Convergence by Ross Lovegrove at the Centre Pompidou Words Anna Yudina
A Ross Lovegrove retrospective seeks to move discussion of his design away from the aesthetics of parametricism, and onto the ideologies that underpin his personal brand of futurism. economy of materials, and the use of advanced technology[…] to reduce the object to a material minimum,” but also to minimise energy consumption. ‘Eco’ shows Lovegrove as a future-oriented designer of the post-industrial age whose work seeks to respond to environmental concerns, and reflects “a shift from a hard, clean, mechanical aesthetic” towards softer and more dynamic forms enabled by new technologies. Finally, the ‘Digital’ axis highlights the fact that Lovegrove pioneered the use of digital tools in design as early as in 1990 (the year when he founded his office Studio X in London), as well as his experiments in interpreting natural forms through digital technology. The Eye camera for Olympus (1990), Emma Office System for Herman Miller (1994-2000) and other projects developed at the time involve what Lovegrove desrcribes as “soft hybrid computational design” – although creating wire-frame models in 3D software, he recalls, was a long and complex process in the 1990s. The exhibition display juxtaposes his works with photographs of natural structures and textures, not to mention an elephant skull dating from 1888. In an interview I conducted with the designer in 2015, Lovegrove spoke about his desire to converge “everything he knows”. With a career that started in the early 1980s and continued through the advent and evolution of digital design and fabrication, this now amounts to a skill set extending from traditional crafts to digital tools and encompassing interests ranging from biology to anthropology to art. Today, Lovegrove continues to “absorb from other areas” in order to set himself new standards in “transforming
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minimal material with minimal energy into what we need”. It is an approach that Lovegrove has adopted from natural processes, and one that leads him to remove inessential elements from his work in an attempt to condense sensory richness, emotional appeal, functionality and user comfort, such that even basic products could offer several levels of experience. Thus, the Disc Camera (1982-83), his master’s project from the Royal College of Art, later manufactured by Kodak, and the Eye digital camera (1990) for Olympus provide distinct formal expressions for the technical innovations of their time (respectively, the Kodak-developed disc-shaped photo film that allowed for thinner cameras, and the silicon-chip memory card that replaced analogue film). They also feel like natural extensions of the human hand. Lovegrove’s champagne bottle for Mumm Grand Cordon (2016), meanwhile, comes stripped of its paper label in favour of a solution that manages to blend ergonomics, aesthetics and marketing in one move. Mumm’s golden signature is printed directly onto the glass, and the brand’s red sash is indented into the bottle’s body, providing an intuitive and comfortable place to put your thumb when serving. Why glue paper on glass in an era of optimised, high-precision effort, if you can do without – and with greater impact? “Maybe a new profession of artistengineer-scientist will be born,” wrote the late Jan Kaplický, the radical mind behind architecture and design practice Future Systems, in his 2002 book Confessions. Kaplický shared Lovegrove’s interest in the workings of nature and organic forms, but also in technological advancement
The Cosmic Angel light for Artemide
The chair derives its distinctive shape from a
was developed between 2009 and 2011.
single-celled organism.
All photographs courtesy of the Centre Pompidou.
There is a glaring problem with Ross Lovegrove’s designs. The fluid biomorphic forms he develops are so irritatingly sleek that they tend to encourage a superficial reading. From a staircase with a structure that blends the human spine with the DNA spiral, through a collection of algorithmically designed lamps, to a model of a 3D-printed tower in carbon fibre-reinforced concrete, 100 examples of the Welsh designer’s work – sketches, sculptures, concept cars, installations, prototypes and commercial products – are on show in the Centre Pompidou’s all-glazed Galérie 3, giving visitors some three months to explore what Lovegrove’s oeuvre is actually about. Figuring this out, however, and moving beyond his sleek surfaces, requires forays into disciplines including biology, futures studies and neuroscience. Titled Convergence, the exhibition has been curated by Marie-Ange Brayer, the Centre Pompidou’s chief curator of design and industrial prospective, and is billed as the museum’s “first futureoriented retrospective”. Besides this, it marks the launch of the Pompidou’s new annual Mutations-Créations exhibition and event series, which is intended to explore “the emergent landscape shared by art, innovation and science”. It thus presents Lovegrove as one of the trailblazers of this process. Accompanied by a documentary that features the designer speaking about his work, the exhibition is organised along three main axes. ‘Organic Essentialism’ illustrates how Lovegrove’s observations of natural structures and processes translate into a quest for efficiency that combines, according to the exhibition’s commentary, “simplification of form,
Ross Lovegrove’s Diatom chair for Moroso (2014).
