’ use of space, citing poor design as the biggest culprit for cramped conditions, which while stating the obvious is nevertheless a necessary point to make given those cramped conditions are still not confined to history.

For the most part, rurally contextualised small homes tend towards the rustic and earthy, as a way of indicating their desire to live closer to nature and to emphasise conservation and sustainability. Urban small homes embed themselves in their context, too, some even basing their look on everyday objects you might find on the corner of a common city street.

Architects working in this niche also say their designs can be used for shared facilities, such as clothes washing and drying, storage and tool sharing, work and studio space, and a host of other functions depending on local demand and needs. Hope says that it’s about “building community and trust”, although she notes: “there’s probably a fear there— can I trust my neighbours?”

Waghorn also believes conventions on private and public areas may need to be rethought.

“I think if people are going to start trying smaller spaces, they are then going to start questioning some of the assumptions they have about how to live… ….the kitchen areas, compost toilets and so on can be outside the dwelling core. So the dwelling core can be a much smaller space.”

Small buildings can be used for other purposes too, says Shiverdecker. “A tiny home is not for everyone as a residency,”

His designs, in comparison, focus on “the specification of the shell” and also the need to create something the inhabitant can adapt to their own needs. Personalisation being a fundamental ingredient to homeliness, but also developing a space that is fit for an individual’s needs.

“People will adapt their dwellings themselves. Someone will stick a shed on the side of it, but that’s something to be enjoyed and embraced.”

Lewis also stresses the importance of thinking carefully about internal space.“The tiny house is a two-trailer design, separating the living and bedroom spaces. This feature maintains a level of separation for the home owner. To make small spaces work, areas have to be multifunctional. For example, the kitchen island has a built-in two-burner stove, a pantry drawer, a refrigerator drawer, and a butcher-block island top.”

Ecomotive have also developed a model based on providing a shell that people can adapt through co-creation. Their Snug Home comes with no internal load-bearing walls and either visible or easily accessible services, which makes them adaptable.

So people develop their own internal layout depending on need.

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“What we found,” says Hope, “is the power is in allowing people to make those design choices. And design choices that can be easily changed as needs change.”

The tiny home movement is much more inclined to factor low-energy use into design, too. It’s obvious that small homes are cheaper to heat, particularly if they use contemporary insulation features and standards, unlike your standard Victorian terraces or park homes.

But small home architects also think more deeply about how context can help conserve energy.

Waghorn explains: “Orientation is very important. The south-facing side would be glazed, and used for living space and growing. The north-facing aspects could be used for larders, the boot room and so on.”

Hope also rejects the current enthusiasm for shipping container homes for the same reason.

“We looked into it, and decided metal containers aren’t necessarily low cost (by the time you’ve adapted them) and also they aren’t breathable. They are reliant on mechanical ventilation systems.

My partner went to visit Container City in Brighton where they have emergency container shipping accommodation, and he said because the electricity was on a meter and they couldn’t afford to pay for it, they weren’t running the fan and it started to get mould. So we started looking at more breathable materials.”

As all this suggests, not all tiny homes are the same despite a basic shared goal— the reduction of occupied space without loss of liveability. Some designs, like the Ecocapsule, are extremely small, selfcontained, mobile, and designed for off-grid living. The AbodShelter is intended to be temporary and off-grid as well, even if they sometimes inspire a more settled population.

Others are meant to be permanent and more spacious, and design can, therefore, clash with planning regulations. In the UK, for example, planning law is subject to minimum space standards and worries about radical design. So the way we think about space culturally also matters, says Waghorn.

“People are buying on the basis of how many bedrooms they have rather than how many square metres they are. There’s an incentive therefore to make dwellings as small as possible, but put in a bedroom and sell it as a one bedroom flat. In Europe, the public buy to square metre.”

“You talk about buildings evolving and adapting to their environment and people might laugh at you. But the important thing is to have the right mindset to experiment and investigate such possibilities.”

Waghorn’s caravan design is designated a park home, so doesn’t need to meet building regulations, But, he says, planning isn’t the main incentive for its design. In contrast, Ecomotive’s Snug Home is big enough to work with existing planning regulations.

So, where from here for the Great British housing crisis, within the context of small homes? The sustainability programme might not appeal to everyone, nor the tiny movement— some people will always aspire to high-tech luxury, others desire sprawling residences. But when people are not permitted a choice at all problems like those facing the UK today will inevitably arise.

