Disegno. No.8
DESIGN ARCHITECTURE FASHION BIANNUAL s/s 2015
Viktor&Rolf on the death of conceptualism
Ethnographic pursuit with Jasper Morrison. Copying in an age of mass production. Eileen Gray in conversation. The frontier lands of food design. Fashion and feminism. Thomas Tait’s material dating. Operatic illustration with Klaus Haapaniemi.
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13 INTRODUCTION A plea for the slow
Exposé
22 TIMELINE The last six months in review
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PHOTOESSAY: HAITI REVISITED Photographer Iwan Baan documents Haiti’s recovery from its 2010 earthquake PAGAN PRACTICE Hilda Hellström reflects on the trials and triumphs of a young designer
LEARNING FROM MILÁ A look at the career and legacy of octogenarian Catalan designer Miguel Milá OBSERVATION 1 Project Ara
OPINION: ETHICS IN ARCHITECTURE Jack Self explores the ethical quandaries raised by architectural torture chambers OBSERVATION 2 Nike ACG
46 TIPSY-MAKING How a melted drinking glass built London-based design studio Loris&Livia
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OBSERVATION 3 Almora by Doshi Levien
OPINION: FASHION AND FEMINISM Elizabeth Wilson laments the dilution of feminism to mere spectacle HUB: ROTTERDAM HARBOUR Rotterdam’s repurposed fruit wharfs conceal a thriving design community
Features
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DISEGNO RESIDENCY: NO MORE POETRY? Viktor&Rolf explores the decline of conceptualism in fashion in a series of photographs accompanied by poems written by fashion curator Olivier Saillard
A NEW FRONTIER As a host of university degrees emerge worldwide, Disegno investigates whether food design is ready to come of age
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Jalousie is a slum in the hills to the south-west of Port-au-Prince. “It’s incredible to see Haiti from the air,” says Iwan Baan, “because it has been very seriously deforested, an effect that is clearly visible in the hills surrounding the city. They’re grey and devoid of plant life, but completely developed, with houses built on top of one another other. You can only imagine what effect the next earthquake to hit Haiti will have on this community.” PHOTOS Iwan Baan
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Photoessay: Haiti Revisited Five years ago Haiti was devastated by an earthquake, sparking a flurry of international media and outpouring of sympathy for the Caribbean island nation. Yet over the proceeding half decade focus predictably drifted. Recovery makes for harder headlines than disaster. >
PHOTOESSAY: HAITI REVISITED
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> Haiti’s rebuilding is worth studying, however. In late 2014, Boston’s MASS Design Group completed a pair of cholera and tuberculosis clinics in the country’s capital Port-au-Prince and this spring will see the publication of Haiti Now, a new study by architectural research body The Now Institute. Together, the projects encourage the world to remain engaged with Haiti’s ongoing recovery. When the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, there was a natural tendency to fall back on statistics; they represented something tangible to grasp onto in the face of the incomprehensible and cruel. The earthquake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale (which classifies it as “major”) and its epicentre hit 25km from Port-au-Prince. Around 300,000 structures were destroyed or damaged; at least 230,000 people were killed. At the time, 2.7 million people lived in Port-au-Prince, a city whose population density rivals that of Hong Kong. Around 26 Disegno. PHOTOESSAY: HAITI REVISITED
a million were displaced by the earthquake’s effects. Haiti received more than £5.6bn in public and private donations in the aftermath of the disaster, in the hope that the nation would not only rebuild itself but also redress the poverty that had long afflicted it. As to this programme’s efficacy, the statistics are discouraging. Haiti remains the world’s poorest nation outside of Africa and Afghanistan – 80 per cent of its urban population live in slums and 55 per cent of the country subsists on less than $1.25 a day – and quality of life is low. Only one in five citizens have access to sanitation facilities and just 43 per cent are literate. Haiti remains a country in dire need. Yet statistics only tell a story in outline. In December 2014, Dutch
architecture photographer Iwan Baan visited Haiti, documenting life in Port-au-Prince during the reconstruction. What is seen in Baan’s images is complexity – a country that in part confirms its statistics, yet which gestures towards a richer human story: a crowded iron market; modern clinics that may inspire similar health centres worldwide; a cemetery that is home to a blur of Catholicism and Voodoo. A selection of Baan’s photographs are published in Haiti Now. Here, an additional series has been curated as a photoessay of Haiti’s renewal, accompanied by captions provided by Baan that reflect on his time in Haiti. They provide an insight into a nation in flux far more vivid and compelling than any statistic.
