The Culture of Design
Block by Block Four Freedoms Park Hedi Slimane Valentino 21st-century Japonisme Design & Jewellery Established & Sons Fixperts Faye Toogood Iris van Herpen Parrish Art Museum The Seaboard CODA
Time for a change
16
War paint
Faye Toogood designs make-up
20
Selected Reading
Kengo Kuma’s list of must-reads
22
Four Freedoms Park
Louis Kahn’s design took 40 years to complete
26
end of an era
An analysis of the changes at Established & Sons
30
Come Again?
A look at the phenomenon of furniture re-editions
36
Anatomy of a Press trip
A dissection of this design journalism staple
41
valentino's Glossary of Couture
A detailed view of the house's fashion samples
44
Iris van Herpen
Is she the future of haute couture?
56
The Seaboard
A new silicon-crafted synthesiser
70
180
Party Wall by CODA
An introduction to the winners of MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Programme
184
The Culture of Baking
A sampling of new Portugese cakes designed by the team behind Fabrico Próprio
186
The Fix
Solutions generated by design problem-solvers Fixperts
Parrish Art Museum
188
92
Game-developer Mojang’s initiative with UN-Habitat
191
A strained relationship?
Disegno’s summer salon programme
A museum by Herzog & de Meuron with interiors by Konstantin Grcic
Design and Jewellery
112
anthology
Hedi Slimane captures the late Yves Saint Laurent’s apartment
132
21st-Century Japonisme
The recent trend of Japanese craft in contemporary design
144
Architecture as Image
The historical relationship between architecture and image
150
INTERIORS
Donald Milne’s series of abandoned multistoreys in Dundee
164
Iceland Emerges
An investigation into the developing design culture of Iceland UK £12 EU €15 US $25
Forecast
Introduction
Features
No.4
Exposé
Disegno.
Disegno.
10
Block by Block
Designer Picnics
192
Index
People and brands in this issue
No.4 S/S 2013
Disegno.
No.4 S/S 2013
Editor-in-Chief, Publisher
Johanna Agerman Ross johanna@disegnomagazine.com Creative Director
Daren Ellis/See Studio daren@disegnomagazine.com DESIGN Director
Colin Christie colin@disegnomagazine.com EDITORIAL Assistant
Kristina Rapacki kristina@disegnomagazine.com online editor
Oli Stratford oliver@disegnomagazine.com salon co-ordinator
Manijeh Verghese manijeh@disegnomagazine.com staff photographer
Arthur Arkin
CHIEF SUB EDITOR
Julia Newcomb SUB EDITORs
Rosie Spencer
Advertising SALES
RA Enterprises Ltd Royal Academy of Arts Jane Grylls, Kim Jenner, Paolo Russo sales@disegnomagazine.com Distribution
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Complete Creative Services completeltd.com Subscriptions
disegnoboutique.bigcartel.com COVER
The cover was photographed by Ola Bergengren. It is a picture of La Corde au Cou necklace by Fernando and Humberto Campana for Galerie Kreo and four bananas. Contact us
12 Disegno.
80 Scotney House Mead Place London E9 6SW +44 (0)20 8986 9687 disegnodaily.com
Words by
Anna Bates, Pete Collard, Mia Curran, Owen Hatherley, Aileen Kwun, Kieran Long, Inês Revés, Catharine Rossi, John L. Walters, Will Wiles. Photos by
Arthur Arkin, Juan Trujillo Andrades, Janette Beckman, Ola Bergengren, CODA, Glamour Et cetera, Peter Guenzel, Richard Haughton, Rita João, Boy Kortekaas, Donald Milne, Rita Platts, Kristoffer Rozental, Hedi Slimane, William R. Staffard, Ronald Stoops, Studio Toogood, Ben Quinton. tHANK YOU
To all our stockists and advertisers, whose support is essential to Disegno’s future. Thank you also to Marcus Agerman Ross, Fredrik Jung Abbou, Tea and Jon Pollock, Jere Salonen, Alice Masters, Anzu Sato, Terry Smith, Dave Sawyer, Stuart Beatty, Jesse Harris, and RIBA London. Our heartfelt thanks also go to Tubby’s Kebab of Hackney Wick, who unfailingly keep the office nourished, and to our favourite feline companions Eames and Reilly. Finally we would like to thank all the designers who contributed to our 12 Days of Christmas project – you helped make a significant contribution to the Article 25 charity. The money raised from the project will fund an Article 25 specialist in Haiti for two months this year. More info can be found here: disegnodaily.com/12daysofchristmas. Paper and print
You might have noticed that the paper has changed. We are now printing on the wonderful Symbol Tatami 115 gsm with a special section on X-PER 120 gsm with a cover on cast coated Splendorlux 250 gsm, all from Fedrigoni UK. We print with the great people at Park Communications. Content Copyright
The content of this magazine belongs to Disegno Publications Ltd and to the authors and artists. If you are tempted to reproduce any of it, please ask first. Disegno publications ltd
Disegno is a biannual magazine published by Disegno Publications Ltd. Please visit our website disegnodaily.com for more frequent updates on news from architecture, design and fashion.
