Design Talks

Observations on design

Playful seesaw installation at Trump wall wins 2020 Beazley Designs award

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Nargess

The images are captivating. They show smiling children playing on pink seesaws installed across the crude brown steel slats that divides the US/Mexican border – the Trump wall. The interactive installation went up on 28 July 2019 and lasted just 40 minutes before border guards ordered its removal. Then the pictures went viral online. Now ‘Teeter-Totter Wall’ has been awarded the prestigious Beazley Designs of the Year 2020 in the London Design Museum’s annual competition.

‘Teeter-Totter Wall’, designed by architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello

The project is a collaboration between the Californian based architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello developed from a binational seesaw idea they conceived a decade ago. The duo chose to implement their concept on one of the most politicised border walls of recent times and in the summer of 2019 – at a moment of extreme tension when the world looked on in horror at the outgoing US president’s horrific war on immigration with innocent children at its centre.

With ‘Teeter-Totter Wall’, Rael and San Fratello want to demonstrate that actions taking place on one side of the border have direct consequences on the other – viewing the boundary as a site of severance. Not surprisingly it took a great deal of planning and preparation given the logistics of the projects. Working with Colectivo Chopeke from the other side of the border at Sunland Park, within 20 minutes the three seesaws were slotted into gaps in the steel boundary wall and screwed safely in place. Children on both sides soon jumped on the bicycle seats before the guards removed the installation.

Images strictly © Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello for the Beazley Designs of the Year

‘Living Colours’ at Japan House explores the ancient art of colour mixing

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Nargess

‘The Tale of Genji’ was written a thousand years ago and is considered one of the first modern novels. Penned by a lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibuthe, it describes the colourful lives of the courtiers and courtesan of the Heian period (794 to 1185), the peak of Japan’s imperial court and a time noted for its appreciation of the arts, in particular poetry and literature. Members of the court wrote and exchange love poems on dyed fans or elaborately folded paper. Often hidden from public view, courtesans would layer their kimonos with colours, subtly coded to reveal elements of their personalities to attract a possible suitor when glimpsed through the passing carriage.

A new exhibition at Japan House London highlights the historical importance of colour in Japan, weaving together the ancient art of using natural pigments inspired by seasonal changes, and elements extracted from the customs of the Heian period. ‘Living Colours’ is a delicate show focused on the work of the 200-year old Yoshioka Dyeing Workshop, a bastion of this method of colour making. The Japan House London deco building is swathed in vibrant colours with a series of ceiling-high installations of silk – each communicating a specific seasonal message – to the soothing hum of a well, a recording of the sounds at the Yoshioka workshop in Ky?to.

In ancient Japan, textile production relied on natural dyeing techniques and it focused on the concept of kasane, meaning the art of colour combinations sensitive to the changing seasons. Since joining the workshop in 1988, fifth-generation master of colour Yoshioka Sachio and his daughter Sarasa, a specialist dyeing weaver, have looked to revive this technique. They have abandoned the use of synthetic colours in favour of pigments harvested from the natural world and plant-based dyeing techniques. ‘Ky?to’s natural beauty is perfect for the dying business,’ Yoshioka tells us. To salvage the tradition, he initially began researching the past, visiting the old shrines and talking with experts to understand the world of the Heian period.

Yoshioka’s work expresses the beauty in the natural pigments of plant-based colours. The seasons are prominent in Japan, especially in Ky?to, but evolve constantly, and the kasane layering of colour and tone is about appreciating these small changes. ‘The cherry blossom pinks of spring and deep plums of autumn,’ he muses. Yoshioka uses only natural dyes in his workshop, some 100 or so shades are fused and mixed slowly for complex and vibrant pigments to immerge.

With the help of the literature, historical documents and textile samples, the Yoshioka studio has recreated the palette of the Japanese court, reviving this age-old craft with all its hidden meanings to be appropriate for modern times. On until 19 May 2019, ‘Living Colours – Kasane, the Language of Colour Combination’ shines a spotlight on the guardians of this tradition, and introduces us to the art of mixing vivid seasonal colours in the most natural and organic way.

All images are strictly under © by Yoshioka Dyeing Workshop and © Jeremie Souteyrat for Japan House London.

Japan House London presents ‘Subtle’ to salute paper art

Posted on November 28, 2018 by Nargess

Paper is alive. Paper breathes. Paper is ever-evolving, changing conceptually and physically with time. Paper can be moulded, manipulated, sculpted. It can be decorative, functional, seductive, argumentative. It can even deceive. ‘Subtle: Delicate or Infinitesimal’ at Japan House London explores the possibilities of paper.

The show is curated and directed by Kenya Hara, the gallery’s global chief creative director and art director at Muji. The display is subtle, modest even, set within the building’s clean and clear deco beauty. It begs you to walk up, take an intimate look at these delicate objects and read the accompanying text which adds intrigue. For instance, the Origata Design Institute writes alongside its exhibit: ‘The act of folding paper – once you fold, you cannot return to the original state… but then you create structure and entrust your feelings onto paper.’

‘Subtle’ follows a successful run at Japan House’s other galleries in Los Angeles and São Paulo. The idea originates from the Takeo Paper Show, which began in Tokyo in 1965 as a way of engaging artists, challenging them to find new potentials for paper. Fifteen creatives living and working in Japan are on show here. They come from a diverse set of disciplines too – art, animation, architecture, fashion, graphic design and literature – each introducing their very own unique layer to this intriguing paper narrative. It reminds us of the value of the material, whilst highlighting the delicate craft of paper art in a modern light.

