Hasta La Ideas

Humans need to design a better future for the planet, and anger can be a good engine for that change, MoMA curator Paola Antonelli told the Dezeen Day audience.

It is important that humans make reparations for the damage that they have done to the planet and adjust our lives to be more responsible, said Antonelli during her Dezeen Day keynote.

“The future is not really terrifying,” she said. “It just needs to be made better. Rather than angst, I wish we used anger.”

We all have a role to play whether doing something very small, like picking up rubbish on the streets, or “flights of imagination” like Elon Musk’s efforts to move to Mars, she explained.

Anger could be an engine for change

“The only way to live well is to be for others or amongst others,” said Antonelli. “Anger could be a better engine to try and improve things in the future.”

“Greta is angry at the older generation, and that’s fine. I think that sense of action is what is needed,” she continued.

During her talk at Dezeen Day, Antonelli spoke about the Broken Nature exhibition she curated for the Triennale di Milano this year, which Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs described in his introduction as “epoch-defining”.

“I was part of a groundswell,” said Antonelli. “This was just one of many exhibitions, many artist projects, designers enterprises that deal with being more responsible towards the planet, and the species.”

“Being responsible doesn’t mean only recycling”

As well as appealing to the design community the exhibition was intended to engage citizens with the issues facing the world in the climate crisis.

“We wanted to highlight the fact that being responsible doesn’t mean only recycling, something that’s well known to this audience but sometimes needs to be understood by the public at large,” she said.

Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA in New York. She told Dezeen in an interview earlier this year that it is inevitable that humankind will cease to exist in the future.

“We will become extinct; extinction is normal, it’s natural,” she told Dezeen. “We don’t have the power to stop our extinction but we have the power to make it count.”

Rather than trying to prevent our extinction we should instead design ourselves a “beautiful ending”, she continued. Only then will the next dominant species on earth think of the human race with respect.

“It’s not pessimistic, it’s about thinking of our legacy,” she said at Dezeen Day. “Pessimistic would be to be in denial, instead knowing it and doing something beautiful with it is the best.”

“To be responsible you don’t have to sacrifice sensuality”

The Milan Triennale exhibition, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, brought together 120 architecture and design projects from the last 30 years that demonstrate this “crisis in our humanity”.

“To be responsible you don’t have to sacrifice sensuality, beauty, elegance, all of the different tropes that make design so interesting,”  said Antonelli today. “We really see in this exhibition that design can be responsible and beautiful at the same time.”

Each project explored the strands that connect human beings to nature that have been badly damaged, or permanently severed, in the anthropocene era – the period in which humans have become the dominant influence on the earth.

Neri Oxman – whose Mediated Matter Group won sustainable design of the year at the Dezeen Awards 2019 for Aguahoja – created a new commission for the exhibition, called Totems.

“If you know Neri’s work, it’s all about finding new ways, new processes and finding new technologies for a different way of building and a different way of designing,” Antonelli said during her Dezeen Day talk.

The Totem sculpture features flesh-coloured plumes, formed by injecting liquid melanin into intricate channels within a 3D-printed transparent brick. The brick was presented within a tall black totem.

Although currently on a small scale, the team hopes that the project will eventually see melanin – the pigment that produces human skin tone – applied to architecture.

Dezeen Day is taking place at BFI Southbank today, 30 October 2019. Alongside Paola Antonelli, speakers include architect Arthur Mamou-Mani and designer Natsai Audrey Chieza, who joined a panel on post-plastic materials, and principal at Zaha Hadid Architects Patrik Schumacher who will discuss fixing education.

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Students from Cambridge University have built an ultra-efficient electric car that drives using only as much power as it takes to boil a kettle.

The Cambridge University Eco Racing (CUER) student society built the four-seater car, named Helia, with efficiency as the main goal.

Their achievement has been to produce a car that can travel 80 kilometres-per-hour using only 2500 watts, or as much power as it takes to boil a single kettle, which is equivalent to 31 watt-hours-per-kilometre.

For comparison’s sake, CUER points out that the Tesla Model 3 needs eight kettles’ worth of power to achieve the same output, while the Volkswagen e-Golf needs nine, and the BMW i3 requires nine and a half.