Exposé
War Paint “Working with make-up is not dissimilar to making furniture and objects. Both involve the manipulation of raw materials,” says London-based designer Faye Toogood of the make-up collection she has created for new cosmetics brand Make. “The concept is cross-disciplinary,” says Toogood.
PHOTO studio toogood
Developed in conjunction with the Japanese make-up artist Ayami Nishimura, the collection is called New Medieval. >
16 Disegno. War Paint
The New Medieval range for cosmetics brand Make has a tactile, primal quality. Here is a study in clay of the colours for the collection
War Paint
Disegno. 17
> The products are highly tactile and intended to be applied with fingers, rather than brushes or sponges. “By combining and contrasting the inherent qualities of make-up – the dry with the moist; the gels with the powders; the rich pigments with the translucent liquids – I was able to put together a palette that expressed the elemental and primal nature of applying make-up,” says Toogood. “I was thinking about the Celts, who coated their faces in woad before battle, and the grinding of pigments on stone. This sense of ritual feels relevant to me now: a New Medieval.” Toogood paid homage to her inspiration by naming one of the dark purplish-blue hues of eye shadow Woad, the plant used throughout the medieval period to produce blue dye. Toogood’s make-up is painterly, a dimension of New Medieval that even extends to the promotional imagery associated with the collection. Rather than focusing on packaging or overt branding, the Brooklyn-based brand’s photography of New Medieval is centred around images of liquids and powders daubed onto blank canvases, and putties pressed into metal chains. The imagery is not gentle or refined; instead, it’s created with a zeal for the colours and 18 Disegno. War Paint
textures available. It is an approach reminiscent of the legendary Japanese make-up artist Shu Uemura, whose distinct transparent packaging put the focus onto his make-up and became an important reference in 20th-century design history. Rather than conceiving of make-up as an invisible
“I wanted to transpose the beauty of the natural landscape to the landscape of the face.” New Medieval however remains primarily a design project. The collection references Toogood’s interests in colour, materiality and expression, borrowing the simplicity of her 2012
As a starting point, Toogood studied the work of Romantic landscape painters. layer applied to subtly bolster appearance, Toogood’s collections lift the idea of “naturalness” to a bolder level: a place where colours suggest landscapes rather than skin tone. As a starting point for the collection, Toogood studied the work of the British Romantic landscape painters J.M.W Turner and John Constable.
Element table and reflecting the intense colouration and mineral-like structure of her 2011 bronze bowl. “For me, make-up is synonymous with self-expression, reinvention, fragility, ornament and femininity,” she says. “The very same qualities that I explore in my furniture.”
.
Manijeh Verghese (see p. 12)
PHOTO studio toogood
Exposé
The collection’s palette is inspired by the natural landscape.
Iris van Herpen The Dutch fashion designer known for using innovative manufacturing technologies has just presented her first prĂŞt-Ă porter collection in Paris, proving that her avant-garde view of fashion production might not be as far away from reaching the masses as it once seemed. WORDS Johanna Agerman Ross PHOTOS Boy kortekaas and Ronald Stoops
44 Disegno. iris van herpen
Photo boy kortekaas
Backstage at Iris van Herpen’s spring/summer 2013 haute couture show, Paris, January 2013.
iris van herpen
Disegno. 45
F 1 The Paris Bourse is the Paris Stock Exchange, known as Euronext Paris since 2000.
