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Kristof Vrancken/Unfold, via Istanbul Design Biennial
The open-end process devised by Unfold, an Antwerp-based design group that will be exhibiting at the Istanbul Design Biennial, in operation. By ALICE RAWSTHORN Published: September 9, 2012
LONDON — How do you design a toaster? By that, I don’t mean what skills and materials will be needed, but rather what the design process consists of. Would you be surprised if I suggested that it might begin with a manufacturer describing what type of toaster is required to a designer who envisages exactly what it will look like and how it will be made, then sends detailed specifications to a factory? Of course not. Countless products have been designed in that way since the Industrial Revolution.
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But a very different process was applied to the design of the toasters as well as of the vacuum cleaners, kettles, vases and toys that are to be exhibited at the first Istanbul Design Biennial, which opens on Oct. 13. All of those products were developed by the new genre of open-ended design processes, which deploy advanced production technologies, like 3-D printing, to enable the people who will use the finished objects to take critical design decisions about them. “The traditional model of the designer and manufacturer foisting a finished product on to the market is no longer relevant in many fields,” said Joseph Grima, editor of the
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In the Shifting World of Product Design, the User Now Has a Voice - NYTimes.com
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Maker Faire Africa/disterics, via Istanbul Design Biennial
Sunglasses made with various objects, giving each pair a unique look, by Cyrus Kabiru.
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Italian design and architecture magazine “Domus,” who is co-curating the Istanbul biennial with the Turkish architect Emre Arolat. “We want to explore what happens when the design process becomes open-ended and unfinished, rather than closed, and to look at the way it is transforming design culture.” The new design and manufacturing systems, including 3-D printing, enable objects to be made at such speed and so precisely that the specifications of each one can be customized to adopt a shape or style chosen by its eventual user. Mr. Grima has invited some of the designers who are pioneering the development of these technologies to participate in “Adhocracy,” a program of exhibitions, workshops and performances scheduled throughout the biennial.
Among them are Thomas Lommée and Jesse Howard, who work in Brussels and Amsterdam respectively, and Unfold, a design group in Antwerp, Belgium, co-founded by Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen. Meanwhile, Cyrus Kabiru, Norbert Okec and other participants in the Maker Faire Africa events in Lagos, Nairobi and Cairo are to take up residencies in Istanbul where they will forge collaborations with Turkish designers, manufacturers and artisans. “Adhocracy” is not the first attempt to explore the impact of the new production technologies on design. The same theme was analyzed by an exhibition presented by “Domus” in Milan in April during the city’s annual furniture fair, and is now being scrutinized in “The Machine: Designing a New Industrial Revolution,” running through Oct. 7 at the C-mine Design Center in Genk, Belgium. But “Adhocracy” is an unusually ambitious endeavor, which could make a constructive contribution to the ongoing debate about the rapidly changing role of design. If it succeeds, it will also establish the Istanbul Design Biennial, which is organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, as a dynamic addition to the global design calendar. The new biennial comes at a particularly busy time in the design year because dozens of design festivals take place in different cities all over the world every September and October. Despite cuts in public funding for such projects in many countries, this month’s schedule includes events in Beijing, Brussels, London, Paris and Shanghai as well as the opening of Vienna Design Week and a flurry of activity in Helsinki as the city nears the end of its year as World Design Capital. The events in October range from Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and the annual design festivals in Prague and the Polish city of Lodz, to the biennials in Istanbul and Kortrijk in Belgium. Many of the early autumn design fests revolve around commercial projects. The London Design Festival is dominated by the 100% Design furniture fair, as is Shanghai Design Week by the China International Furniture Expo. But the London festival also embraces scores of fringe events ranging from an exhibition of sticky tape from around the world in the Shoreditch shop of the industrial designer Jasper Morrison, to a survey of the eating and cooking products designed by Sebastian Bergne and Corin Mellor at the David Mellor store in Chelsea. The most influential design fests tend to be the ones that are driven by cultural, rather than commercial agendas. The most talked-about event of last autumn was the Gwangju Design Biennial in South Korea where the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei co-curated
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In the Shifting World of Product Design, the User Now Has a Voice - NYTimes.com
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an exhibition “Unnamed,” which challenged conventional definitions of design. So far, the new Istanbul biennial looks like the strongest contender to succeed Gwangju this year. A promising development is that some cultural events, which have traditionally focused on art or architecture, are adopting a more thoughtful and provocative approach to design. Among them is Manifesta, the roving European contemporary art biennial running through Sept. 30 in Flanders. It includes work by the Beehive Design Collective, an experimental U.S. design group, and the Dutch book designer Irma Boom. Another example is the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened late last month and runs through Nov. 25. Traditionally, it has focused (unsurprisingly) on architecture and ignored other aspects of design, with occasional exceptions — mostly implausible, uncomfortable chairs designed by architects — but not this time. Mr. Morrison is participating in “Common Ground,” the exhibition curated by the biennale’s director, the British architect David Chipperfield, and other designers have contributed to the national pavilions in the Giardini di Castello. The German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic was part of team responsible for his national pavilion, as was the Dutch graphic designer Joost Grootens for the Belgian Pavilion. Among the dozens of socially motivated projects exhibited in the U.S. Pavilion were pieces by community design groups, design activists and information designers. For the first time, design features in the Venice Architecture Biennale not as a prop, but by making an incisive contribution to the issues under discussion. In other words, it has been included for the same reasons that art often is — just as it should be.
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A version of this article appeared in print on September 10, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune. FACEBOOK
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