Ecomotive points out that Japan has 80,000 building firms, whereas in the UK a handful dominate. So it’s easy to see why people-led innovation isn’t on the British agenda.

In addition to the £60million allocated to councils annually as of 2016, the UK Government has made an additional £163million available for the Community Housing Fund across England in 2020 and 2021, so maybe we’ll see more innovative projects emerge. As Hope says: “We need people to pioneer this so it becomes normalised. And local authorities need to release more land and support these kinds of projects. This is perhaps the main challenge.”

Perhaps, then, as we move backwards into the future, the creation of new sustainable and selfreproducing villages might not be so far-fetched. Whatever the coming decades bring, though, one thing is for sure— we can ill-afford to continue limiting options and ideas in the way the country has for so long without the current crisis becoming an even bigger problem.

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Above: Tiny House, Austin, Texas Below: Architects Waghorn, believe conventions on private and public areas may need to be rethought. ©Waghorn Design

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#6

IDAHO UNITED STATES

Clif Bar & Company TERRAPIN BRIGHT GREEN

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n the Heart of Idaho’s Magic Valley, not far from where daredevil Evel Knievel attempted his rocket-powered motorcycle jump across Snake River Canyon in 1974, lies possible the world’s first large-scale biophilic bakery.

A place to try out daring ideas, it seems.

But while the famous stuntman failed, the bold bakery design

by US organic food maker Clif Bar & Company, known for its energy bars, and New York design consultants Terrapin Bright Green, is an audacious and remarkable achievement.

The $90 million, 300,000-square-foot facility located in the town of Twin Falls is a one-of-a-kind design that— from the outset— incorporated a multitude of biophilic elements. It opened in August last year and, at the same time, created a whole new conversation about where and how biophilic design interventions can happen in seemingly counterintuitive structures. Food manufacturing is a heavily regulated industry governed by strict rules on hygiene and food safety, so no plants, animals, natural materials, or water features on the bakery floor, then.

“Most food processing facilities are huge, windowless boxes and they frequently run 24-hours a day,” says Bill Browning, a leading biophilia expert and founding partner of Terrapin Bright Green. “And so how do we make these spaces not only be sterile and clean and meet all the needs for making food, but also good places for the people?” Located in the middle of a field, Clif Bar’s bakery is in stark contrast to what you might normally see in a food processing building.

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“As a company of people that love the outdoors, it was a natural fit to build a bakery that fosters a closer connection to the outdoors and to nature,” explains Elysa Hammond, Vice President of Environmental Stewardship at Clif Bar & Company.

“Also, the more we learned about biophilia, the more we recognised that it has an important role in the manufacturing industry and is linked to improved health and productivity of employees.”

“Biophilic design for the built environment was first championed

by Stephen Kellert from the Yale Forestry School, whose research and writing advanced E.O. Wilson’s concept that we as people have an innate need for and connection with nature.

Stephen passed away [in 2016], and we want to be sure to honour his inspiring work and initial research efforts within this space,” says Hammond.

Image: ©ClifBarBakery

While biophilia has already been used in the design of places like offices, schools and hospitals, the bakery at Twin Falls is a first for the manufacturing sector. Understandably, then, the build has won awards, including 2017 Sustainable Plant of the Year from Food Engineering Magazine, and was named Green Plant of the Year 2016 by Food Processing Magazine.

However, bringing the outside in wasn’t a new idea for Clif Bar when it began its bakery project.

“Our headquarters were designed with biophilia as a guiding principle, which we requested from the start,” Hammond continues.

Located in Emeryville, California, just outside of San Francisco, the corporate HQ is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum-certified building

space designed by ZGF Architects. The 75,000 square-foot open-plan space incorporates many biophilic elements and is a physical testament to the company’s culture, brand identity and environmental ethos.

“At Clif, we are a five-aspirations business. We make decisions based on five bottom lines: planet, community, people, brands, and business. Return on investment on energy efficiency, water conservation and waste reduction investments is calculated on more than financial value. Investments in our people and their health are also calculated on more than financial value,” says Susan Marie Potucek, Human Resources Manager at Clif Bar & Company.

