Design Talks

Observations on design

Best new books on architecture and design for 2018

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Nargess

Once-upon-a-time design theory was considered art history’s inferior sibling – a bit of a side-subject. When in 1989 Terence Conran and Stephen Bayley opened the doors to the cubic white Design Museum at Shad Thames, it was such a revelation. Finally, the applied arts were given a platform to talk. Some years later I recall my excitement at discovering a university course in Design History that promised to dissect and analyse the subject in the context of social history and wider ideologies.

Now, design is everywhere. The Design Museum has moved to a bigger place in Kensington, the V&A’s exhibitions challenge design in all directions, whilst the Barbican is instigating dialogues between art, design, creativity, music, dance. When I first began writing, and my work took on the motor car, discussing design in the context of the automotive world was considered novel. All this has changed, and it is a great time to be involved in analysing the world of design. To reflect the trend, publishers now offer a grand choice of design books. Some can be a touch superficial; then again, a seasoned hunter will find plenty of excellent, thought-provoking, and at times beautifully-bound books to relax the festive weeks away. Here are my recent finds.

California Captured, published by Phaidon, brings together the work of the brilliant photographer Marvin Rand. Los Angeles was a kind of utopian dream in the mid-twentieth century. The sunny southern Californian city had attracted a progressive set – experimental filmmakers, independent artists, writers and patrons of design came here for it offered freedom of expression. This coupled with urban growth and industrial expansion led to a period of exceptional architectural innovation. Rand captured this spirit. Throughout the post-war period, the native Angeleno photographed the buildings of Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, John Lautner, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler. He also played a crucial role in helping shape the mid-century Californian modern style – all of which is explored in this stylish book.

Also by Phaidon, Designed in the USSR: 1950-1989, created in collaboration with Moscow Design Museum, is an account of life under Communist rule told through the design of everyday objects, graphics, illustration and advertising. The images here, selected largely from the Museum’s collection, tell the compelling story of design behind the Iron Curtain.

Modernist Design Complete is comprehensive study of last century’s progressive movement. Published by Thames & Hudson, this impressive hardback brings together most facets and scales of design under a single volume to present the vast breadth of towering and lesser-known figures within modernism. This lavishly-illustrated book reveals unexpected connections and aims to form new insights. Elsewhere by the same publisher, The Iconic House features over 100 of the world’s most important and influential residential homes designed and built since 1900. International in scope and wide-ranging in style, each has a unique approach that makes it radical for its time.

Then a trio of architectural books take on a more academic position. Le Corbusier: The Buildings, is a comprehensive survey of the work of the modernist pioneer. The features his vast body of work – the early Swiss villas, his mid-career buildings, his role as the first global architect to venture out to Argentina and Russia, his late contributions including the extensive civic plan of Chadigarh in India – an unforgettable place to visit. With an authoritative text by scholar and curator Jean-Louis Cohen, the book reveals the creative evolution and global breadth of a great practitioner, theorist and evangelist of modernist architecture.

Santiago Calatrava: Drawing, Building, Reflecting is an intimate publication in which the celebrated Spanish architect reflects on the nature of the his work’s imagination and reveals the breadth of his influences. The architect’s words and thoughts are extensively illustrated with photographs of his buildings and drawings from his private sketchbooks, work rarely seen outside his studio. Elsewhere, Kengo Kuma, Complete Works records the work of the acclaimed Japanese architect. It features Kuma’s thirty projects, including the brilliant V&A Dundee. There are personal and architectural reflections on each project alongside specially commissioned photography and detailed drawings. An essay by Kenneth Frampton frames Kuma’s work in the context of post-war Japan’s flourishing architecture scene.

Social Design is a timely book – a survey of architects and designers hoping to make a positive impact on society. Published by Lars Müller, the 27 projects featured here look at cityscape and countryside, housing, education and work, production, migration, networks and the environment. They are framed by three research studies that trace the historical roots and foundations of social design and look at today’s theoretical discourse and future trends. Projects here include Fairphone, Little Sun by Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen, and Shigeru Ban’s Paper Emergency Shelters.

