Design Talks

Observations on design

2020 in review: A year in design and rethinking the future

Posted on December 22, 2020 by Nargess

No One is an Island' by Random International, Superblue, Studio Wayne McGregor and BMW i and dancers Jacob O’Connell and Rebecca Bassett- Graham (company Wayne McGregor). Photo Ravi Deepres © BMW AG — ‘*No One is an Island‘ by Random International, Superblue, Studio Wayne McGregor © BMW AG*

We will enter a decade premiered with a very dark storm. Yet much of what we are witnessing since the pandemic was already in progress: a planet in deep ecological crisis, systemic race and gender inequalities, unsustainable economic disparities, rise of populism and the post-truth era, the anxieties of the information age and machine science…

Covid has fast-tracked the speed of change. It has intensified – no exploded debates around these overwhelming existential issues, much of which have found a visceral voice in Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion. In the words of the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, this is our version of World War III. And like so any monumental episode, it has offered a chance to deconstruct our world as we know it – or knew it – and to reimagine new possibilities.

With our normal lives on hold and almost no international travel, formally time-short senior designers and executives have been available and excited to talk, keen to discuss their ideas – and more openly. I like to think it has something to do with the informality of home video calls. With their intimate backdrop of books and artwork, and the occasional cute wondering toddler and (not-so-cuddly) pet, the set-up has certainly contributed to a more honest exchange of ideas.

So, what has been my top takes from reporting in the time of the coronavirus? A large chunk of my writing since March has been devoted to navigating design in the future. What will our transport landscape look and feel like? How will we live more efficiently in our sprawling cities? What does progressive luxury look like? How can we use design and innovation to cut waste? I’ve been speaking with car designer, industrial designers, architects and town planners, with technology experts and gaming innovators, with fashion designers, filmmakers, artists and even chefs. It has been exhaustive, and I’ve had to learn about new industries, new technologies for a hugely exciting and challenging journey of discovery.

An image of the Pix Moving self-driving fleet — Pix Moving self-driving fleet © Pix Moving

One of the more ambitious projects came via a Chinese tech start-up called Pix Moving. The Pix Self-Moving Spaces are autonomous mobile living units based on self-driving cars, while the overarching Pix City proposes flexible, technology-evolving cities. Company founder Chase Cao wants to deconstruct the relationship between city inhabitants and the urban space they occupy – what he calls the core logic of the city. Airspeeder is another inventive idea by the Australian tech firm Alauda. This is an electric flying race car ready to take to the skies and compete with other speeders in a bid to help advance sustainable future transport.

Less grand but equally impressive are practical ideas for more ecological urban transport. The handful of electric cars presented by the traditional automakers have been adequate but largely underwhelming, leaving independent designers and makers to come up with the more radical ideas. London-based industrial design studio Seymourpowell’s Quarter Car is an interior-led design study of an electric autonomous ride-sharing vehicle for urban commutes, with physical partitions to allow for adaptable communal and private journeys.

Elsewhere, I was contacted by Arturo Tedeschi, an Italian architect and computational designer who uses algorithmic modelling, virtual reality and video games to make complex and exciting forms and shapes. While Swiss start-up Komma virtually showed me its Urban Mobility Vehicle. The work of a former Pininfarina designer, this inventive electric commuter sits somewhere between a motorbike and a conventional car, offering the agility of a two-wheeler, but with the comfort and safety of the latter.

Rolls-Royce Phantom V by Lunaz — The electric 1861 Rolls-Royce Phantom by Lunaz © Lunaz

On a more conceptual level, Royal College of Art Intelligent Mobility students offered some really exciting ideas to drive our future. I particularly like a proposal to create a megacity taxi for 2040 as a way of considering the various cultural and social aspects of our future smart cities. A couple offer some sophisticated critical design thinking too with ideas that may have seemed impossible dreams before the pandemic made all things impossible possible.

On the other side of the spectrum, in the midst of the darkest hours of pandemic lockdown, I got into a debate as to the future of luxury. It all started with a casual video call with Alex Innes, the designer in charge of Rolls-Royce Coachbuild, who had rightfully been questioning the validity of the traditional values of luxury. The pandemic had offered him clarity on the issues, and the term post-opulence was coined to represent the coming era where timeless objects will gain more value and customers will form deeper relations with luxury brands.