On a single charge, Helia can cover a range of 900 kilometres – the distance from London to Edinburgh. Again, compared to the Tesla 3, the Cambridge University team’s car has double the range on a battery a quarter of the size.

The ability to cover this distance is aided by Helia’s chassis and body panels made from carbon fibre, which grant it a kerb weight of 550 kilograms.

CUER’s programme director, Xiaofan Zhang, said the achievement was possible because electric vehicle (EV) technology had developed so far in a short space of time.

“These innovations have allowed us to build a four-seat car that is much faster, more efficient and practical,” he said.

Zhang said the team had leveraged the knowhow of UK automative companies in developing Helia.

“Currently there is a lot of news about the decline of the UK’s automotive industry, but working with our partners has shown us that there is a very strong network of automotive companies,” Zhang said.

“Many of our partners are world leaders in automotive engineering, research and development, and high-value manufacturing but are not necessarily household names.”

Helia draws power from conventional EV chargers but can also use the solar cells on its roof.

CUER has just put Helia through its paces in the 3000-kilometre Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, which ran from 13 to 20 October 2019 in Australia.

Taking place across the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide, the event is the most famous solar-powered car race in the world.

CUER set out aiming for a podium finish in the race’s cruiser class, which is for practical, multiple-occupancy vehicles. They had to drop out on day two of the race, however, after driving at high speeds that drained the battery.

“Whilst we have had some misfortune in the last couple of days during the competition the performance we we’re seeing from Helia showed she was very competitive,” said CUER in a Facebook post.

“It’s a fantastic achievement already given Helia is our first-ever cruiser-class car.”

The Cambridge University-based group is made up of 20 students, almost all working on the project only part-time.

The World Solar Challenge is held every two years in Australia. A previous winner in the cruiser class was Stella, by Solar Team Eindhoven from the Eindhoven University of Technology, who dubbed it “the world’s first solar-powered family car”.

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Although few overtly Bauhaus buildings were built in the UK, the movement’s ideals had a huge impact on British architecture. Beyond Bauhaus curator, Pete Collard, picks four buildings that demonstrate the school’s influence.

The Beyond Bauhaus exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London aims to explore the influence that the German design school, which was established 100 years ago, had in the UK.

Collard believes that it was the philosophies behind the Bauhaus, and its founder Walter Gropius, that have had the greatest lasting impact on architecture in the country.

“The impact of the Bauhaus on Britain was perhaps not stylistic, as modernism was already underway, but more to do with the philosophies that Gropius typified and brought to the UK in 1934,” Collard told Dezeen.

“His vision for a newly defined role for the architect in society was centred around collaborative working, the adoption of new materials and construction technologies, ideas that were not yet prevalent in contemporary practice at that time but that was transformative to many younger architects.”

Within the exhibition Collard and co-curator Valeria Carullo trace how the ideal behind the Bauhaus school, along with some of its teachers, came to the UK and how its ideals spread.

“Our exhibition initially shows ‘what happened next’ to some of the key Bauhaus figures in the immediate aftermath of the school’s closure in 1933, but from there we consider what impact the arrival of Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy in Britain had on British architecture during the 1930s and beyond,” said Collard.

“In particular we wanted to show that influence can be traced through ephemeral moments such as public lectures and exhibitions as much as any completed buildings.”

The exhibition features numerous images taken from RIBA’s picture archives displayed in a brightly coloured exhibition designed by Chilean architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen.

“We hope the exhibition demonstrates that modernism is a complex, multi-layered language and that a show centred around the Bauhaus can discuss Le Corbusier as well,” said Collard.

“Because much of the material on display is archival and primarily 2D – drawings, photographs and ephemera – we wanted to offer a more dynamic exhibition design than people might have anticipated, something that would encourage closer looking and create a more physical engagement within the gallery space.”

Read below for Pete Collard’s choices from the exhibition that demonstrate the breadth of influence of the Bauhaus in the UK:

Cadmore Lane Junior School by Hertfordshire County Architects Office, 1959

Collaborative design was central to Gropius’ tenure at the Bauhaus and his later teaching in Harvard, and formed the basis for his theories on architecture practice. “True leadership can emerge when all members have a chance to become leaders by performance, not by appointment,” he claimed.