Radical Essex follows a similar theme. It sets out to reveal another side to the county at the edge of London that has been a victim of crude stereotyping. The book captures the raw rural beauty and the radical spirit of Essex. It features some excellent finds – the 1960s student halls at the University of Essex in Colchester, the bungalows at Silver End at Braintree, built by Francis Crittall and fitted with his famous steel frames, London Underground stations designer Charles Holden’s cottages near Maldon, and there is the brilliant white crop of International Style houses at Frinton-on-Sea.

Lastly, another relevant design book delves into the approaching age of sustainable mobility. The Current – New Wheels for the Post-Petrol Age by Gestalten takes a closer look at some of the pioneers of eco mobility, introducing a selection of the more inspired products and concepts to include vehicles with two, three or four wheels. The combination offers an interesting glimpse into what to expect from a new generation of creatives in the next decade.

Design exhibition: The Future Starts Here

Posted on November 23, 2017 by Nargess

‘The future is up for grabs,’ according to Rory Hyde, co-curator of The Future Starts Here, an upcoming exhibition at London’s V&A which sets out to explore the power of design to shape the world of tomorrow. ‘This is not a speculative show,’ he warns me at the preview this morning. Rather this exhibition, which has taken two years to research – working with architects, designers, scientists, inventors around the world – is more about gathering evidence of the future to see what social and cultural impact objects can have on our lives. ‘These objects point to where we are going.’

On show this morning were only a few examples of the sort of objects and ideas to expect when the exhibition opens here in May 2018. All the 100 or so selected pieces are currently in development in studios and laboratories around the world. From smart appliances to satellites, artificial intelligence to internet culture, this will be the first opportunity to not only see projects by the likes of Google and Apple, but in the context of alternative futures presented by smaller institutions and independent thinkers.

For instance, Bento Biowork’s Bento Lab is a portable DNA lab that makes it relatively easy to take biological samples and conduct simple genetic analysis. As the name suggests it is compact and designed to be portable and affordable to appeal to universities but also ‘hobbyists’ – bee keepers, brewers, say the inventors. Radical Love is Heather Dewey Hagborg’s DNA portraits of Chelsea Manning – the life size, three-dimensional printed portraits were generated using her DNA, which was extracted while in prison from cheek swabs and hair clippings and posted to the artist.

Netherlands-based artist Jalila Essaidi’s Living Network project imagines a future of the internet as a worldwide web of trees, allowing communication over great distances.While, Luchtsingel is a 400-meter pedestrian bridge connecting Rotterdam’s declining Central District to north of the city with its own park and rooftop garden. A community initiative crowdfunded by citizens, each of the bridge’s timber panels is inscribed with the name of every donor. Elsewhere, Facebook’s Aquila aircraft is part of a solar-powered high-altitude platform station system which is in early development as part of the company’s efforts to bring affordable connectivity to unconnected regions around the world.

The Future Starts Here will explore not just these objects and ideas, but crucially what impact they may have on us, our daily lives, our work, cities, larger politics and the planet. Hyde likens it to the smartphone, an object that has merged our work, home, personal and leisure lives, unknowingly completely altered how we live. The exhibition highlights the reality that the future isn’t some abstract concept that we don’t have control of – we can monitor, direct, select the objects and ideas that define our future in a positive way.

The Future Starts Here is supported by Volkswagen Group
The exhibition will be on from 12 May to 4 November 2018 in The Sainsbury Gallery, V&A, London

#TheFutureStartsHere

Highlights of London Design Festival 2017

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Nargess

The creative industries are worth close to £90bn a year to the economy, offering some three million jobs here. It is a ‘serious, big, wealth-earning and reputation-enhancing’ sector, Sir John Sorrell told the Financial Times this weekend. These numbers came back to me as the London Design Festival (16-24 September) kicked off bringing colour and creativity to pockets of this dynamic city.