That week I happen to contact Dickie Bannenberg, one half of the celebrated London yacht design studio Bannenberg & Rowell. He was equally pensive, noting that the post-pandemic world should be one of post-hedonism – a concept that also chimes with our time. How much of this will be viable in the ultra-luxury, purely hedonistic superyacht world remains to be seen though.

Arksen 85 © The Boundary — Arksen 85 adventure yacht represent new luxury © The Boundary

More realistic perhaps are the restored classic Rolls-Royces, Jaguars and Land Rovers by the British restomod firm Lunaz. The 1961 Rolls-Royce Phantom V and Silver Cloud motors – completely re-imagined for modern driving with less wasteful battery-electric drive and sustainable luxury materials – seem to be the finest manifestation of a post-pandemic luxury landscape.

As is Arksen. Capturing the zeitgeist, the yacht business is on a mission to inject purpose into luxury travel and to facilitate philanthropic adventures. The portfolio is truly tempting, but what I like most about both these brands is that rather than make ecological luxury a lesser option, they have injected huge desire into their products and propositions. To me, this is the key.

Meanwhile, art and culture increasingly became a lifeline during the pandemic blues. With shuttered galleries and museums, doors closed to theatres and music halls, and with art fairs cancelled, the need to endorse the arts became ever-more apparent. Early in the pandemic, I had an uplifting conversation with a friend and colleague Thomas Girst who, in his role as head of BMW cultural engagement, is deeply involved with supporting artists and cultural establishments.

We talked of the benefits for corporate brands getting involved with creative sponsorships, but also of the momentum steered by the BLM movement urging us to rethink cultural memory – re-write the text to include those largely left out of the canon of art and design history. The pandemic has also proved something that I’ve long passionately believed: of the necessity of arts and ideas to be more than entertainment – to be the voice, the reviewer and the projector of change.

Covid may have accelerated life into the future, yet with limited access to places and people, it also brought clarity and the chance to rethink the future through design and innovation — Emeric Lhuisset ‘L’autre rive’ at 2019 Paris Photo concludes with a series of fading blue renderings through cyanotype © Emeric Lhuisset

I signed off my 2020 writing assignments with a conversation with Chris Bangle – a creative I admire very much for his on-going questioning of mainstream car design, and for his true critical design thinking. Over an impassioned and animated video call, he made a compelling case for an urgent need to radically rethink and deconstruct design for the electric age.

Chris compared today to the 1960s – a similar period of fear, upheaval, complexity and contradictions – noting that cars have the potential to reflect the paradoxical nature of our society. He spoke of cars imagined to the theory of ‘form follows emotion’. I mused over the idea that cars could have the possibility of then sharing this emotion with society – maybe take it further and be part of nation-building, have civic duties. Later, discussing this with my father, he suggested replacing the word ’emotion’ with ‘human relations’ or ‘society’, so the argument extends to becoming one at the centre of progressive political thought.

Chris Bangle and the creative team behind the 2018 REDS electric concept — Chris Bangle and the creative team behind REDS electric concept © CBA

Looking back, what I learnt most in the last nine months is that we have a collective responsibility to engage with the world and to make change happen. Change is possible, but it requires active involvement. And the pandemic has been polarising – separating us into those who see this as a call to action, and those who have retreated further inside their tribes. I’m transported to my childhood growing up in the Middle East, witnessing how in times of conflict and revolution friendships and families naturally drift apart over ideology and action. It is often in these critical times when you can re-evaluate who you wish to continue in your life story.

On a positive note, the pandemic unleashed a new wave of activists – well, Covid combined with Trump’s toxic reign. And it is encouraging to see some of my dear friends and colleagues stand up to racial and social injustice, defend the planet and environment, become involved in the making of a better world. There’s been a fantastic sense of camaraderie during the pandemic which I sincerely hope won’t vanish with the end of the virus.