In Britain, such approaches to practice were not seen until the post-war era, when a series of County Architects were established to design the social housing and public infrastructure projects being planned.

In Hertfordshire, the council recruited a team of young and progressive architects, including Mary Crowley and Stirrat Johnson-Marshall to deliver a programme of new schools. Johnson-Marshall had been inspired by a visit of Gropius to Liverpool University in 1934 and his new role as Deputy County Architect allowed him to bring the German master’s philosophies into action.

The office operated as a collaborative practice, sharing skills and experience and liaising closely with teachers to unite the disciplines of architecture and education in a joint purpose. Over 100 new facilities were built in the county in the first ten years, based on a standardised grid system and using pre-fabricated industrial components, as Hertfordshire became a world leader in school building.

Sunny Blunts Estate, Peterlee, by Peterlee Development Corporation, 1960

A founding principle of the Bauhaus was the belief that art should engage with all aspects of human life. Gropius carried this ethos forward into his architecture practice, as demonstrated when he asked Henry Moore to create a sculpture for his scheme for Impington Village College in Cambridgeshire in 1937.

Although the plan was scrapped due to costs, Moore’s design was later commissioned for a new school in Stevenage, part of a generous programme across Hertfordshire that saw one per cent of the county’s annual budget spent on contemporary art, to be installed within the schools and grounds.

A more significant iteration of Gropius’ concept saw the participation of abstract artist Victor Pasmore in the design of housing for the new town of Peterlee in County Durham. Following the early departure of Berthold Lubetkin from the project, Pasmore was appointed consulting director of urban design, using his paintings as the basis for the landscaping and layout of the 300-acre Sunny Blunts estate.

At the centre of the estate is the Apollo Pavilion, a cantilevered concrete cubist structure designed by Pasmore, set above an artificial lake as a symbol of the estate’s intentions to synthesise architecture and art.

New Ash Green, Kent, by Eric Lyons and Partners, 1966

Across town from the Bauhaus, the Törten housing estate was commissioned by the city of Dessau as an experimental solution for cost-effective mass housing. Designed by Walter Gropius with the Bauhaus’s department of architecture, the estate was planned under the premise of “light, air and sun”, and worked to a modular design principle that saw some components manufactured on site.

Some of Gropius’ ideas are visible in the Span Development housing built in the 1950s and 1960s, at 63 sites across the south of England.

The housing was designed by Eric Lyons, who worked as a junior architect in the office of Gropius and Maxwell Fry in the 1930s. He believed, like his former employer, that architects should provide a service to society, and sought to create village-style communities that integrated roads, houses and play areas into “total environments”.

The Span scheme for New Ash Green in Kent was proposed as a complete village with nineteen neighbourhoods, each featuring 100 to 150 homes and designed using elements of the modular forms seen in previous estates. All the houses faced or backed onto common green areas, with Lyons and his team also designing many of the village’s community and public facilities.

Reliance Controls Factory, Swindon, by Team 4, 1968

The Bauhaus’ move to Dessau in 1928 resulted in part from Walter Gropius’ desire to strengthen the links between his students and industry. The adoption of industrial materials was fundamental also to his architecture practice, although this created problems upon his arrival in the UK.

Gropius’ plans for Impington Village College ran significantly over budget as the standardised components he specified were not yet in production in Britain. It was only in the post-war era that standardisation could be implemented to scale and delivered at pace, as seen in the school building programme of Hertfordshire County Council.

The visibility of the factory-made structural components in many of the schools was to become a central facet of the high-tech style, pioneered by Team 4 in the 1960s, a practice set up by Su Brumwell, Wendy Cheesman, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers.

The firm’s last project was the Reliance Controls Factory in Swindon, a flexible, low-cost design built using available, standardised components. Foster’s later IBM Technical Park in Greenford, Middlesex was built to a similar ethos, a split scheme linked by block on pilotis that traverses a service road, a plan remarkably similar to that of Gropius’ Bauhaus building in Dessau.

Main image is by Edmund Sumner.

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Central Saint Martins graduate Chiara Tommencioni Pisapia has proposed a method for improving the textile recycling process by using moths to break down the natural fibres in discarded clothing.