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natural light, and a smart solar array that meets 80% of the building’s electricity needs and a solar thermal system that supplies about 70% of its hot water requirements. Recycled whimsy abounds, with walls lined with salvaged wood from barns and railroads, and retired sports equipment refashioned into artwork and functional bits and pieces. Bike-frame door handles, anyone? It’s a dog-friendly office too, and has the full complement of forward-thinking employee benefits and amenities— childcare, a gym, café, and event space.

“One of my favourite examples of biophilic design in our headquarters is the atriums that are located throughout the space. From most vantage points, Clif employees are able to look and see natural daylight, plants and even access the outside. We also have repurposed wood throughout and ample natural light so our employees can see and feel that daylight and sun change position throughout their workday,” explains Hammond.

Ever ahead of the zeitgeist, many companies in the San Francisco Bay Area— especially cashed-up innovators— are taking biophilic workspace design seriously. As well they should. There’s a growing body of research demonstrating that biophilic built environments make for happier, healthier humans. It’s been linked with more creative workers, less stress, better staff retention, fewer sick days, and increased productivity, as demonstrated in the Human Spaces Global Report, which looked at nature in the workplace. It can even result in improved profits. Terrapin Bright Green has also published compelling reports into the economic benefits of biophilia. And, while Clif Bar’s head office is by all accounts an amazing place to work, perhaps more interesting is what they have done at the bakery.

“For the design of our Twin Falls bakery, we first worked with our design-engineering firm to develop the initial plans for a sustainable bakery built to LEED standards,” says Hammond. And, as with the Emeryville HQ, zero waste, water conservation, and energy efficiency were also priorities.

“We then engaged Terrapin Bright Green to advise us on ‘biophilic interventions’ within the three main bakery areas – outdoors-landscape, office and employee gathering and educational spaces, and on the bakery floor.”

Essentially, as Terrapin’s Browning puts it, the strategy was a two-fold design.

First, to incorporate biophilic elements into non-sterile areas including the front office, reception area, meeting rooms, cafeteria and breakrooms, and the event space. “The strategy with those spaces and the non-sterile spaces was to do more than you would normally do related to biophilia,” says Browning.

The building boasts more than 200 windows, light-directing solatubes, vaulted skylights, indoor walls of recycled barn wood and natural stone. Recognising the importance of outdoor space was also crucial. There are sliding doors that connect an auditorium to an outdoor events space, with a bike and footpath and organic community garden also in the initial plans.

“We built patios for pleasant outdoor breaks and planted drought-tolerant, native plants, including more than 570 trees and 5,700 shrubs and grasses. We also have a break room designed to be both welcoming and comfortable for employees with expansive landscape views to enjoy during their breaks,” Hammond explains.

Second, and much more tricky, was incorporating biophilia in the sterile areas. On the bakery floor— like in many manufacturing operations— the space must comply with regulations. So, Clif and Terrapin really had to get creative with the sterile areas and bakery space to ensure the design was up to code.

“In the factory itself, the layouts are largely driven by the equipment, the machinery,” says Browning. “In the sterile spaces, really there are very, very strong limitations on what you can do.

Obviously, no plants, animals or water features. But also no natural materials. Not even putting artwork on the walls. So, we explored a couple of things.”

In the factory, they installed high windows along the north wall to allow daylight in. “While that doesn’t sound like much, it’s highly, highly unusual for a food processing facility to have any sort of windows,” Browning continues.

But what about the fact that it’s a 24-hour operation? How do you bring the outdoors inside for the nightshift workers when it’s pitch dark outside?

“We know that textures and representations in nature have an impact— not as strongly as direct experience of nature in threedimensions, but it still helps lower stress and helps lower heart rate and blood pressure.”

So, the concept of using a projector to present images on the large white walls, particularly in spaces where the most people are working, has been explored.

“People are excited about it enough that they may actually do it in more than one location. Clif Bar gets a really interesting social media feed where people love sending pictures of themselves eating Clif Bars in beautiful places outside. And so picking one of those images each day and projecting that onto the wall— and then the next day it will change— it keeps it interesting and it’s a nice tie to Clif Bar itself. You have this beautiful picture of someone in nature. Projecting that onto the walls is a way to bring nature into those spaces,” Browning says.

“From the employee perspective, the ability to view the gorgeous South Hills as the seasons change during the year has impacted engagement, to what level is being evaluated,” Potucek says of staff responses to the overall design.