Tabacs (tobacco in French) are newsagents that sell tobacco products.
2
Paris Fashion Week is a biannual fashion trade show held in Paris.
3
Prêt-à-porter, meaning ready-to-wear, is massmanufactured clothing produced in standard sizes for the shop floor.
4
Haute couture is handsewn, made-to-measure, bespoke clothing. To qualify as an official couturier, a fashion designer must fulfill a strict set of criteria laid out by the French Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture (see note 7).
5
From 24 March to 23 September 2012, the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands staged an exhibition of Iris van Herpen’s work.
6
7 Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture dates back to 1868 and is one of five trade unions under the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode.
These are only some of the criteria, the rest can be found on modeaparis.com.
8
46 Disegno. iris van herpen
riday nights close to the Paris Bourse1 are quiet. The streets are empty and the Tabacs2 are closed. One such Friday night in March, during Paris Fashion Week3, I walk down Rue du Mail and slip into a courtyard behind two large, heavy doors. At the other end of the courtyard lies a fashion showroom displaying next season’s looks. Here, the silence of the street is abruptly broken, by the chatter of PRs, bleeping mobile phones, fashion buyers and agents negotiating, still working at nine o’clock at night. It’s the behind-the-scenes of fashion, the non-glamour, the wheeling and dealing. It is here, rather than on the catwalk, that the next season’s trends will really be set, as this is where the buyers from some of the world’s largest online and off-line boutiques make their orders for what fashion looks will reach the shop floor. Tucked away in the basement, removed from the commerce upstairs, the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen is showing her first prêt-à-porter4 collection. The setting is fitting. It’s six years since she launched her own label, but so far her only collections have been extraordinary haute couture5 shows displaying her unique view of fashion design. Now she is showing how those ideas can be turned into garments that won’t just appear on the catwalk or in exhibitions6. “It feels really natural to be doing a prêt-à-porter collection,” says van Herpen. “Because for my couture collections, I do a lot of development research for techniques, but the audience for this is very small. Few women have the money to afford this,” she says, gesturing to an haute couture dress in laser-cut Plexiglas, weighing between four and five kilograms, displayed on a mannequin to demonstrate the origins of the ready-to-wear collection. The purposefully commercial setting highlights the ambitions of her brand, so how can her conceptuality be turned into a product that sells? Van Herpen has her own ideas about that and, as with everything else she does, it smacks of the future, setting her in sharp contrast to an industry obsessed with the past.
The Hôtel de Ville is a 20-minute walk from the showroom where, earlier that day, the exhibition Paris Haute Couture opened to the press. Containing haute couture garments, sketches and photographs from the past century, it celebrates a craft that is elitist and close to extinction. Protected by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture7, haute couture is a closely guarded art form. In its stipulations, this governing body states that in order to create haute couture, a designer must create made-to-order designs for private clients; have a workshop in Paris that employs at least 20 full-time technical workers; and present one collection of no less than 35 outfits, twice a year8. This is the reason why, with the rise of industrial manufacture of clothing, between 1946 and 1967, the number of couture houses was reduced from 106 to 19. Today, there are 12 Parisian couture houses. It is in this rarified world that van Herpen made her Parisian debut, in July 2011, as a guest of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. >
One of the 11 outfits in van Herpen’s recent couture collection called Voltage, inspired by the theories of Nikola Tesla.
PHOTO Gabby Laurent/Sebastian Tarek Bespoke Shoes
The double-pitched roof is a key identifier of the Parrish Art Museum.
70 Disegno. Parrish Art Museum
Parrish Art Museum The new building in Water Mill, Long Island, by Herzog & de Meuron with interiors by Konstantin Grcic, is a series of double takes and a positive embodiment of restraint. WORDS Johanna Agerman Ross PHOTOS Janette Beckman
Parrish Art Museum
Disegno. 71
H 1 Hurricane Sandy was the name given to the powerful tropical storm that devastated parts of the Caribbean, the Mid-Atlantic and the north-east of the US from 22-31 October 2012. It is the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, categorised as level 3 at its peak.