Pisapia, who says she is “interested in sustainability related to fashion, textile recycling, bio-design and the circular economy“, wanted to find a more efficient way to deal with mixed-fibre textiles, which are currently complicated to recycle.

These textiles, containing a combination of manmade and natural fibres such as wool and polyester, typically end up in landfill or incinerators as it is difficult to separate the fibres for recycling.

“Textile recycling is currently done mainly using chemicals or mechanical methods,” the designer told Dezeen.

“As we are in a time where biology and design are interweaving, I thought it would be interesting to explore how nature is recycling and breaking down fibres and this brought me to look at clothes moths,” she added.

Pisapia initially proposed using common clothes moths to remove animal fibres from clothes, leaving behind the synthetic fibres so these can be recycled separately.

The moths feed exclusively on natural materials such as wool, fur, silk, felt and leather, as these contain a fibrous protein called keratin that their larvae can digest.

“I just thought that if clothes moths eat the beloved woollen clothes in our closet, why shouldn’t they eat those we don’t use anymore that have keratin inside,” the designer added.

Pisapia developed the Made by Moths project during her final-year studies on the MA Material Futures course at Central Saint Martins art school in London.

The London-based Italian designer worked with experts from the Center for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at the University of York to explore the potential for farming the moths’ larvae and using them to digest the keratin-based fibres.

The dust-like waste produced by the larvae is entirely natural and will biodegrade over time. It can therefore be composted and will give something back to the environment rather than polluting it.

Pisapia said she views the bio-waste as “a precious material” due to the number of larvae and the time required to produce even a tiny amount of material. For this reason, she chose to celebrate its properties by transforming it into jewellery.

“I liked the idea that a brooch is something that goes on garments where the material comes from,” she pointed out, “and also because a brooch can be used to hide or to highlight a hole that moths might have made in a garment.”

The length of time it takes for the larvae to break down even small quantities of fibres prompted the team to explore alternatives, including the potential for extracting the digestive enzymes of the larvae and reproducing them as a bacteria that could perform the same task.

The result of this process would likely be an amino acid that could have alternative applications to the bio-waste produced by the larvae.

According to the designer, the process would take place initially in a laboratory, with the potential to upscale it to an industrial level.

“To manage this successfully would require a strong collaboration between designers, biologists, chemists and investors,” she claimed.

Pisapia is continuing to speak with her collaborators at CNAP about the potential to develop the project and hopes to obtain funding to expand her research into the use of the moths’ enzymes to improve the textile recycling process.

Tech-based clothing startup Vollebak also developed fashion that becomes insect food. The company used wood pulp and algae to make a t-shirt that breaks down in soil or in a composter within three months.

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Fem Architects has completed a cross-laminated timber house clad in sheets of Corten steel in a twist on the traditional row house in Amsterdam.

The weathering steel was chosen as a nod to the Buiksloterham area’s historic brick factories.

Ridges on the Corten steel panels and window insets allowed for some depth and texture to be brought to the facade, despite the municipality’s strict rules about boundary lines.

White walls, concrete floors and a lightweight steel frame for the staircase and balustrades maximise the sense of openness and light in the interiors.

Constructed using a timber frame with cross-laminated timber (CLT) floors and walls, the three-storey house has high-ceilinged rooms that are designed to offer flexible family living.

Amsterdam-based practice Fem Architects also added  a separate flat on the roof and a studio apartment at the rear.

The house is bookended by two double-height spaces at either side of the kitchen, one overlooking a road at the front of the home and the other overlooking a patio garden through a large, double-height window.

Alongside this patio space runs a glass corridor, which currently acts as a loggia for enjoying the sun. Eventually it will provide a connection through to a separate studio at the end of the garden.

This private space at the back of the home has been designed to contrast the front, which could be separated with a glass partition eventually to form a ground floor office.

A living space occupies the first floor and the bedrooms sit above on the more private second floor, all connected by a large wooden staircase with landings becoming balconies that overlook the double-height spaces.

Fem Architects was founded in 2013 by TU Delft graduate Femke van de Voort.

Amsterdam’s row houses have prompted interesting responses by contemporary practices. Barend Koolhas’ inserted a gallery space between two properties, and James Jeffries’ built a house with a sunken living room.

Photography is by Isabel Nabuurs.

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