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What is striking about MASS Design Group’s cholera and tuberculosis clinics is how specific they are to the location. The cholera hospital, for instance, is a completely closed system. This hospital is next to one of the slums on the coastline, which is built on top of an old landfill with streams of water running through it. There’s no real sewage system in Port-au-Prince, so everything that comes out of a home or a hospital immediately flows into a stream and down into the ocean. Of course with a cholera hospital that can be extremely dangerous, so in MASS Design Group’s clinic they’re treating all the waste water on site.
PHOTOESSAY: HAITI REVISITED
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Rotterdam Harbour Rotterdam’s quayside warehouses once stored goods; now, goods are created in them. Since the late 1990s the city’s harbour area has become home to a slew of influential design practices. The Netherlands’ second city has long stood at the forefront of architecture and is home to more than 300 practices (including heavyweights such as OMA and MVRDV), but it is increasingly also recognised as a design hub, with major practices >
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At 126sq km the port of Rotterdam is the largest in Europe. PHOTOS Tjerk Spannenburg
ROTTERDAM HARBOUR
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> like Richard Hutten and Studio Wieki Somers based there. Although design studios dot the conurbation, it is the old fruit wharves – at the eastern, town-facing edge of the enormous port district – that have become the design community’s epicentre, with about two dozen practices nestled there around the waterfront. The 126sq km commercial port of Rotterdam is by far the largest in Europe and for a long time it was the world’s busiest. A series of expansions towards the sea since 1872 have rendered its older harbours disused and it is in these harbours that designers have taken up residence. Marconistraat is a kilometre-long road that caps one such
“It feels like the countryside. It’s our island in the city, but it also has the rough side of heavy industry.” wharf; largely built in the postwar years with Marshall Plan reconstruction money, it was devoted to fruit. Warehouses – some brick, others corrugated iron – periodically break up the desolate stretch and only a couple of the dozen cranes that punctuate the sky remain in operation. Besides the odd speeding vehicle, it has an odd tranquility. Marconistraat 52, an old industrial building that sits next to a still-functioning warehouse, is the area’s nucleus. Now divided into several studios, it is a heterogeneous space, with room for product designers, architects and photographers. “The architects were here
The old parts of the harbour are largely disused and it’s in these abandoned warehouses that designers have found studio space. Above: Sculpture by area resident Joep van Lieshout.
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first,” says Odin Visser, co-founder of resident industrial-design practice Studio Kees. “But then the recession came and they left.” Designers – with lower overheads and greater self-sufficiency – gradually took over. Although a largely Dutch community, the present tenants of 52 include Italian/Japanese furniture designers Minale-Maeda and US artist Ellen Gallagher. The building acts as a draw for its inhabitants.
The first to arrive, in 1998, were Richard Hutten and architectural model-maker Vincent de Rijk. Both already rented properties elsewhere in the city but needed space for expansion. Hutten’s branch is accessible through a side door removed from the rest of the warehouse and includes a voluminous office, workshop and storeroom. “Rotterdam is really cheap,” says Hutten in short explanation of the size of his space.
Richard Hutten was one of the first designers to arrive in the harbour, in 1998. Below: Hutten’s workshop.