The building regulations are there to mitigate damage in the case of a hurricane. They regulate roof and glazing systems, types of building material, foundation, wall and beam construction, structural designs and egress.
2
The East End of Long Island is comprised of five townships within New York’s Suffolk County: East Hampton, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Southampton and Southold as well as Long Island’s North and South Fork.
3
The Long Island Railroad (LIRR) was established in 1834 as a New York-based commuter railway system that stretches from Manhattan along the length of Long Island to the eastern tip of Suffolk County.
4
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) was an American Impressionist painter and teacher, known for his portrait and landscape paintings.
5
72 Disegno. Parrish Art Museum
urricane Sandy 1 swept the entire eastern coast of the United States – from Florida to Maine – four days before the planned opening of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, Long Island, New York. As a result, on 2 November 2012, instead of a gathering of patrons, local artists and the museum’s architects and designers, there was the whirr of an emergency generator, a handful of security guards and a museum director with a worried and tired look in her eyes, wondering when the electricity would start working again.
At least the building remained intact, having withstood the hurricane force winds and the debris it swept along with it. Sandy was the museum’s second hurricane in as many years and the building is subject to a stringent hurricane code2. “Scientists have been awaiting the hurricane cycle for a while and now it’s starting, so this was a reminder of why the code is in place,” says Terrie Sultan, the Parrish Art Museum director.
It’s an overcast autumn day, but despite the cloud coverage the light is painfully bright as I step from the car outside the Museum. The light is one of the reasons why this place, the East End of Long Island3, has become such a popular destination for artists since the Long Island Railroad extended its services to Southampton in 18704. The East End is only two hours from Manhattan, and the stream of artists heading there has never stopped, starting with the founder of American Impressionism William Merritt Chase5, who established a school for plein-air painting6 here in 1891, and continuing with Fairfield Porter7, Jackson Pollock8, Lee Krasner9, Willem de Kooning10 and Roy Lichtenstein11. Even the contemporary art scene pays attention to the East End, with people like Ross Bleckner12, Eric Fichl13, Chuck Close14 and Elizabeth Peyton15 establishing studios in the area. It is this long list of artists and their relationship to the location that has made the new incarnation of the Parrish Art Museum possible. And yet, for a while, it looked like it wouldn’t happen at all.
The Parrish Art Museum was established in 1898 by the wealthy lawyer Samuel Longstreth Parrish16 in Southampton, 10 minutes by car from Water Mill. Parrish’s museum housed a collection of Italian Renaissance paintings, as was a la mode for the wealthy at the time. Although he donated some of the land for the establishment of Chase’s Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art, he never collected art by his contemporaries. It wasn’t until the 1950s, with the donation of a collection of American paintings by the then president of the museum’s board Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn, that the museum adopted the focus it has today: modern and contemporary American art from the local area. “We are a regional museum and we are very proud of the region, because who hasn’t worked here?” asks Sultan rhetorically as she walks through the echoing, new museum. The galleries are not yet completely installed and there is a beauty to the half-unpacked crates – some paintings still under wraps, others leaning >
In-Ei, foldable The central spinetextile runs the lampof shades designed by length the building with Issey Miyake for Artemide. the galleries flanking it.
Parrish Art Museum
Disegno. 73
PHOTO Gabby Laurent/Sebastian Tarek Bespoke Shoes
The Perles de Jaspe necklace by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec for Galerie Kreo is made from red jasper.
92 Disegno. Design and jewellery
Design and Jewellery A number of recent exhibitions showcasing jewellery by product designers have prompted a debate about the relationship between the two disciplines. This essay explores the origins of this relationship and the effects on contemporary practice. WORDS Catharine Rossi PHOTOS Ola Bergengren
Design and jewellery
Disegno. 93
I 1 The Design Museum was established in 1989 by British designer Sir Terence Conran with Stephen Bayley as its first chief executive.
Unexpected Pleasures: The Art And Design Of Contemporary Jewellery showed from 5 December 2012 to 3 March 2013.
2
Beautiful Objects showed from 22 November 2012 to 26 January 2013.