Covid has brought with it much loss and sorrow. It has shown social disparities with the economically disadvantaged and immigrant groups largely bearing much of the heavy burden. The virus has exposed our fragility as humans. It has also revealed our spirit of resilience. Stuck at home with limited access to people and places, with social media’s frightening alternative truths in constant view, it is easy to get consumed in life’s dramas. Bad news shouts louder than good news. But look around and for every act of evil there will be a dozen selfless deeds of kindness.

On the day before the third London lockdown, I popped into a gallery which happened to have remained open. On entering I spotted the beautifully illustrated ‘Planting the Oudolf Gardens’ on the bookshelf and mentioned to the manager how I admire Piet Oudolf’s expressive and spirited landscape designs. She promptly offered me the book with a smile, saying that it clearly belongs to me. There is plenty to be hopeful for. To quote the author Isabel Allende, ‘the virus has invited us to design a new future’.

To 2021.
In memory of Annie, who lived a full life and left us peacefully during the pandemic.

Time for change after the coronavirus pandemic

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Nargess

I’ve taken to keeping a daily diary in isolation – though I suspect I’m not alone here. Most of us locked up our diaries to collect dust in the attic when we left our teens. Its job was complete, navigating those unpredictable and impressionable years. This pandemic needs its own navigation. For many, cocooned in the safety net of the western world, trauma of such scale, the human loss, the fear of the unknown, are new. Some have witnessed wars and displacement (I saw some of this) but for many, the memory of war is from grandparents’ stories, from the movies, from The Diary of Anne Frank. The more contemporary events are events – they happen somewhere else, captured in a photograph, an article, noted and then gone.

This coronavirus pandemic has the gravitas of a world war. And there is something unifying in its global-ness. We’re all in it together, feeling one another’s pain, understanding each other’s fears. And equally terrified and helpless. Yet, the reality of the loss of lives and livelihood, the surreal nature of the lockdown – these need to undergo some sort of daily navigation. And so, the daily diary has re-emerged, with slightly less self-absorbed content and with a finer quality Japanese fountain-pen, ink, and paper.

It contains intimate details of the cherry blossoms that have doubled since yesterday in the local park where I take my daily walks. The hazy morning light brightening in the unusual April heat. London’s clear skies. The silence in the air. The orchestra of bird songs – some of which are new melodies in a city cleansed of air and noise pollution. The hungry bees populating the garden. Spiders weaving their architectural webs. The house cheese plant cuttings coming to life in their containers. The life of spring.

I observe the teenager across the lawn in the neighbouring house slouched in his backyard, headphones on, absorbed in his world, possibly thinking of his school friends, maybe even a girl, or boy, whom he cannot see for months. Months that are years in the teenage world. I watch the man in the park dry fly fishing. It looks surprisingly elegant. I mourn the elderly neighbour no longer with us, not for the virus, but another illness that took him in silence in the midst of this chaos. I hear another neighbour signing, alone but with her church choir via Zoom or Skype for Easter Sunday. I try not to listen to the ambulance and police sirens moving across our road, slowly fading, perhaps another tragedy in offing. Then silence and stories in my own mind.

Mostly, my diary pages are filled with ideas of how these monumental episodes offer the chance of renewal. Why not use this golden gift of silence to rethink our cities? With the High Street closed, I’m reminded of how little we need to live well. There are the essentials, of course, but do we need all this ‘stuff’ designed for desire? Observing families in the parks, should shopping be the default for entertainment? Equally, the pandemic is highlighting the precious value of time with family and friends, the social factor in being human. It is humbling watching communities come together to help one another with such dignity, and formal work rivals offering assistance. Perhaps our cities could focus less on empty consumption and more on places for people, for communities to grow, for this unified spirit to continue.

Equally, observing London with minimum cars and transport, do we need to be constantly moving? Walking through Hyde Park and onto Buckingham Palace, there is so much beauty in this city without clutter. Why should cars drive through parks? Why not pedestrianised central London and offer electric trams and the kind of clean driverless pods we have been discussing for years? The products are there. The technology is there. The infrastructure is largely there. It all just needs a push.

We now see that many businesses can function perfectly remotely. Why not rethink the tired work arrangement, the largely unchanged office format? Judging by the conversations I’m having with most colleagues, especially those in public relations and communications who are now working from their home offices and shed, I see such creative thinking from individuals who usually follow the corporate line. I suspect there will be more productivity, more interesting work emerging from this new way of working.

