How does a priest baptize a baby while adhering to social distancing? Industrial designer Joshua Skirtich observed the new trend of using squirt guns loaded with holy water.
It’s obviously disturbing to see an adult pointing any type of firearm-like device at a baby. Skirtich came up with something far better. Here’s his project:
In the Catholic Church, infants are baptized to welcome them into the Catholic faith and to free them from the original sin they were born with. This is usually performed by a priest who douses the child’s forehead with holy water (water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy.
Recently, Catholic priests began using squirt guns loaded with holy water to baptize from afar. Photos of these Covid-19 Baptisms showcase uniformed men holding vibrant, plastic, toys for what is normally a serious, sacred ceremony. I initially thought to redesign the gun as a joke, but later realized it as a serious opportunity to design a premium squirt gun – something that has never really had a reason to exist.
The gun’s silhouette is a cross, the most important symbol of Christianity. The red cross floating in acrylic doubles as crosshairs (to aim with) and another nod to Christianity.
Three holes in the barrel signify ” the father, the son, and the holy spirit,” a doctrine used to explain the complex structure of God being three entities at once. During a baptism, the priest will say “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Da Enzo, a social-distance-observing restaurant in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, has figured out how to do away with menus. The waitress simply holds up a sheet of paper with a QR code on it.
Diners capture it with their phone, giving them access to the menu.
This is a practice that should persist after the pandemic is over. Printed menus are dumb. When I was a waiter, I hated cleaning them. Managers can’t like having to reprint an entire batch every time there’s a change. And the last time I went to a restaurant in the city, a combination of poor lighting and font size meant I could barely read the damn thing. I’d much rather have it in my phone.
The only downside is that diners without smartphones can’t access them. But post-pandemic, at least, restaurants could simply keep a small stock of menus for such cases.
The New York-based architect will speak to Dezeen’s founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about her work.
Originally from Germany, Selldorf founded her practice Selldorf Architects in New York in 1988 and has completed projects including museums, educational facilities and interiors.
In 2019, it completed a campus for a primary school in Zambia which was funded by a charity that aims to build schools and orphanages in rural African communities.
Annabelle Selldorf will feature in a live Screentime conversation as part of Virtual Design Festival
Selldorf is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the Board of the Architectural League of New York. She has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and received the AIA New York Medal of Honor in 2016.
This Screentime conversation is sponsored by Enscape, a virtual-reality and real-time rendering plugin for architectural design programme Autodesk Revit.
Regarder les peintures surréalistes et colorées de Sheila Nicolin donne l’impression d’être le témoin d’une scène de la vie quotidienne, prise sur le vif. Dans certaines de ses œuvres, on ressent parfois un sentiment d’intimité avec les sujets représentés. Cela fait d’ailleurs partie de sa démarche artistique. En tant que peintre, cette dernière explore la lutte qui est celle de la recherche d’une connexion intime. Racontées dans une perspective naïve et voyeuriste, les peintures de Sheila Nicolin créent des aperçus surréalistes d’expériences authentiques et vulnérables entourant la solitude, la maladie mentale et le désir.
It’s six years since digital design studio UsTwo created Monument Valley: an MC Escher-inspired puzzle game that racked up millions of downloads, and set a new bar for mobile gaming in the process. The project’s success prompted UsTwo to create a dedicated games division, which has spent the past few years crafting some impressive follow ups – from Monument Valley II to the charming Assemble With Care.
This week, UsTwo’s New York office released a new title created exclusively for Facebook’s gaming platform. Set in a glitchy, cyberpunk universe, Go Go Bots is a fast-paced game that allows players to test their logic by completing a series of climbing challenges. Players can choose from one of five robot characters and play in solo or multiplayer mode, competing against others to complete climbing routes in the fastest time possible.
As Chris Marotta, design lead at UsTwo New York, tells CR, the gameplay was inspired by real-life bouldering, where people scale walls by navigating colour coded courses. “At [bouldering’s] heart is the concept of the ‘climber’s puzzle’ – this idea that getting from A to B is a little problem to solve, sometimes through pure speed and power, other times through grace and cleverness,” he explains.