In its fifteenth year, LDF is expecting some 350,000 visitors. Sorrell founded the festival. He feels London’s advantage over copycat events has always been our rich creative education system which dates back 180 years when the state set up the Government School of Design in Somerset House to improve the quality of design. It is also thanks to an open city, an international city that embraces people of all colour, race and religion – something that became rather clear when, unlike most of the nation, the majority of Londoners found the concept of leaving Europe completely absurd.

Fifteen years on and LDF is bigger, bolder, braver and crucially more inclusive – representing voices from the international community and not only star designers which seemed to be the case in previous years. This year’s festival, which officially began on Saturday and will go on all week, feels more confident. LDF has grown to include Design Frontiers at Somerset House, Landmark projects around the city, Design Junction at King’s Cross and a whole host of pop-ups from Brixton to Clerkenwell and around the city.

Sir John Sorrell seems pleased with the event as he joins our group for a preview walk around the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is traditionally LDF’s main hub where exhibitors are asked to choose a room and create work that responds to the space and collection. For me the V&A exhibits are the most exciting part of LDF, for this unique place is a living museum, constantly evolving to be an expression of my city, its past, its now and its future – and it carries infinite personal memories.

The exhibits are a big mix tackling various themes from sustainability, ageing to materiality. They include Leaf, a bionic chandelier by the V&A’s emerging talent medallist Julian Melchiorri. Here his chandelier explores how biological micro-organisms and materials can convert waste and pollution into valuable resources. Then Scooter for Life by transport designer Paul Priestman addresses ageing and mobility. Whilst Czech glassmaker Petr Stanicky works with the possibilities of materials with two installations – a mesmerising site-specific work offering pixelated vistas of the surrounding V&A in the delicate September light, and a geometric thick glass structure that plays with our sense of perspective. Then, set designer Es Devlin’s High Tide for Carmen takes us on a bit of Alice in Wonderland trip to the making of her scenes for the Georges Bizet’s opera.

A visual treat is Flynn Talbot’s Reflection Room which looks incredible in the Prince Consort Gallery, a vaulted space rarely visited. It is dramatically illuminated on either end by the Australian artist’s trademark blue and orange lighting. He says the blue is symbolic of the ocean and the orange of the vast sunsets and sunrises of his childhood.

While We Wait by Palestinian architects Elias and Yousef Anastas explores the cultural claim of nature and is inspired by the Cremisan Valley between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The lace-like structure of local stone spirals softly up the Medieval and Renaissance rooms as we are encouraged to enter and take a meditative and reflective moment inside. Form and objects also chart cultural identity and ideas by V&A artist-in-residence Lobna Chowdhary.

Yet my pick of the V&A exhibitions is Transmission by London designer Ross Lovegrove in the incredible Tapestries room. His 21-meter-long flowing installation and free-standing three-dimensional tapestry works are made of tactile Alcantara – the colours offer the exact pigments of the stunning renaissance textiles that surround it. Lovegrove was inspired by the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries on display at the far end of this dark and mysterious room. In a reflective moment, he expresses his longing to explore such non-commercial projects, of taking this installation to other historical locations and to see how it responds and lives on.

Away from the V&A, as part of the Landmarks projects, architect Sam Jacob Studios presents Urban Cabin, the fourth project in the Mini Living research initiative to see how intelligent design can help city life. Sitting on the Southbank behind Oxo Tower, it explores London’s identity and what the city means to its inhabitants. Jacob questions the concept of private home, how we can challenge the existing (possibly outdated) model to be relevant for today and future urban inhabitants living in crowded cities where property is limited and expensive. He proposes a mixed private and shared space explored through food and books. Urban Cabin offers a shared open kitchen to evoke the feeling of street food and markets, and a micro-library, a cross between grand library and the books piled by our bedside. It is brilliantly constructed with opposing materials – precious stone, building foam, expensive timber, cheap wood – stacked sculpturally to create both shelving and exterior structure. Then the communal modular structure is covered in copper mesh to reflect the surrounding city life.