3
Autor du Cou translates as Around the Neck and was on display from 29 November 2012 to 19 January 2013.
4
Notable recent exhibitions include: SET: 40 Years of Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (12 November to 14 December 2012), and Chamber of Wonder at Gallery S O (7 December 2012 to 27 January 2013), both in London; Van Cleef & Arpels: L’Art de la Haute Joaillerie at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (20 September 2012 to 10 February 2013), and Pezzi per il Corpo, an exhibition of Gaetano Pesce’s jewellery design at Galerie Basia Embiricos (6 December 2012 to 20 February 2013), both in Paris; and in Vienna, Contemporary Necklaces at the MAK (6 November 2012 to 10 February 2013).
5
94 Disegno. Design and jewellery
wouldn’t call what’s downstairs design, but it’s telling us something about design,” says Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum1 in London, to the audience. He is discussing Unexpected Pleasures: The Art And Design Of Contemporary Jewellery,2 an exhibition deemed so unusual for the museum that a discussion panel was organised to explain this placement of jewellery in a design setting. Also on the panel are jewellery designer Susan Cohn, who curated the show, the Design Museum’s founding director Stephen Bayley, Victoria and Albert Museum curator and craft expert Glenn Adamson, and jewellery designer Solange Azagury-Partridge. Opinions on the panel vary. Azagury-Partridge and Adamson are in no doubt – jewellery is a design endeavour. Sudjic finds some common ground in function, posited as a key design issue. “Both jewellery and design have their starting point in function of a kind,” he says. “But pretty soon that function might become emotion.” Bayley, who has promoted the museum’s agenda of industrial design since its foundation in 1989, is most resistant to the idea of jewellery as design. “Historically, the idea of design and what made it different from craft or art was that the object itself might have very little intrinsic value,” he says, “because it was mass produced and that gave a corresponding greater value to the idea that created it. The pattern of thought I have sees jewellery as being the other way round.” For Cohn, Bayley’s inability to accept jewellery’s design credentials are symptomatic of a larger separation between the two realms: she compares design and jewellery to two people at a party who have never spoken but have a lot in common.
The panel’s lack of consensus confirms how rarely the disciplines of design and jewellery interact, and the misunderstandings that arise when they do. Yet contemplating jewellery as design is a timely exercise – the past few months have seen a number of exhibitions that have attempted just this. In London, aside from the Design Museum’s show, the Aram Gallery staged its first jewellery exhibition, Beautiful Objects3, while in Paris Galerie Kreo commissioned established designers to create jewellery, many for the first time, for Autour du Cou4. Viewed alongside other recent shows devoted to jewellery across Europe, it seems that this overlooked realm is enjoying a rare moment in design discourse5. Although differing in scale, setting and ambition, these exhibitions shared a number of characteristics. Each of the venues was displaying a jewellery exhibition for the first time, and each saw jewellery as a departure from the gallery or museum’s normal design-led remit. As such, they raised a number of questions. Can jewellery be considered design, and what happens if it is? Why are designers turning to jewellery, and what could they learn from doing so? Now that jewellery and design have finally struck up a conversation, what have they got to say to each other? >
Corde textile au Cou in flax In-Ei, La foldable gold by Fernando lamp and shades designed by Humberto Campana Issey and Miyake for Artemide. was part of the Autour du Cou exhibition at Galerie Kreo, Paris.
Design and jewellery
Disegno. 95
Pieces from Scholten & Baijings’s Colour Porcelain collection for 1616 Arita.
132 Disegno. 21st-century japonisme
21st-century Japonisme With a spate of shows, launches, and big-name collaborations promoting traditional Japanese crafts, are we seeing a Japonisme for the 21st-century emerging? WORDS Kristina Rapacki PHOTOS Rita Platts Styling Anzu Sato
21st-century japonisme
Disegno. 133
A Japan Creative is funded by several Japanese corporations. It allows for international designers and Japanese manufacturers to work together. 1
Jasper Morrison (b. 1959) is a British designer active in London, Paris, and Tokyo, known for his minimalism.
2
Inga Sempé (b. 1968) is a French designer. She was awarded the Grand Prix de la Création en design de la Ville de Paris in 2003.