‘Subtle’ is at Japan House London until 24 December.
All images are © Jeremie Souteyrat, Japan House London.

Read about the previous exhibitions at Japan House.

Highlights from London Design Biennale 2018

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Nargess

‘Emotional States’ sets the theme for the 2018 London Design Biennale with Somerset House once again forming the brilliant backdrop to installations conceived by architects, designers and artists from six continents. The responses are varied. Apart from a handful of pavilions seemingly concerned with pleasing the instagram crowd, most others have responded with emotion and urgency to the sustainability of our planet, identity and nationhood, war and destruction and lost civilisations.

Some offer intellectual solutions. At the UK pavilion, ‘Maps of Defiance’ by Forensic Architecture looks at how design can directly inform new perspectives and lines of investigation. This is an emotional project about preserving disappearing cultures. Through digital tools and image-capture the team record and preserve evidence of cultural heritage destruction and genocide, such as the savagely ravaged Yazidi community of Iraq presented at the Biennale. The idea is to eventually reconstruct the buildings and rebuild these communities.

At the US pavilion, ‘Face Values’ by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum explores alternative uses of technology, and consider the vast capabilities of digital design. We are encouraged to make expressive gestures and allow the machine to translate our emotions, so live facial data form the basis for a dialogue on the provocative relationship between man and machine.

A few pavilions take a dark dystopian turn. Austria’s ‘After Abundance’ asked us to enter a terrifying post climate change world where Alpine forests are fast disappearing and rain is artificially created. ‘Matter to Matter’, the LDB winning pavilion by Latvia’s Arthur Analts of Variant Studio, asks visitors to leave fleeting messages on his wall of condensation to explore the transience of emotions and the ways in which nature reclaims the marks we leave behind. Others offer a touch of hope. Over at the Brazil pavilion, London-based designer David Elia sets out to give a voice to ecological anger with his ‘Desmatamento’ (deforestation). This tranquil room shares the beauty and significance of the diminishing Amazon rainforest.

Finally, the Refugees’ Pavilion tells the story of the survival of displaced people through creativity. Housed within the flat-pack structure ‘Better Shelter’ (the winner of the Design Museum‘s 2016 Design of the Year), we enter the temporary world of refugees to see their stories through the objects they place on display, so as to humanise their conditions.

LDB opened its doors to the public last week and will be at Somerset House, London until 23 September.

Take a look at the inaugural 2016 LDB on the theme of ‘Utopia by Design’

Serpentine Pavilion 2018 by Frida Escobedo

Posted on June 12, 2018 by Nargess

This is the 18th Serpentine Pavilion, the temporary installation appearing each summer in London’s Kensington Gardens. It is the work of Frida Escobedo, a complex and fascinating architect with a small studio in Mexico concerned with reactivating urban spaces. In Hyde Park, her practice imagines a courtyard of light, water and geometry. It takes the form of an enclosed courtyard, with two rectangular volumes positioned at an angle. The courtyard and lattice walls are inspired by a celosia, the traditional breeze wall found in Mexican domestic architecture. Yet here they are made with a very English material, cement roof tiles, and arranged to blur our vision so we see the park as fragments of blues and greens. Like Mexico this structure is at once tough, fluid, flexible. It is anchored in space but also spaceless. Through a blend of simple materials made complex and surprising, and the pivoted axis that traces the 1851 Greenwich meridian, we find ourselves reflecting on the past and present.

At 38, Escobedo is the youngest candidate and only the second female architect to complete this project alone – the other being Zaha Hadid who designed the inaugural pavilion. What started as a initiative for allowing some of the grand masters of architecture to build in London has since evolved to be a space for experimentation, for exploration and for opening a wider discourse as to the role of the arts in shaping our world. Under the leadership of the Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and the chief executive Yana Peel, the pavilion project has become more daring, more radical and therefore much more exciting.

Walking through this simple structure on the preview day, I was reminded of BIG’s pavilion of 2016 – the most visited and certainly the most Instagramable of all these park projects. It was visually dramatic, but had no connection to its surroundings and said so little. The materials were cold, harsh and sharp and felt disconnected to its green natural environment. In contrast, Diébédo Francis Kéré‘s quiet pavilion the following year, a giant treehouse of sorts, was inviting. It was a sanctuary that naturally provoked intimate discourses – and no it wasn’t much of a hit on social media. It was Peel’s first pavilion choice as the then new chief executive, and it certainly made a stance as to where she feels the Serpentine Galleries should be heading.

Like Francis Kéré’s, Escobedo’s structure isn’t showy. Instead it initiates a much more complex set of questions about time, space, identity and multiple geographies. Hadid famously said ‘there should be no end to experimentation’ and the Serpentine sees its mission to champion arts and ideas to a wider public, to ‘share our beliefs in internationalism and radical inclusion,’ says Peel. The pavilion project is architecture for everyone, and Escobedo’s delicately-harsh courtyard is here for the summer months to be explored and enjoyed by all offering, in the words of Peel, a space for healthy self-reflection from above and below.

See the previous Serpentine Pavilion projects here