The world could benefit from working together progressively. This pandemic is proof of that. Watching the devastation caused to less fortunate countries, and watching ours largely surviving through state intervention, should it not encourage a more active state? Surely, we can now see the value in investing ever-more in our national health system – instead of systematically starving it. Equally, seeing how more deprived communities are suffering largely due to underlying health issues, isn’t this the time to discuss inequality, education and more? Even capitalism knows it cannot survive in its current grossly unequal state.

Within this adversity, we see families reuniting in parks, teenagers cycling with their parents, no iPhone in sight. Couples jog together absorbed in conversation. Maybe they are revaluating their life, their fast world. Perhaps they are rethinking their careers, ditching the corporate life for something more real. I suspect much of this thinking will be gone by the end of the pandemic (assuming there is an end). Yet, dear diary I hope this episode changes our collective perspectives, that we each see our individual responsibility to help make this world a better one not for a handful, but for all. That is not a tall order.

BIG’s Bjarke Ingels talks clean cities

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Nargess

‘Urban space and urban movement coexist in a constant feedback loop where each part is evolving to adjust to the other.’ So says Bjarke Ingels, founder of the Danish architecture firm BIG. In his vision for the ideal future urban environment, mobility will be automated with the driverless car ultimately changing the dynamics of the urban space.

BIG proposes for an ‘elastic’ city, a flexible urban environment to replace the current static one. By fully utilising information technology, driverless vehicles will become a reality. ‘Smart tile’ surfaces, a thin layer of reprogrammable sensors within the surface of roads, will coordinate the flow of traffic so that the city can be free of the clutter that supports driving. Finally, with a push of a button the ‘urban pavement’ can transform to adapt to our needs.

We caught up with the architect at his office in New York.

Design Talks. How will the driverless car change the shape of the urban space?
Bjarke Ingels. In the next five to 10 years cars we will become not just driverless but also noiseless, and fumeless. Therefore many of the aspects that condemn the car to remain outside will no longer exist and it would potentially be possible to blur the distinction between inside and outside.

From where I’m sitting in New York, I’m looking at the building opposite that used to be a giant manufacturing site. It now has elevators that can take cars and trucks to all floors with individual zoning docks on all the levels so some of the people in the building actually park their car in their office. Down the street there is another project called the Car Lot where people can park their cars in a place that is visible so they can look at their awesome vehicle whilst dinning!

DT. But how will buildings support the new developments in mobility?
BI. The above examples are quite eccentric, but in the big picture, developments in urban mobility will mostly impact on the space between the buildings rather than on the buildings themselves. In theory the city itself can remain unchanged and left to deal with other design tasks. It is really the urban pavement that is transformed on its own.

DT. If space has been made available through the removal of the clutter that supports traffic, then how will building design respond to this new urban aesthetic?
BI. I have a suspicion that other parameters rather than urban mobility will have more of an impact on building design. In general the envelop of the building – the roof and the façade – is probably more likely to respond to energy and climate change. If developments in technology will have an impact on the future of buildings it is going to have more to do with daylight exposure, thermal exposure, glare, energy consumption for heating and so on than to do with how we move in the city.

DT. How do you envisage the city being shaped?
BI. The city in general is shaped by a vast multitude of very diverse parameters – there is a whole army of political, cultural, economical and social issues affecting the city. Off course in different domains different issues have higher significance, and right now you can say the floor of a building is very dominated by the way we move around in the city, and the vertical dimension is much more influenced by how we occupy the city. With clean cars this distinction could blur a little.

DT. What do you mean when you say ‘elastic’ city?
BI. The traditional dichotomy between the city and the countryside are blurring with activities such as leisure invading formally purely industrial spaces. In New York, for instance, the waterfronts are turning into parks and they have made more bicycle lanes in the city in the last two years than in the whole of Copenhagen!

The gradual evolution used to be that you first walked, then you cycled, then you drove a car and in each step you abandoned the previous mode of transportation. Now they complement each other. In the last 50 years urban planning has been focused on efficient car circulation, but in the future you’ll see much more of a hybrid of different movement. This is what I mean by the elastic city – one that would expand and contract to accommodate this.