3
Japonisme is a French term coined by Jules Claretie in 1872. It refers to the impact that Japanese imported products had on the fine and applied arts in Europe and the United States.
4
Dr Sarah Teasley lectures the Royal College of Art in London. Her research centres around Japanese products and architectural design from the late 19th century to present day.
5
Ukiyo-e are Japanese woodblock prints produced between the 17th and 20th centuries. They were used for packaging products to the West, where the motifs captured the imagination of artists.
6
7 Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1760-1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) are considered two of the great masters in the ukiyo-e tradition. 8 Mingei championed local Japanese crafts in the 1920s and 30s.
134 Disegno. 21st-century japonisme
piece of unexpected news broke in January: for the first time in decades, the Japanese economy is growing. Or, that’s what Shinzo Abe’s government predicts. If its anticipation of 2.5 per cent growth occurs in the coming financial year, it will mark a welcome change in a country whose finances capsized in the early 1990s and have stayed stagnant since.
Reports of negative growth, and natural and nuclear disaster, have dominated our image of Japan over the past few years. But in the design industry a welcome turn seems to have taken place, with a series of launches, exhibitions, and collaborations promoting traditional Japanese crafts and manufacture for the global market. Visitors at last year’s Milan furniture fair could experience one such project off a quiet side street in the Brera district. In the rooms of the quaint Museo Minguzzi, Japan Creative1 presented its first exhibition, Simple Visions, which featured pieces by international designers such as Jasper Morrison2 and Inga Sempé3. Another enterprise, Japan Handmade – overseen by the Danish creative agency OeO – launched at the Maison et Objet interior design fair in Paris at the beginning of this year. Traditional Japanese wood manufacturers Maruni and Karimoku are also pushing into new markets; the latter especially so with its line Karimoku New Standard, launched in 2009. Japanese crafts were given further exposure in the exhibition 365 Charming Everyday Things, first held at the Bastille Design Centre in Paris in January 2012, and later shown in Tokyo at the Pola Museum Annex. Do these projects herald a new Japonisme4 of the 21st century? The preoccupation with ancient craft certainly seems to suggest so. High-quality, labour-intensive craftsmanship has been associated with Japanese products since the 1860s, after the US navy commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry coerced the Tokugawa shogunate to open Japan’s ports to international trade. “In the 19th century, the Japanese ceramic and textile industries hadn’t industrialised to the same extent as in Britain and France,” says design historian Sarah Teasley5. “So the Japanese government promoters identified craft as Japan’s edge on international markets. When they started exporting things to the world fairs, they exported craft.”
These were the objects that enthralled the western imagination in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, alongside the woodblock prints or ukiyo-e6 by Hokusai and Hiroshige7, whose stylistic features artists Vincent Van Gogh, James Whistler, Gustav Klimt, Edgar Degas and others incorporated into their paintings. A few decades into the 20th century, traditional crafts became the focus of the intensely nationalist folk art movement Mingei8, spearheaded by the Japanese philosopher Yanagi Soetsu9. From the beginning of Japan’s interactions with international markets, ancient craftsmanship has been the stuff of soft power10.
But this emphasis on crafts risks a certain typecasting of Japanese products. An example of this occurred in the US in the early 1950s, when the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO)11 funded Japan: Design Today, a travelling exhibition organised in collaboration with the Walker >
A Koubei-Gama plate designed by Inga SempĂŠ for Japan Creative (left). On it, a wood tea canister and a bamboo teaspoon. Below, a large plate designed by Scholten & Baijings for 1616 Arita.
21st-century japonisme
Disegno. 135
On winter solstice the glow from Vopnafjรถrรฐur village and a touch of the northern lights illuminate the snow covered mountain tops.
164 Disegno. iceLand emerges
Iceland Emerges Last autumn the remote town of Egilsstaðir in East Iceland was host to Make It Happen, a conference investigating how design can help create an alternative future for this region. This report investigates the growing importance of design in a country that as late as the 1950s didn’t even have a word for design. WORDS Pete Collard and Oli Stratford PHOTOS Glamour Et cetera
iceLand emerges
Disegno. 165