and its transformational influence on the world in general and design in particular. Seemingly developing Kaplický’s idea, Lovegrove has articulated, in his 2005 TED Talk and elsewhere, a concept of DNA, which he unzips as “Design, Nature, Art”. Ridon, for instance – one of a series of designs executed in carbon fibre between 2003 and 2007 – evokes a motorcycle fused with its rider. One of Lovegrove’s statement pieces, Ridon is intended as “a metaphor for the way we should design in the future” and it knowingly references the futurist sculptor Umberto Boccioni’s bronze cast Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). Ridon embodies different levels of convergence – a “fusion of man and machine at full speed”, but also Lovegrove’s idea of art and design coming together in a single resolved form. The convergence of material, technology and form, as in Lovegrove’s Tŷ Nant water bottle (1999-2001), is – once again – Lovegrove’s DNA triad in action. Its irregular, wavy surface creates the odd impression of holding a chunk of water. Technologically speaking, it was the world’s first industrial product that relied on the methods pioneered by parametric architecture and, in search of new processes that would bring his idea of a “liquid” form to life, Lovegrove also collaborated with a specialist in facial scanning and surgical reconstruction. Ergonomically, he has shaped the bottle so that it can fit into hands of different sizes and grip strengths, although it is also an object that communicates with its owner on emotional and sensory levels, the transparent shell seeming
to disappear when filled. The container is intended to be “an icon of water itself”. There is yet another kind of convergence in Lovegrove’s work that reflects different paces of change, from the glacial speed of evolution to the constant flux inherent in nature. A sense of implicit movement is present in nearly all of his designs. The Liquid Shelves (2011) seem to be made from mercury and shaped by a tension between external and internal forces; the legs of the Megabioform table (2000) are “sucked” from its centre as if from a pool of liquid metal. Every detail of the concept cars for Swarovski (2005-06) and Renault (2012-13) heightens a sense of flow. The shape of the Ilabo shoe (2015), developed for the Dutch brand United Nude, originates from hair-like forms that roll around the foot under the action of gravity. The curved, rippled glass enclosure of the Lasvit LiquidKristal pavilion (2012) creates an immersive environment whose state – liquid or solid – seems to remain undecided. Meanwhile, the Corolised Chairs (2012) (of which no two look the same) use a production process that implies unpredictability in the way the original form, inspired by human anatomy, varies with each new 3D-printed chair. This multi-sensory awareness of an environment resonates with some of the findings in cognitive science about the complex interconnected mechanisms of human perception and the influence that our body has on the concepts we develop about the world. In the 2015 book Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment and the Future of Design,
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Vittorio Gallese – one of the scientists who discovered mirror neurons in the 1990s – and architect Alessandro Gattara share neuroscientific evidence of the relationship between the motor system, the body and the way we perceive space and objects. “We now know that the thoughts and feelings that populate our subjective reality are not abstractions belonging solely to us,” notes the architect Sarah Robinson, the book’s co-editor. “Rather, they are constantly forming patterns of experiential interaction emerging from our continual engagement with the environment.[…] In shaping matter, we shape experience – in shaping experience, we give form to life.” Robinson’s words sum up a once intuitive, and now empirically proven, understanding of the effects that designers’ and architects’ work can have on the people who use it. There is yet another facet to Lovegrove’s work that provides intense and novel sensory experiences, and which feeds into an emerging challenge: in times of exponential information density, how can we process, let alone make sense of, new and overwhelming levels of input? Artificial intelligence may be one part of the solution, but it is equally important to look to our own internal resources. Here, too, relying on intellect alone will not be enough. “Remember that your understanding comes through your body,” states the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist writing in Mind in Architecture. “You experience the world intuitively through your senses more than you can ever know the world intellectually.” It’s an argument that calls