Design Talks

Observations on design

London celebrates design & ideology with new biennale

Posted on June 3, 2016 by Nargess

London is in the midst of quite a creative moment. The Design Museum is soon to open in the £83m conversion of the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, and the V&A has announced plans for a second museum of visual culture in east London’s Olympicopolis at the south end of the Olympic Park where there will also be a Sadler’s Wells and Washington DC’s Smithsonian outposts.

But before all this kicks off, the city will experience its first Design Biennale which will join forces with the annual London Design Festival. Alongside the festival, the biennale will aim to unite a global community of designers, artists, architects, as well as design historians and theorists for a celebration of visual culture.

John Sorrell, co-founder of the festival and biennale says, ‘If you believe in design you know it can make the world a better place, and I say the more international design dialogue the better.’

But do we really need two design festivals at the same time? The two, we are told, will function on very different levels and complement one another. Whereas the festival is about showcasing new works of design and site-specific installation work, the biennale will be more about creative thinking, speculative design, theory, ideology.

‘The unique combination of these two events will offer a world wide window on design,’ says Sorrel.

Working under the title Utopia by Design – a nod to the 500th anniversary of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, and looking at London both as platform and subject – the biennale will focus on talks, education and conversations thus giving substance to the work on display. The biennale will work on pushing ideas rather than objects. This is an intriguing proposition that could be a template for other global festivals as such.

Should be exciting to see.

Read our highlights from LDF 2015 here

Highlights from Clerkenwell Design Week 2016

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Nargess

London is alive with creative energy and it is sometimes hard to keep up with the sheer volume of exhibitions and fairs celebrating visual culture. This week saw Clerkenwell Design Week celebrate its seventh year. The three-day event in May sees international brands, individual designers, and emerging young artists exhibit their latest creations in one of London’s oldest neighbourhoods – creating a striking contrast between the local architecture, old churches and historic buildings and the contemporary design and installations on show. The festival may be a relative newcomer to the scene, yet it has grown substantially in size, confidence and personality.

You enter CDW through St John’s Gate, where this year London studio Flea Folly Architects partnered with Hakwood to create an installation of stacked wood referencing the gate’s austere past. Along the route four glass-tile sculptures by Giles Miller Studio helped visitors navigate the fair.

CDW is as much about the products as the location, and one of the highlights was Icon’s House of Culture, an exhibition space dedicated to international brands and set up in the former Metropolitan Cold Stores in Smithfiled, now Fabric nightclub.

Here Stellar Works, the French/Japanese design brand with headquartered in Shanghai, showed its Valet Collection, first seen at Salone del Mobile in Milan. American designer David Rockwell collaborated with Stellar, interpreting the roots of the word valet for a series of fourteen beautifully crafted, unique furniture pieces that are relevant for contemporary living. We particularly like the clever shelving systems that offer combinations for book and vinyl storage, and a bar.

At EBB & Flow, Danish lighting designer Susanne Nielson with her passion for glass and textiles showed products based on a combination of British and Nordic designs. Elsewhere in Icon, the Scandinavian company NORR11 displayed its collection that aims to rethink classic designs for today with a strong focus on taking inspiration from the natural materials.

The British Collection offered an interesting line-up of local talent. Pluck, for instance, is a bespoke modern kitchen collection by 2MZ, a Brixton-based design studio. Here they have used traditional materials in a fresh way, the clutter-free environment allowing the clean lines and thoughtful application of colour to stand out.

Minale + Mann debuted The Workshop and the new Well Hung collection. An elegant, and a rather sexy, line of furniture that works with combining wood and metal including a cantilevered dining table in American walnut and copper, and the unfolding bureau that appears as if floating from the wall was inspired by the grand piano.

The dim lights and dark corridors The House of Detention, a former prison and very chilly on that day, offered an interesting space to exhibit Platform. Amongst the forty up-and-coming designers showing their work, we particularly liked the clever modular breadboard by Baker Street Boys who also showed their coffee table/stool designs that work with metal, wood and Perspex. And Rubertelli Design saw the London-based sculptor Stefano Rubertelli fuse the world of handmade and mass production to create striking, swirly lights that are almost pieces of art.

Over at Additions the display focused on interior products where Monica Bispo, a Brazilian born Italy based ceramic artist, offered her collection of ceramics. Inspired by artisanal craftsmanship, her pieces are both physically and visually handmade.

Tom Dixon has installed a large central chandelier in the main space of the beautiful seventeenth century church in Clerkenwell Green, as well as setting up a working environment and kitchen that will remain as permanent fixtures here.