Good ideas usually spread. So, is this one catching on? Are there likely to be more biophilic manufacturing facilities? Browning explains Terrapin has been approached by a competitor of Clif Bar in the past (an offer graciously turned down due to the obvious conflict of interests), and as this school of human and nature-first design becomes more firmly established in the business world overall it would be surprising not to see more progressive food companies explore its obvious potential.

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.N.W

CHANGE MAKERS #6 Like 21st Century suffragettes, D.N.W. use creative daring to honour their heroines both past and present through intrepid and colourful approaches to message delivery. Their output merges art, music, dance, documentary, film and activism, telling stories of women’s rights through a contemporary lens. A clandestine collective masterminded by artist-filmmaker (D.) and musician-producer (W.), to preserve anonymity while making it clear who is speaking, all answers are simply attributed to one or all of the letters.

DE: What motivates you to do what you do?

D.N.W: We are motivated by the call to action ‘deeds not words’, adopted by the pioneering suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. We were inspired to form D.N.W. through a shared fascination in political rebellion, suffragettes and other females fighting for freedom and equality.

D: I remember being taught about the suffragettes at school and feeling exhilarated by their daring, as well as their public campaigns that employed the striking suffragette colours (purple, cream and green), costumes, accessories, posters and banners. I also loved how their marches seemed to be so beautifully choreographed.

Above: This visual depicts a character from the new D.N.W. film - SuffraJitsu. In this episode we learn about the suffragettes who were trained in the Japanese martial art of Jiu-jitsu in order to protect themselves and other protesters from the police and bystanders who would attack them during marches. Photo ©D.N.W.

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CHANGE MAKERS D.N.W. W: In 2018 we decided to combine creative forces to celebrate the centenary of some of the first women who were able to vote in the UK. We were clear that we did not want to regurgitate stories of the suffragettes through traditional historic reenactments, but instead to explore the subject in a more abstract way through stunts and films, incorporating experimental music, costumes and props.

D.N.W: We decided we would use the suffragette colours to tie our stories together and use the centenary year to learn about the suffragettes and experience what female activism means today. Of course we would never know the brutality that the suffragettes experienced during their protests and imprisonment, but in our own small way we wanted to experience what it might have been like to plot our own stunts and activities under the watchful gaze of the city.

D: We wanted to be 21st century suffragettes— expressing our message through creativity. Our long-term aim was to energise a new wave of creative activists with a shared vision for gender equality, celebrating all that the suffragettes achieved as well as highlighting what is left to be done.”

DE: Is there a landmark moment during your collaboration that really shifted the way you see the world?

D.N.W: The surreal political landscape of the past few years with Brexit, Trump and fake news rubbing-up against inspirational movements like Me Too and Time’s Up transformed the way we see the world and brought us together through a shared sense of discombobulation and a strong desire for change. These years have caused us to wake up politically and form D.N.W. as a way to find a political voice through creativity.

D: We created D.N.W. alter egos, deciding that we wanted to remain anonymous— covering our faces with balaclavas when photographed. When you’re faceless you’re granted a certain amount of freedom which is exhilarating. Rules can be broken and a new facet of your personality emerges.

W: We realised very quickly that a downside of our anonymity was that no one wanted to fund our suffragette centenary activities. With no money we were forced to think in a really raw and creative way, making our first films without budget.

Below: A still from D.N.W. Chapter 1 - the first guerilla-art film by D.N.W. shot in the City of London. This short film tells the story of how the suffragettes set fire to pillarboxes to raise the profile of women’s suffrage during their campaign of civil disobedience. In this first episode D.N.W. reimagine the pillarbox as a time-machine which transports the spirit of the suffragettes back into the City of London in the form of their eye-catching flag, where they can continue their mission in the 21st Century. Photo ©D.N.W.

Above: Another guerilla-art stunt executed by D.N.W. on 6th February 2018, marking the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, in which (some) women over the age of 30 were able to vote for the first time. On this day, D.N.W. rose before dawn and headed to parliament square to festoon a statue of the suffragettes’ arch-nemesis David Lloyd George in a 40 metre flag of purple, cream and green which billowed in the wind catching the attention of Londoners on their way into work.

Photo ©D.N.W.