Elsewhere, Stellar Works presented Indigo: A Cultural Iconography at the Design Museum, an installation by design duo Neri&Hu exploring materiality in manufacturing, the craft of making and the associations between old and new and east and west in attitude, form and application.

Finally, at Design Junction Campari offers Campari Creates a stylish floating bar on the canal at Granary Square, King’s Cross to serve classic Campari cocktails and launch La Vita Campari. This lifestyle book is a hybrid of arts and ideas, design history, liquid history and cocktail book, and it was created by Spinach for Campari and authored by me. The book will be available at the barge until the end of the festival.

Nargess Banks

See previous years’ highlights here.

Exploring the dark, cute and magical world of Yuko Higuchi

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Nargess

‘Magical Colouring Museum’ is a beautifully-illustrated picture book of sorts – cute, dark, surreal, funny, frightening at times. ‘Cats and Other Creatures’ features 24 stand-alone illustrations. Published by Laurence King, together they explore the imaginative world of the celebrated, cult Tokyo artist Yuko Higuchi.

Higuchi is the voice behind the kawaii trend, sketching whimsical illustrations of anthropomorphised characters that fuse cute picture-book style illustrations with dark and surreal elements. In her imaginative universe, cats look like ogres and foxes transform into astronauts. So, I caught up with the artist to see what inspires her wonderfully magical and at times dark world.

Your characters are at once cute and dark. What inspires you?

I can’t pin-point what would be considered cute and what would be dark in my artwork. But, I can tell you that I draw what I love (creatures, etc.) spontaneously.

What attracts you to kawaii?

I am not conscious of creating things that are kawaii. I think that the more intentionally you seek out kawaii, the more intentional your artwork becomes. And in the end, it will just look deliberate or calculated. I don’t have a high opinion on these kinds of kawaii.

Do you base your characters on reality?

Not all of them. I usually just draw as ideas pop into my head, much like how children scribble. Some of my drawings are imaginary characters, and in some cases I base those characters on reality. But, I also add a touch of my imagination to them when I draw.

And the surreal storylines, are these based on real or imaginary events?

I draw from things that pop up in my head. Sometimes an actual event can ignite my storyline, but often my imagination takes over and the story develops as I draw.

What medium do you work in?

I use pens, pencils, hemp paper and watercolours.

Your books can be appreciated by both children and adults. Who do you have in mind when creating?

When I create a book, I don’t have any target age range. Although, honestly, I feel that more adults like my books than children.

Nargess Banks

Interview Yana Peel: Serpentine Gallery CEO discusses arts and ideas

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Nargess

The Serpentine Galleries hold a unique position. They are nestled in Kensington Gardens in London’s glorious Hyde Park. They occupy discreet spaces and you may not even notice them walking by. Yet the two boutique galleries – Serpentine and Sackler – have held some of the most exciting exhibitions in the city. Then there is the annual commission for the Serpentine Gallery pavilions – one of the most anticipated events in the architecture calendar since its launch in 2000 showing work by Zaha Hadid, Frank Ghery, Bjarke Ingels and now Diebedo Francis Kéré.

Yana Peel became chief executive of the organisation over a year ago when she took over the position from its founder Julia Peyton-Jones. She has an extraordinary record of service to the arts, co-founding the contemporary art fund Outset, co-chairing the public debate forum Intelligence Squared Group; she sits on many arts advisory boards, and still appears to have time to write children’s books.

Peel also brings a very different approach to the Serpentine programme which I discovered when I met with her in March for an article for Weatherbys Private Bank Magazine. Below is an edited version of our interview.

Nargess Banks: You’ve spoken passionately about making exciting art and ideas available to a broad audience, and there is something egalitarian about the Serpentine Galleries being accessible and free, which also relates to your background at Outset and art philanthropy.