Larger still is Studio Wieki Somers, a few minutes down Marconistraat in the old customs house. Faded remnants of the old signage are still visible on its concrete façade. At 4,500 sqm, the studio has ample room for specialised workspaces. Both Hutten and Somers’s studio presence speak of two main reasons why designers have been drawn to the fruit wharves: abundant space and cheap rents. “The local government knew that we were looking for a bigger space,” says Somers, who founded her practice with partner Dylan van den Berg in 2003 in Rotterdam, “Only in this undefined area was it possible.” Like most designers in the harbour, Somers rents her premises from the publicly-owned port authorities at a non-commercial rate. The city is happy to lease out structures that would otherwise remain vacant. Although a renewal plan for the area is in place, its timespan remains vague. Visser says that direct government grants have decreased since the 2008 recession but the city’s administration is still active. “It often facilitates things,” he says. “If a building has no insulation, for example, they’ll add it for you if you’re willing to pay the rent.” Rotterdam also hosts the national Creative Industry Fund, which provides €1.5million a year in
subsidies for design. In Rotterdam, designers can enjoy face-to-face access to the fund’s organisers, although funding is by no means guaranteed. Asked if Minale-Maeda has received sponsorship, Mario Minale’s response is unilateral: “No, nothing.” Transport connections also make the area attractive. Hutten spends several months a year abroad and sees Rotterdam as a convenient base from which to travel: “Rotterdam is
a suburb of London. With a 10-minute bike ride I’m at the airport, and 40 minutes later I’m in London.” Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is also a mere half-hour train ride from Rotterdam Centraal. The proximity of Rotterdam’s architectural scene also bolsters the port’s desirability: Studio Makkink & Bey, a collaboration between architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey, also based on Marconistraat, recently co-designed the city’s municipal headquarters within OMA’s monumental De Rotterdam office block; > ROTTERDAM HARBOUR
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THE DISEGNO RESIDENCY NO MORE POETRY VIKTOR&ROLF
MOTIF N°13 Je viens arroser les fleurs de ta chemise, Caresser les poils de ton pull angora, Embrasser les poches de ton gilet, Mesurer l’écartement des carreaux de ton pantalon, Compter les chevrons de ta veste… Je viens dormir dans ton dressing
Karlina, Flowerbomb, spring/summer 2005. PHOTO Philip Riches POÈME Olivier Saillard
THE DISEGNO RESIDENCY NO MORE POETRY VIKTOR&ROLF
TENUE DE JOURNALISTE DÉVOUÉE, DÉVOTE OU DÉFAITE pour Madame S.J. Maquillée de perles et de larmes, des phylactères en ceinture, les yeux à demi clos tout le printemps, tu attends un fax qui ne vient pas de l’archange Gabriel Sainte Madeleine et Saint Laurent Rive gauche te guident en médaillon de boucle d’oreille. Viktor & Gabbana Miuccia Montana Rolf Mugler Azzedine André Adeline Cavalli Christian Marant sont les apôtres d’une garde-robe échangiste mais pieuse Les plis religieux de tes robes longues s’écrasent comme une descente de croix
Final Preparation, Russian Doll, autumn/winter 1999. PHOTO Philip Riches POÈME Olivier Saillard
A New Frontier Food design is in its infancy, but with three international design schools launching degrees in the subject within the last year, is the discipline about to come of age? WORDS Oli Stratford PHOTOS Nick Rochowski
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A NEW FRONTIER
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I
Mike Lee is the founder of Studio Industries and innovation director for AccelFoods. Working out of New York, Lee has focused his work on mass-produced packaged foods. 1
A mixture of the strengths of the brands (we know Nutella, not Nutella’s designer); has sheer ubiquity and commonplace nature of the product; and a desire to see our food as fresh and natural (not shaped by man and industry), among others. 2
Marije Vogelzang was one of the first food designers. She founded her Dordrecht-based practice in 2000 after graduating from DAE and has gone on to become one of the most well-known practitioners in the discipline. 3
The long-running food design workshop at ESAD in Rheims, France is a notable exception. 4
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n the past year, global revenues from packaged foods reached $2.4tn, which is more than double the $1tn in sales mustered by consumer electronics in the same timespan. Just as a mobile phone or tablet are designed, so too are the foodstuffs we eat. When you consider the intermingling of fresh ingredients, flavourings, additives, bleaching agents, replacers, colourings, sweeteners, salt substitutes, preservatives, shaping, injecting, cutting, moulding, packaging, branding, graphics and logotypes required to devise even the simplest market-ready packaged food, you realise that food can throw up design projects every bit as complex as creating an iPad. And given the scale and immediacy of its production – Mars produces 2.5m Mars Bars a day in its main UK factory in Slough – food ought to stand as one of the crown jewels of industrial design. So why isn’t food design discussed more often?
The situation is summed up well by US food designer Mike Lee:1 “I hope eventually food gets to the point where products are designed and scrutinised to the degree that people scrutinise Apple products. It’s interesting how much attention products like that get compared to food, which is so much more intimate than consumer electronics.” The reasons for this discrepancy are varied,2 but there are signs that the situation is changing. In 2014 a surprising number of food design initiatives were launched. In the early half of the year, Pratt Institute in New York began Food Design Studio, a semester-long class hosted in the school’s industrial design department; in July, Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) in the Netherlands announced Food Non Food, a BA department headed by designer Marije Vogelzang3; and in December, Scuola Politecnica di Design (SPD) and International University of Languages and Media (ILUM) in Milan announced a joint MA in food design, sponsored by PepsiCo, the world’s second largest food and beverage business. Food design is starting to be talked about seriously. What is interesting about these courses is that they have been created in a design context. Training in food design has existed before – principally in the form of “food engineering” courses at technical schools – but had little traction at design and art institutes.4 Yet the courses at SPD, DAE and Pratt suggest that the design world is interested in extending its own role in the food industry, and that a giant on the scale of PepsiCo (with a turnover of $66.4bn in 2013 alone) has chosen to back food design education suggests that industry is interested in examining design too. “The world hasn’t known about designers working with food, and this type of design still needs to prove itself, especially in the outside world,” says Vogelzang. “What can it add? What can it do for us? Why do we need it? Those are very valid questions.” In other words, the three courses may begin to unravel a question that has plagued food design from the beginning. What even is it?