D: We decided to use the suffragette colours as a starting point. I had sewn together 30 metres of purple, cream and green fabric which we posted through the slot of a red pillarbox in the City of London, close to where the very first postbox was set alight by the suffragettes. We filmed the fabric billowing dramatically from the mouth of the postbox like a dragon breathing fire.

That moment set us on a new course— the fabric became the spirit of the suffragettes, returning to the City of London from 1918, 100 years earlier. This became our new way of working; our journeys within the city and the people and dangers that we met along the way dictated our narrative. We didn’t seek permission to do any of the stunts in our films, leading to some hair-raising moments.

W: I found this exploratory process really inspired the sounds I created. As we animated the fabric around the city I could imagine the voices of the suffragettes vibrating, humming and bellowing— as though trapped in the fabric of the city. During my

process I often use the surrealist’s cut up technique, while also experimenting musically using found, electronic and acoustic sounds.

DE: Who inspires you?

D.N.W: Naturally our honorary sheroes are the inimitable suffragettes. Our favourite being Emily Wilding Davison, who tragically died for the cause beneath the King’s horse on Derby Day. Emily was a most inventive suffragette and could have perhaps lived another life as a conceptual artist.

She was responsible for many brilliant interventions, but our favourite was locking herself in the broom cupboard beneath the Houses of Commons during the 1911 census in order to have herself counted as a resident of Westminster. It was this story that inspired our third D.N.W. film. With two films under our belt we were excited to receive our first ever funding from another of our sheroes, avant-garde musician Bishi Bhattacharya, founder of WITCiH— a festival dedicated to women in tech.

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CHANGE MAKERS D.N.W. Using this funding we were able to take the final scene of our film to Morpeth, the graveyard where Emily was buried.

DE: Gender imbalances continue to impact on almost all areas of life. Within your work what are the most important steps that need to be taken to try and level the playing field?

D: When I started filmmaking I was often the only woman in the room, and being quietly spoken I found that my voice was trampled and ignored. I changed this by signing up to a short filmmaking course which gave me the confidence to take on the role of director.

I believe that we need to be supporting women filmmakers from a young age through mentorship schemes, lining up female directors and industry experts to assist and inspire girls and young women to navigate this male-dominated space.

Thankfully, disparities in the film industry are being challenged by groups like Time’s Up, who have recently launched an initiative that calls for the British film industry to commit to working with female directors on feature films.

W: Visibility in the music industry is key. Seeing strong female role models and their art influenced us to be more assertive and ambitious. Programming at festivals and events needs to change, woman are still underrepresented. Men and women need to put themselves on the line, take responsibility, reclaim history, and invest in the future, boys need positive role models of women too.

DE: If you had the power to make a change on a global scale, what changes would you make?

D: Equal representation, equal pay, equal opportunities and equal education for women. From a wider perspective, equality for all no matter what gender, race, ability or religion.

W: I agree with Bill Hicks. and I quote: “Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

DE: Can you briefly summarise your plans and ambitions for the coming year?

D.N.W: This year we are creating a new D.N.W. film and accompanying music, supported by the British Council, the British Film Institute and Sensoria Festival. Our aim is to continue the legacy of the suffragettes by exploring and remixing new ways of telling their stories through music, archive footage and vox-pop interviews with 21st Century women and girls.

In this episode we will spotlight the story of the jiu-jitsu suffragettes— women who trained in martial arts to protect members of the suffragettes from the police and other men during protests and public activities. We hope our films and events will inspire and inform new audiences of women, men, girls and boys of all ages interested in women’s history, suffrage, feminism, activism, music, experimental film and even martial arts.

Above: A still from the short film D.N.W. Chapter 3 in which we see the brilliant activist Emily Wilding Davison reborn from the suffragette flag. In this episode we find that her spirit was locked in the broom cupboard beneath the Houses of Parliament only to be released by a mysterious admirer of her work. Unleashed into the 21st Century Emily visits her grave which is etched with the phrase ‘Deeds Not Words’ and then calls the women of the 21st Century to rise-up. Photo ©D.N.W. Left: Stills from D.N.W. Chapter 2, in which D.N.W. join the March 4 Women on International Women’s Day 2018. This episode focuses on footage of the day shot through a kaleidoscope, which mixes and blends with archive film of a similar march organised by the suffragettes over a century earlier - starting in Parliament Square and ending in Trafalgar Square. Photo ©D.N.W.

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