Elsewhere, Sam Jacob Design created the 3D One Thing After Another for Sto Werkstatt. The concept aims to explore the dialogue between the digital and physical worlds. Much like a Russian Doll, the original garden shed structure is 3D scanned to create a larger digital copy for the outside with another tiny scaled copy housed inside.

Design Fields at Spa Field saw curated contemporary design on display including work by the main sponsor Renault. Here the carmaker’s focus was on the environment, displaying its futuristic EOLAB concept car that showcases over hundred sustainable innovations. Renault also collaborated with MA industrial design students at Central Saint Martins who were tasked to envisage the interior of a future autonomous car with some intriguing results.

The winning proposal Oura is a single wearable vehicle suit with a gesture-controlled, head-up display visor that uses virtual reality – the cabin is almost entirely stripped away so that the user can interact more closely with their environment as they travel.

Clerkenwell Design Week ran from 24-26 May 2016. To find out more about exhibiting or attending the 2017 fair visit here.

Read our reviews of previous Clerkenwell Design Week here.

Nargess Banks

Highlights: London Design Festival 2013

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Nargess

London is experiencing a design renaissance and events like the 2013 London Design Festival that kicked off earlier this week highlight the city’s incredible creative energy. This is not to say all the designers featured are locals – as the show once again illustrates, London is a gateway for talent from all over the globe. The exhibits this year are an intriguing, lovely and spirited collection spanning from the purely conceptual to the quirky and fun.

Lebanese designer Najla El Zein’s Wind Portal sees 5000 spinning paper windmills installed in the doorway of the festival’s hub at the Victoria & Albert museum. Her delicate hand folded spinning windmills are attached to upright plastic tubes.

Other highlights at the V&A included a dramatic and giant chandelier of colourful glass spheres designed by Omer Arbel for Canadian lighting company Bocci. The chandelier is made of 280 hand-blown glass lights suspended on slim copper wires that descend some 30m from the ceiling of the first floor gallery, through a hole in the floor and into the museum’s main atrium. The impact is quite something.

Another project sees the museum and Swarovski challenge 14 leading designers – including Faye Toogood, Amanda Levete, Tom Dixon and Paul Cocksedge – to look into the theme of ‘God is in the Details’ by selecting an object of desire from the V&A’s extensive collections and constructing a viewing point from Swarovski specialist lenses that are positioned next to the chosen objects. Watch Cocksedge discusses his contribution to the project here.

Elsewhere in London Dutch designer Tord Boontje experiments with magnesium to cover surfaces with some intriguing results, and British designer Sebastian Wrong collaborates with Danish marque Hay to create a furniture collection shown in a Georgian townhouse.

Finally, Endless Stair is a fantastically surreal piece by Alex de Rijke of dRMM, Dean of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, installed in front of the Tate Modern. Inspiration came from Dutch graphic artist M.C Escher. Working with ARUP Engineers using American tulipwood, the team have created a series of 20 interlocking staircases that see climbers appear and disappear. The Endless Stair will be in place until 10 October.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

Read highlights of London Design Festival 2012 here.

The eleventh London Design Festival runs from 14 – 22 September. For more on this year and to apply for next year’s festival visit here.

Designs on Chocolate

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Nargess

Five leading designers and chocolatiers have created a range of intriguing sculptures referencing London, and made entirely from chocolate. Designs on Chocolate at The Dock – up the road from DT headquarters – forms part of London Design Festival which sees a host of designers, showrooms, design organisations and retailers participating in events across the city.

The exhibition sees the collaboration between The Dock owner Tom Dixon and Rococo, Lee Broom and William Curley, Paul Cocksedge and Hotel Chocolat, Faye Toogood and Cocomaya, and Moritz Waldemeyer and Artisan du Chocolat.

Cocksedge’s contribution Gift is a striking blend of traditional crafts and digital technology.?Following an inspiring visit to the Hotel Chocolat production centre, the designer has used almost a thousand pieces from its range of exquisitely crafted chocolates to create a wall-hanging pattern that interacts with the viewer – to become something beyond itself.

He explains: ‘I wanted to leave these beautiful pieces of chocolate as they were, instead of creating an object simply to be looked at, and so losing the whole idea of taste.

‘The true art of the chocolatier appeals to your palate as well as your eyes, and through the process of placing these exquisite pieces in various patterns, the project started to grow…’

‘Designs on Chocolate’ will be on display at The Dock from 17-23 September.

Read our highlights of LDF 2012 here, and our report from the LDF 2011.

Designer Talks: Tom Dixon

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Nargess

Tom Dixon discusses the parallels between nationality and creativity at the 2012 Milan Furniture Fair. In the latest video from Nowness experts Carlo Lavagna and Roberto De Paolis the British industrial designer talks of his likes of Lee Broom, La Chance, and Noé Duchaufour Lawrence. Watch the video here.