DT. How will this flexible city actually work?
BI. Our roads could serve as a programmable surface so that by switching say a light on and off you can change a street into a plaza, or instantly materialise a sports court, or dynamically expand and contract to create more or less bicycle space, pedestrian space, or car space in a way that has not been possible.

In Hanoi in Vietnam the whole city gets up at 6am and does sports together in the streets – this is the kind of shared space and flexibility of space that I’m thinking of which will become reality.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

For more on BIG read BIG’s 21st Century urban living and Urban concepts for 2030. Also watch this video by CNN which reveals more about the thinking behind some of BIG’s projects.

All rights and labelled images are covered by ©

8 House: BIG’s 21 century urban living

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Nargess

Last century’s modern thinkers founds new ways to house city dwellers – some of the solutions proved not so successful in the long term. How to house twenty first-century urbanites is at the heart of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)’s 8 House scheme just completed on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

8 House proposes a fresh way of urban existence where the ease of suburban life is fused with the energy of a big city, where business and housing co-exist, and where common areas and facilities merge with personal life.

With views overlooking Copenhagen Canal and Kalvebod Fælled’s protected open spaces, the project, for client St Frederikslund Holding, is a 60,000sqm mixed-use building – a hybrid between shops, offices, apartments and 150 town houses.

Instead of dividing the different habitation and trade functions of the building into separate blocks, BIG has spread out the various functions horizontally. The apartments are placed at the top while the commercial programme unfolds at the base of the building. ‘We are exploiting that they have deeper floor plates than the residential spaces so you get extra space to accommodate the gardens,’ explains BIG founding architect Bjarke Ingels. ‘This is also exploiting that housing tend to enjoy daylight and views but offices don’t.’

BIG was inspired by classic townhouses and the open, democratic nature of functional architecture for the design of the accommodation which includes apartments of varied sizes, penthouses and townhouses with small gardens and pathways to encourage outdoor communication.

8 House’s layout encourages its inhabitants to bike all the way from the ground floor to the top, moving alongside townhouses with gardens winding through an urban perimeter block. ‘We have created an almost mountain pass that extends from the street and moves up in a figure 8 – hence the name,’ muses Ingels. ‘It becomes like a public space where people can bike, strol1 long or walk all the way from the street to the penthouse and back down. Therefore social life which is normally restricted to street level invades the three dimensional space of the urban block.’

The bow-shaped building creates two distinct spaces, separated by the centre of the bow, which hosts the communal facilities. At the very same spot, the building is penetrated by a 9m wide passage that connects the two surrounding city spaces: the park area to the west and the channel area to the east.

‘This is our take on creative, experimental architecture, which surprises and calls for a life based on a sense of community,’ says Ingels. ‘We have actually elevated the shared facilities around the height axis, so that gardens, trees and the system of paths follow the body of the structure all the way to the roof. On the rooftop, eleven stories up, these shared spaces culminate in a combined mountain path and rooftop garden. From here, you can enjoy the view of Kalvebod Fælled’s nature resort.’

BIG took part in a competition initiated by carmaker Audi over the summer to find solutions for urban mobility in 2030. Read our review published in Car Design News.

Read more about the architect here at BIG Talks Clean Cities and watch this video by CNN which gives more of an insight into BIG’s thinking.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

Urban mobility concepts for 2030

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Nargess

Sustainable mobility by its very nature requires a supportive infrastructure – and a globally united one at that – for real value. With this in mind, Audi has sponsored six international avant-garde architects to design a future urban landscape for 2030 that will examine how urban planning and architecture can support green mobility .

The prize is 100,000 euro, and the winner will be announced in August at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in the Venice Biennale. For the exhibition, each of the architects will produce an installation representing their concept of a transformed reality.

The architects are: Alison Brooks Architects (London), BIG (Copenhagen), Cloud 9 (Barcelona), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York), J. Mayer H. Architects (Berlin) and Standardarchitecture (Beijing).

Read more on Phase One in my reports for Wallpaper* and Car Design News.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks