photography by: Gwenael Lewis
73 73 Series by Omer Arbel Standard fixtures and custom installations
Bocci Berlin O P EN I N G Autumn 2015
bocci.ca
15 INTRODUCTION On design’s duty to climate change
Exposé
25 TIMELINE The last six months in review
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PHOTOESSAY: MANOS DEL URUGUAY Photographer Heidi Lender captures Uruguay’s cooperatives of women woolworkers OBSERVATION 1 Jasper Morrison’s dumbphone
POWER BEHIND THE SCENES Magis founder Eugenio Perazza lifts the curtain on industrial production
SOLE ALTERNATIVES Ethical-footwear designer Mats Rombaut explains leaving leather for tree bark OBSERVATION 2 Return to Villa le Lac
BERLIN REVISITED An assessment of a creative-class city opening its doors to big business OBSERVATION 3 Technophilic fashion
A MUCH-WATCHED KETTLE The story behind Michael Graves’s Alessi 9093, his celebrated whistling bird kettle
Features
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DISEGNO RESIDENCY: 2°C New proposals for communicating climate change from designers Ilona Gaynor, Maria Blaisse, PearsonLloyd, Sam Baron, Neri & Hu, Marjan van Aubel, Universal Design Studio, Parsons & Charlesworth, Dominic Wilcox and Ross Lovegrove THE INTERNET OF THINGS Disegno examines the uneasy relationship between furniture design and e-commerce
ANALOGUE DREAMS, DIGITAL REALITIES Fashion designers Peter Pilotto discuss breaking with digital printing in favour of traditional techniques >
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Sorting and untangling yarn on the floor of the Dragรณn cooperative. PHOTOS Heidi Lender
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Photoessay: Manos del Uruguay There is a history of craft production in Uruguay, the nation nestled between Argentina and Brazil on South America’s Atlantic coast. “But there isn’t really ‘design’ in Uruguay,” says Matteo Fogale, a London-based, Uruguayan designer. “There isn’t design production, whereas Brazil and Argentina have been very industrial over the years. Production in >
PHOTOESSAY: MANOS DEL URUGUAY
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Above: A tiny pueblo close to Fraile Muerto in the Cerro Largo region of Uruguay, where some of Manos’s 13 cooperatives are based. Below: A colourful street in Melo, the capital of Cerro Largo.
> Uruguay hasn’t really existed, so it’s hard to do design there.” In place of industry, and amid the economic and political instability that engulfed the country in the 1960s, Uruguayans became reliant on local resources, leading to the development of small-scale production across the country. Craftspeople produced goods in their homes, using materials such as leather, wood and wool, which they sold to the domestic market. In December 2014, Fogale and his design partner Laetitia de Allegri
produces wools and garments in a series of 13 cooperatives across Uruguay, all using traditional techniques involving a network of 250 craftswomen. Its headquarters, based in the capital Montevideo, acts as a central sales body. While Manos sells to the domestic market, it is unlike many cottage industries in that it also sells internationally, as well as collaborating with global fashion brands such as Prada, Ralph Lauren, Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs.
“We weren’t planning to base the colour palette on Uruguay itself.” undertook a research trip to the country. “We wanted our time there to be like an extension of working in London,” says de Allegri, “We wanted a project.” “I suggested that we find someone working with local wool,” begins Fogale. “And I found Manos,” finishes de Allegri. “Manos” is Manos del Uruguay, a non-profit organisation that operates on the borders of craft and industry. The company 30 Disegno. PHOTOESSAY: MANOS DEL URUGUAY
Manos was founded in 1968, initially as a means of aiding women in rural Uruguayan communities. “The objective was to develop economic opportunities in a country where there weren’t – and still aren’t – job opportunities for women living in the countryside,” says Ana de Prado, a designer and Manos’s head of product development. “The founding members seized on the idea of bringing together the knitted >
Some of Manos’s yarn is sourced locally from Corriedale sheep.
PHOTOESSAY: MANOS DEL URUGUAY
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Aram Designs Limited holds the worldwide licence for Eileen Gray designs
LEADING BRANDS Furniture and lighting by international designers ARAM STORE 110 DRURY LANE, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON WC2B 5SG MONDAY – SATURDAY 10AM – 6PM (THURSDAY UNTIL 7PM) TEL. 020 7557 7557
WWW.ARAM.CO.UK
2°C COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE ILONA GAYNOR MARIA BLAISSE PEARSONLLOYD SAM BARON NERI & HU MARJAN VAN AUBEL UNIVERSAL DESIGN STUDIO PARSONS & CHARLESWORTH DOMINIC WILCOX ROSS LOVEGROVE
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THE DISEGNO RESIDENCY COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE On 30 November the leaders of 195 nations will descend on Paris in order to manage the “climatic disruption that threatens our societies and our economies”. The premise is simple: there is no longer a question about whether climate change is happening. It is. Or even why: it is human-made.
News of this event in Paris, the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), piqued Disegno’s interest. If climate change is occurring – and 98 per cent of climate scientists agree that it is, predominantly as a result of greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels – how should the design world relate to this? What role might design play in addressing a problem of this scale? For the Disegno No.9 residency, we decided to examine the way in which climate change is communicated. We asked numerous leading designers to reimagine the campaign’s public face, asking them to consider how the issue might be presented so that a familiar story feels fresh and provides a new impetus to action.
be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers… Journalism tends to be a rear-view mirror. We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead.” Disegno wanted to examine whether design could play a role in remedying this. Design is frequently described as problem solving, but clearly no single discipline will solve climate change on its own. Instead, we wished to set a more modest target: could design trigger a shift in the way that we perceive global warming?
None of the 10 proposals that are exhibited in this issue provide a solution or a campaign that is ready for roll-out, but they do prod and probe, raising questions and asking us to examine a problem that we will all have to tackle before long.
“FEAR OF CHANGE MAKES THE SITUATION ABSOLUTELY STIFLING. FEAR MAKES US RUN.” The need for greater public understanding of climate change is crucial. The aim of COP21 is to find ways to prevent the global temperature from rising by more than 2°C, a UN target that was agreed in 2009. Should the international community fail to meet this target – and at present rates of fossil fuel consumption the world is on track to heat up by 4°C or 5°C by the end of the century – dangerous climate change will take place, with huge swathes of the planet becoming uninhabitable, subject to flooding, desertification, or severe food and water scarcity.
Considering the outcomes of such a temperature rise, it is shocking that the issue does not garner more attention in mainstream and social media. “Changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list,” wrote Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian’s then editor-in-chief, in March. “The changes may
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Following the completion of the residency, Disegno invited several of the contributing designers to come together to discuss climate change. The resultant conversation is documented in the coming pages and provides an insight into the designers’ research and the thinking behind their final proposals, as well as the failings of the existing communication of climate change. “There isn’t enough campaigning,” noted Cathrin Walczyk, a designer at Universal Design Studio and one of the participants in the roundtable. “That’s the fundamental issue.” This is what the Disegno residency aims to address. An exhibition supporting this residency opens at The Aram Gallery on 21 September during the London Design Festival. Created by Universal Design Studio and curated by The Aram Gallery’s Riya Patel, it will remain open for a month.
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THE DISEGNO RESIDENCY THE PARTICIPANTS 1. Ilona Gaynor Speculative designer and artist Gaynor’s proposal confronts us with the visceral impact that climate change will have on everyday life: on the human body and built environment, for example. The print published in the magazine refers to the symptoms of a brain tumour. Gaynor’s design deals in horror and pessimism, rooting the communication of climate change in a bleak reality that she believes is inescapable. p. 72–73 2. Maria Blaisse Fashion designer and architect Inspired by naturalist Viktor Schauberger’s book Living Energies, Maria Blaisse focused her contribution on how humans might interact more carefully with nature. Developed as a part of her ongoing research into form and movement, Blaisse photographed a dancer interacting with a flexible bamboo structure. The bamboo form is an oloid, a shape with great potential for transformation and movement. Through the simplicity of her work, Blaisse invites us to develop a deeper connection with nature. p. 74–75 3. PearsonLloyd Industrial design studio Mies van der Rohe’s dictum of “less is more” is adapted by PearsonLloyd for a campaign focused on rehabilitating public perception of the concept of “less”. The studio proposes that climate change has been largely prompted by an economic system and widespread cultural mindset that are obsessed with growth and acquisition at all costs. PearsonLloyd proposes countering this with a vision of a better, richer way of life focused on promoting less acquisition, less waste and less expenditure of energy. p. 76–77 4. Sam Baron Conceptual designer and director of design at Fabrica
Baron’s reflection of climate change is manifest as a glass, Miró-like mobile. The structure is a weather vane, with a candle balanced at one end and a young plant in a beaker of water at the other. The proposal invites reflection on the way in which energy consumption affects the environment, the delicacy of the mobile suggesting an imbalance in current conditions. p. 78–79 5. Neri & Hu Architecture and design studio Neri & Hu wove its treatment of climate change together with reflections on the rapid demolition of sections of Shanghai, where the practice is based. The result is a collaged image of a dystopian version of the city, behind which runs a dense screen of disturbing facts surrounding pollution. Neri & Hu’s proposal is intended to challenge the way we view our cities, and reflects on how the built environment is inalienably linked to the progression of climate change. p. 80–81 6. Marjan van Aubel Designer Many climate technologies are alienating and poorly integrated into our daily life. Van Aubel’s campaign features an image of an orange solar cell, the final photograph in a chromatic scale of close-up imagery of natural materials, rock formations and floods. The sequence reflects on the need for a holistic approach to climate technologies, which must be designed in such a way that they are seamlessly adopted by users and connect with the wider world. p. 82–83 7. Universal Design Studio Architecture studio Collaborating with Dr Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network, Universal Design Studio focused on the environmental implications of global food production. Their research
is manifest in a collaged series of four fictional restaurants, each of which presents a different vision for the future of livestock rearing and crop farming. The proposal scrutinises the narratives that people construct around food, and the beliefs and assumptions that surround its production. p. 84–85 8. Parsons & Charlesworth Speculative design studio Parsons & Charlesworth’s design blends facts around carbon sequestration with a fictional tale of a group of people seeking to embed such practices in their everyday lives and cultural rituals. The proposal seeks to develop new and compelling stories that could be told around and about climate change, the idea centring on a suggestion that changing ways in which we think about the problem can trigger shifts in behaviour. p. 86–87 9. Dominic Wilcox Designer and artist Wilcox presents a tragicomic vision through his Global Warming Funtime Island, a speculative fairground in which the rides ridicule political and social failings around climate-change action. The proposal uses wit and irreverence to sugar the tragic and frightening, making engagement with climate change accessible, although the effect conversely deepens the unnerving quality of the issues. p. 88–89 10. Ross Lovegrove Furniture and product designer A photograph of the Earth at night, Lovegrove’s design reflects the fragility of life. Lovegrove likens the few lights visible on the planet to bacteria clinging to its surface, expressing our vulnerability. He suggests that while the Earth will survive without humans, humans cannot survive without the Earth; there is a need to appreciate the precariousness of our situation in the face of climate change. p. 90–91
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72 Disegno. 2°C | ILONA GAYNOR
THE DISEGNO RESIDENCY COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE
2°C | ILONA GAYNOR
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74 Disegno. 2°C | MARIA BLAISSE
THE DISEGNO RESIDENCY COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE
2°C | MARIA BLAISSE
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The Internet of Things As a number of online retail sites dedicated to design launch, Disegno looks at why furniture brands aren’t embracing the full possibilities of the internet and how that’s now likely to change. WORDS Joe Lloyd PHOTOS Kevin Davies
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THE INTERNET OF THINGS
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Design Within Reach was founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Rob Forbes. Originally the business ran as an online store and a direct-mail catalogue, but it began adding physical stores to its portfolio in the early 2000s. 1
Goldberg originally invested $350,000 of his own money into Fab and invested a further $250,000 in 2011. The site was reworked to adopt a model similar to Paypal. New users were given $10 credit upon registration, and more money if they signed up friends. Such incentives meant the site had 165,000 users before its official launch and before it even had products to sell. 2
Flash sales are a form of e-commerce in which products are offered for limited periods. Customers register with the website to receive news of offers by email or social media. 3
Backcountry was founded in Utah, USA in 1996. Shellhammer was Backcountry’s chief design officer until September 2014. He remains an adviser to the brand. 4
It can be t is hard to imagine life without the internet. Almost everything – groceries, clothes, computers, holidays – can be purchased online, with no need to interact directly with the physical world. If you’re looking for a rare, out-of-print book, you’re more likely to find it on Abe Books or Amazon Marketplace than by combing the shelves of second-hand shops. For any business with aspirations beyond a concentrated local community, the idea of forsaking the virtual forum seems absurd.
Yet in design, particularly when it comes to furniture, we find an industry whose presence within e-commerce is incomplete and whose relationship with the internet remains non-standardised, even ambivalent. Many established design brands offer none or a limited portion of their repertoire online, and prominent attempts to create online marketplaces have faced stormy times. Over 2013 and 2014, even the seemingly thriving Fab.com, one of the progenitors of online direct sales in design, faced complete implosion. The issues facing design retail affect everyone from gigantic corporate brands to small, designerled practices. But in light of Fab’s struggles, it seems high time to define these problems and explore why the design world has failed to match other industries in moving online. And with so many brands and retailers vying for the vaunted position that Fab once held, it’s worth looking at approaches that might finally enable online success. The story of Fab is an informative one, which reads like a cautionary tale. Its two founders, Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer, both had significant backgrounds in digital startups and design. Goldberg, a former member of Bill Clinton’s staff, had previously raised $48m (about £31m) for Jobster, a jobs search engine akin to a prototype LinkedIn. Shellhammer had worked for Design Within Reach (DWR),1 and was founding editor of the still successful LGBT blog Queerty. When they came together to found Fabulis in early 2010, they envisaged it as a gay social network. Just over a year later, the company dropped the “-ulis” and flew headlong into online design retail,2 largely structured around regular flash sales.3
By the end of 2012, Fab seemed a sure success. More than 4.3m pieces had been sold, with sales totalling $100m. Fab had partnered with Facebook, and had its own android and tablet apps. Investment raised $150m and the company was valued at $1bn. Goldberg’s vision of an Amazon for design, a one-stop department store selling everything from evergreen classics to inexpensive new works, seemed on the verge of coming true.
But then, in 2013, Fab’s fortunes began to turn. The costs of marketing, expansion and maintaining a vast stock saw the company burn through its backing, which still fell far short of the desired amount. At one point, Goldberg estimated losses of $14m each month and after four years as chief design officer, Shellhammer left for outdoors equipment retailer Backcountry.4 An attempt to refocus on lower-priced in-house designs over working with external designers was too little, >
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Made.com’s Jam floor lamp, designed by MADE studio.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
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The Polypropylene Story With British furniture designer Robin Day’s centenary falling in 2015, Disegno shares a rare internal document about the creation of his celebrated Polypropylene chair, introduced by contemporary designer Edward Barber. INTRODUCTION Edward Barber ESSAY Robin Day and Leslie Julius PHOTOS Images courtesy of The Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation
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Robin Day’s Polypropylene chair, the first version of which was produced by British manufacturer Hille in 1963.
THE POLYPROPYLENE STORY
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obin Day’s Polypropylene chair was the first mass-produced injection-moulded polypropylene chair of its type. It is, in fact, the best-selling plastic chair ever designed and has been produced around the world. Exact production figures are hard to find, but estimates of total sales range between 20m and 50m pieces to date.
The Polyprop chair, as it is affectionately known, became ubiquitous after its introduction in 1963, changing the look of schools, universities, village halls and football stadia across Britain and countless other countries. Yet the chair was a challenge to produce, one that required foresight and tenacity from its designer Day and manufacturer Hille. Great design pieces come from a clear strategic vision, often coupled with a new material or one developed within another industry. The first mass-produced chair, the 1859 Thonet No.14, exploited new steam-bending technology and became the world’s best-selling chair. Michael Thonet’s ambition to create a chair that anyone could afford led him to invent not just a manufacturing process, but also the way his chair was shipped. Day had a similar vision for the Polyprop.
In 1960, Day took the relatively new material polypropylene, discovered in 1954 by Italian chemist Giulio Natta, and applied it for the first time to the furniture industry. With this material, it became possible to produce large multiples at low cost because of the speed of the injectionmoulding process. A seat shell could be made in a matter of minutes.
Day was a democratic designer and committed to designing objects for everyday use. He said in 1962, “A good design must fulfil its purpose well, be soundly constructed and should express in its design this purpose and construction.” His diligent problem-solving, combined with his economical approach to construction, led to the innovative design of the Polyprop. The chair was reduced to a few simple elements, a process typical of his work: a plastic seat shell, a welded tubular steel A-frame leg that enabled efficient stacking, and four nylon feet. “Considerations of posture and anatomy largely determined the sections through the shell,” explained Day, who achieved maximum strength in the plastic by rolling over the edges of the seat shell to reach the desired strength, while also reducing the amount of material needed. Reading through the following essay from 1963, it struck me how similar the process is today when designing something as complex as a plastic chair. The to-ing and fro-ing between >
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Development work on the Polypropylene chair in Day’s Cheyne Walk studio in London.
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134 Disegno. DISPARATE THREADS
Children play in the savannah that surrounds the Thread cultural centre in Sinthian, Senegal. Designed by Toshiko Mori Architects, the centre is operated by US-based non-profit American Friends of Le Korsa and funded by The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. PHOTO Iwan Baan
Disparate Threads
An arts centre in Senegal’s savanna provides a glimpse of a society in which culture is politics, and art the basis of national and personal identity. WORDS Oli Stratford PHOTOS Iwan Baan and Thatcher Cook
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S A rust-coloured rock that is rich in iron and aluminium. 1
Toshiko Mori (b.1951) was born in Japan. She founded her eponymous studio in 1981 and works across architecture and exhibition design, as well as teaching at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. 2
inthian’s roads are red with laterite,1 passing through green fields of millet, corn and grass. It is the rainy season and Sinthian, a village in the east of Senegal, is unexpectedly sylvan. Its goats, cattle and donkeys graze in pasture noduled with termite mounds, watched over by children in the savannah, while the village proper is grouped in a series of round mudwall thatch huts, white against the soil, close to which grow young gardens of okra, bitter eggplants, cucumbers and spice. Amidst this August verdure is the Thread cultural centre. It is white-walled too, made from plastered bricks produced from Sinthian’s clay, and its canopy is thatch, although of more ambitious form than the conical shapes that top the nearby huts. Thread’s roof undulates across its low-rise walls in curves that suggest discrete shaded spaces within the open-plan centre below. The building is a rough figure of eight, open to the savannah at its middle and arranged around two concrete courtyards at either end. All of it is ventilated by geometric patterns in the brickwork that aerate the sultriness of Senegalese summer. The thatch splits above the dual courtyards and sweeps into extended circular skylights in the canopy.
Thread is a social experiment, conducted in an outpost of west Africa some 520km from the Atlantic coast and Senegal’s capital Dakar. The centre was designed by Jordan MacTavish, an associate at New York-based architects Toshiko Mori,2 and, in the spirit of experimentation, is a hybrid. Thread is an artists’ residency programme, with two live-work spaces for visiting practitioners. It is a community space, which Sinthian’s 900 or so residents can use for education, workshops, gardening, relaxation, and – as a result of Thread being one of the few electrified structures in the village – a charging station for mobile phones. Equally, Thread is a piece of infrastructure, the roof canopy pitched so that rainwater pours into channels that run through to external cisterns providing 200,000 gallons of water a year, around 30 per cent of the village’s annual consumption. More than this, however, Thread is an attempt to answer certain questions. What role does art play in modern Senegal, a country that, historically, has used the arts as the engine for its political and societal development? And what role might art play in shaping a community – any community – through the cultivation of personal identity? “What is the impact, what do we hope the impact will be?” asks Thread’s director Nick Murphy. “That’s what we’re trying to learn. What can this space be?”
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Attempts to unravel Thread’s history quickly become knotty. The centre is run by American Friends of Le Korsa (AFLK), a US-based non-profit that works across health, education and >
Villagers in Sinthian clean the blue mosaic tiles that circle the cultural centre. Thread functions as a community centre as well as a residency space for Senegalese and international artists. PHOTOS Thatcher Cook
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