The game was designed to be easily consumed in idle moments – such as waiting for a train or commuting to work (or, in the case of lockdowns, sitting on the sofa at home). “We know that players on Facebook’s Instant Games gravitate towards snackable experiences, where there’s a really short ‘time to fun’. So we wanted something that gave players a meaningful session during those few minutes,” says Marotta. “We knew that we had to embrace the competitive spirit – in the context of a race, if the player doesn’t see a clear path to victory, or feels like they can’t win, the game is suddenly a lot less interesting.”
The project came out of a wider partnership between UsTwo New York and Facebook: the studio has spent the past four years working with the social media platform to develop the vision for its games platform, which launched in 2018. The platform allows developers to create games in HTML5, which means players can access them instantly on a mobile or desktop from within the Facebook app. (A standalone app is also available on Google Play, which allows players to watch gaming streams and take part in gaming groups as well as playing titles created for Facebook Gaming.)
The process began with a two-day workshop, where Facebook briefed UsTwo on the kind of experience they wanted to offer players. UsTwo’s initial idea was to create custom bots which players could put through a series of wacky challenges – a concept inspired by cult Japanese game shows like Most Extreme Elimination – but this soon proved problematic. “We thought it would be fun for players to watch their bots get destroyed in goofy ways – but it turns out there’s a fine line between fun and frustrating,” explains Marotta.
“As we moved towards [creating] a one-handed experience, we shifted the Go Go Bots concept to a futuristic game show where different bots raced up an epic climbing wall. We tried to retain that game show vibe but centred it around climbing and made the customisation more about the choice of bot [and] play style,” he adds.
With its focus on fun and quick challenges, it’s a very different experience to UsTwo’s previous releases, which are based around intricate and absorbing puzzles. And with its clear instructions, playful graphics and a race-against-time mechanic, the game feels reminiscent of vintage arcade titles from the 1980s.
Marotta says the game’s design was informed by user behaviour on Facebook Gaming and the platform’s focus on providing accessible games which promote “friendly competition” and interaction. “A key difference between Facebook Gaming and other gaming platforms is how and why its users engage with the platform. There’s a tendency to characterise these users as ‘casual gamers’, which isn’t all that informative or actionable from a design standpoint,” he says.
“We found it more useful to think about them through the lens of key contexts: when and where are they engaging with the game? How much time do they have to play? Do they only have one hand free? Discovering, discussing and ultimately designing for the contexts in which people might play helped us make a game that (we hope!) is enjoyable and accessible for everyone.”
With mobile gaming now accounting for around 10% of all app usage, it’s little wonder that Facebook has set its sights on developing its own titles. Its gaming offer appears to have proved popular so far – according to Facebook, more than 700 million people now play games, watch gaming videos or interact with gaming groups through Facebook Gaming each month. Alongside working with UsTwo, Facebook Gaming has also been working with Pokémon, and released two new Pokémon-themed games – Pokémon Tower Battle and Pokémon Medallion Battle – on its platform in 2019.
The coronavirus pandemic will bring an “intense focus” on the world’s environmental crisis, says Nike‘s sustainable design lead Noah Murphy-Reinhertz.
The impact of the current pandemic gives an insight into what may happen if we do not address the current climate crisis, according to Nike‘s Murphy-Reinhertz.
“Right now we’re in the midst of two global crises,” he told Dezeen.
“One is super visible that we’re experiencing and immediately it’s put us all back into isolation for a few months,” Murphy-Reinhertz continued. “But the other crisis that’s happening at exactly the same time is one that could put us all inside air-conditioned homes and gyms for the foreseeable future.”
Speaking ahead of the launch of Nike’s Space Hippie trainers, which have the lowest carbon impact of any shoe made by the sportswear brand, Murphy-Reinhertz said that companies need to act now to prevent this future becoming a reality.
“That’s not the kind of future that Nike wants for the planet or for sport,” he said. “So, acting with urgency and showing a really committed response to that in this moment is super, super imperative.”
Coronavirus could focus attention on sustainability said Noah Murphy-Reinhertz.