Yana Peel: I am incredibly excited about this open landscape for art and ideas. What we are trying to do is lure in the visitor who would normally not come in, for instance with the Pavilion, whether it’s the wireless access in terms of the mobile app, or virtual reality with Zaha Hadid. It is about creating programmes around art, architecture, fashion and music. It is about collapsing these universes and being a hub for these kinds of multiple discussions which are so relevant in the world today.

NB: How do you see the Serpentine expanding on its mission to bring these visions to an even wider audience?

YP: Well, as with all things we do at the Serpentine, it starts with the art and the artists we work with. Take our 2017 Summer season – we are excited to present Grayson Perry, the first solo UK show of the American filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa, and our Summer Pavilion by architect Diebedo Francis Kéré.

As you can tell by the show’s title ‘Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!’, Grayson addresses front on the question of popularity and populism – who comes to an art gallery and why. AJ is someone with a cult reputation for work with Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick and Solange Knowles. Here he reinvents the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, taking his message right across London with a series of interventions in unexpected places. And Kéré is a marvel, and perhaps the nicest man you will ever meet, with community at the very heart of his practice. All these artists are excited by the opportunities the Serpentine presents and we’re excited to work with them. We are a small gallery in terms of our footprint, but with a local, national and international reach.

NB: I’ve read you admire creatives with disruptive ideas, a vision you share with the artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Given our current political climate, how crucial is the role of galleries like the Serpentine to provoke open debates, explore how the arts can help shape society, agitate even?

LP: Essential! And it is the artists who are best place to do this. That’s why everything we do is artist led. The late John Latham (who exhibited at the Serpentine at the time of our interview) believed powerfully in the artist’s role in society. His Artist Placement Group put artists in industry long before the concept of residency became cool. At Sackler, we showed four contemporary artists picking up this radical mantle.

NB: The younger generation consumes art in different ways, perhaps in a less linear fashion. How do you see the organisation responding going forward?

LP: It is a given that we must be where they are. This mean across all social media platforms, those we know and those we don’t yet know about. Technology is a key focus for me, and something Hans Ulrich and I work closely on with our curator of digital. How can we use technology to give bigger and wider audiences access to our art? More importantly, we need to make sure we are listening as well as talking. It has to be a dialogue, always. Whether that is Hans Ulrich’s 89+ project (co-founded by Simon Castets), our educational outreach on the Edgware Road, or our fantastic Future Contemporaries fundraising board. To be meaningful, the dialogue must reach across all areas of the organisation.

NB: Events such as the summer marathons, although open to all, can be intimidating for some. How can they be made to be more inclusive?

YP: The Marathon is an annual joy, and last year’s Miracle Marathon was our best yet. The second day was held just off Brick Lane, mixing our West London magic with East London cool. The atmosphere was fantastic and the audience definitely younger than ever. We also broadcast the entire event on the Serpentine Radio, opening it up to a whole new audience, giving people the chance to engage with the material on their own terms.

NB: The annual Serpentine Pavilion commission has become one of the most respected events in the architecture calendar. How do you see this project pushing the envelope even further?

LP: (The 2017 Pavilion winner) Francis Kéré’s work is so exciting and a way of bringing his village of Gando, Burkino Faso into Kensington Gardens. The Pavilion has such a history and Hans Ulrich and I, in making our first joint selection this year, were so mindful of that. Equally, we did want to push things forward. Kéré’s practice is rooted in community and sustainability. He is also the most wonderful storyteller. His design, based on a tree which is the focal meeting point in his hometown on Gando, is the inspiration for a new piece of programming that will bring even wider audiences in to what we call an open landscape of art and ideas.

Watch this space as we are going to bring in different groups. We’re looking at how we can use our privileged position, use our platform to bring in dissenting voices. Always better to debate a question than to answer…

Nargess Banks

‘Grayson Perry: Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!’ and Arthur Jafa ‘A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions’ are on at the Serpentine and Sackler galleries until 10 September. Francis Kéré’s Serpentine Pavilion will be at Kensington Gardens until 8 October.