In terms of definitions, it’s easiest to say what food design is not. It’s not packaging design and it’s not cookery (although both of these may play a part). But because the chef/food designer conflation in particular is such a common misconception, it’s worth adding a few more words. The best way to conceive of the difference between designer and chef is to consider the difference between a furniture designer and the craftsman who executes their design. The relationship between a food >
Rotary Tray designed by Jasper Morrison for Vitra. Cheese provided by the East London Cheese Board.
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Eileen Gray: Operating in Dialogue Modern movement architect Eileen Gray was forgotten in her time, but now her influence resonates throughout the field. Here, a rarely seen conversation between Gray and architect Jean Badovici about their E.1027 house reveals Gray’s architecture of “mind and heart”. INTRODUCTION Caroline Constant DIALOGUE Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici PHOTOS Eileen Gray, courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland
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EILEEN GRAY: OPERATING IN DIALOGUE
EILEEN GRAY: OPERATING IN DIALOGUE
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ntil 1968, when architecture critic Joseph Rykwert published an essay on her practice in Domus magazine, Eileen Gray had been virtually forgotten.
Gray (1878-1976), an Anglo-Irish architect whose practice was centred largely in southern France, realised fewer than 10 buildings during her long career. Yet her ability to combine architecture, gardens, furnishings, fabrics and fittings, all directed toward the reintegration of architecture and daily life, led Gray to create settings with an evocative quality that is rarely found in the work of her avant-garde contemporaries. Celebrated in major exhibitions at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt (1996) and more recently at the Design Museum in London (2005) and Centre Pompidou in Paris (2013), Eileen Gray’s creative output has a subtle and elusive appeal that is attracting a growing body of admirers. The recent resurgence of interest in Gray’s work stems largely from the vast amount of archival material that the National Museum of Ireland acquired between 2000 and 2008, and which its curator Jennifer Goff analysed in her book Eileen Gray: Her Work and her World. This material has in turn inspired two new films: Gray Matters, a documentary directed by Marco Orsini and The Price of Desire, a feature film directed by Mary McGuckian. Although both films begin with an account of the 2009 Christie’s auction in which Gray’s Dragon Chair fetched a record price of £19.4m, they point to the broader significance of Gray’s work in the decorative arts and architecture.
Central to the two films is E.1027, a house on the Mediterranean coast outside Cap Martin, France, which Gray designed for (and with input from) her companion, Romanian architect Jean Badovici, between 1926 and 1929. The design reflects Gray’s awareness of the work of contemporaries such as Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier and Gerrit Rietveld, among others, and her interest in engaging their architectural concepts in dialogue. By challenging yet working within such modern movement precepts, Gray sought to overcome the cold, inhuman qualities associated with abstract forms by engaging the subjective qualities of experience. E.1027 is itself the focus of the written dialogue From Eclecticism to Doubt, first published in 1929 in a special issue of Badovici’s avant-garde periodical L’Architecture Vivante and now republished in translation in Disegno.
E.1027 was named a Monument Historique in 2000. Owned by the Conservatoire du Littoral, it underwent a heavy-handed and historically problematic restoration in the 2000s – at the hands of Pierre-Antoine Gatier, the state-appointed Architecte en Chef des Monuments Historiques – a task undertaken more effectively through the recent efforts of Michael Likierman (founder and CEO of the French arm of Habitat) in cooperation with architect Robert Rebutato, who was raised in the bistro next door in the company of Le Corbusier. The aim is to organise, as a study centre, the series of seaside buildings in Cap Martin: E.1027; the Rebutato bistro/residence Étoile de Mer (1948) and “Unités de camping” (1957), designed by Le Corbusier and built at the instigation of Rebutato’s father Thomas; and Le Corbusier’s adjoining cabanon (1952) and workshed. The official inauguration is tentatively scheduled for late June 2015. >
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Dressing cabinet in principal bedroom. See full caption on p.159.
EILEEN GRAY: OPERATING IN DIALOGUE
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