Murphy-Reinhertz said the pandemic and enforced isolation has already caused people to reconsider how they live. “What’s very interesting about the pandemic is how it’s making us live differently, right now,” he said.
He believes people will also rethink what is important to them in the aftermath, including sustainability.
“It’s going to accelerate the adoption of things that have meaning,” he explained. “Sustainability is one of those things. But there’s a lot of other ones from all the things that Nike stands for in terms of purpose, like a thriving planet, sport as a positive influence.”
Nike’s Space Hippie shoe is made from recycled bottles and T-shirts
The Space Hippie is knitted from what Nike calls “space waste yarn”, which is made from recycled plastic water bottles, T-shirts and textile scraps. In total 90 per cent of the upper is made from recycled content.
The trainers, which have around 3.7 kilograms of carbon per pair, are designed to “celebrate the potential” of a more sustainable product, but also to be fun, Murphy-Reinhert explained.
The shoe has the lowest carbon impact of any of Nike’s trainers
Nike unveiled its Space Hippie in February this year as coronavirus outbreaks spread globally. Murphy-Reinhertz believes that because of this people have become more excited about projects like a sustainable shoe.
“When we took the shoes and the materials around to all the different teams, not just design, but all the different product teams at Nike, the response was super enthusiastic,” he said. “People were really excited to take these things and begin to work with them.”
“But what the current moment is doing is it’s bringing a really intense focus on to that. That’s what’s really powerful for our design teams and our product teams right now is that sense of focus.”
The pandemic has made people more excited about sustainable products said Murphy-Reinhertz
Nike’s wider sustainability aim is to reduce all carbon and all waste as part of its Move to Zero commitment. According to Murphy-Reinhert, the Space Hippie trainers give Nike a target that they need to beat in the future.
“That [Move to Zero] almost certainly is fairly far away, because that’s a really, really lofty goal,” he continued.
“But we have a bit of a roadmap because Space Hippie basically achieves 3.7 kilograms of carbon per pair. Okay, that’s what we know, we still have to solve for, and we have to solve a lot more. But that’s a very concrete goal.”
Read on for the edited transcript of the interview with Murphy-Reinhertz:
Tom Ravenscroft: Why is Nike releasing the Space Hippie now?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: Right now we’re in the midst of two global crises. One is super visible that we’re experiencing and immediately it’s put us all back into isolation for a few months. But the other crisis that’s happening at exactly the same time is one that could put us all inside air-conditioned homes and gyms for the foreseeable future.
That’s not the kind of future that Nike wants for the planet or for sport. So, acting with urgency and showing a really committed response to that in this moment, is super, super imperative.
Back in somewhere around 2005, I was just coming out of design school and Nike released the Considered line. These were shoes that explored the idea of durability and repair as a way of making sustainable product, to really push the conversation forward.
Ultimately, that wasn’t an approach that you could apply to every single product. But in the meantime, Nike started becoming far and away the largest user of recycled plastic bottles in the whole industry.
So over the past few years, we’ve turned about seven and a half billion plastic bottles into yarn, and then knit those into millions and millions of Flyknit shoes and apparel.
So really, in this moment, as we’re thinking about the next chapter of this, we’re really in competition with ourselves to set a new bar. The Space Hippie is just this like next exchange in the conversation – if Considered was an early chapter.
This now is saying, okay, we’ve been informed by the very latest science around what’s important, and what’s really important for pushing back on climate changes to reduce carbon emissions. So let’s take that mission and let’s figure out what kind of product we can make that really achieves that goal.
When we kind of took all the tools that are up today, and were able to deliver a shoe that was about 3.7 kilograms of carbon per pair, we knew that that kind of thing was the right step to put forward and to talk about as this next big commitment in sustainability.
Tom Ravenscroft: Why is this only a limited release?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: The very first drop is pretty limited. I would imagine that’s going to disappear really quickly. But this product actually has a fairly long life because the materials themselves are not specialised.
This is really part of a circular system that’s really abundant. The T-shirt waste that we used to build the shoes, there’s tonnes of that out there. And so it’s a closed-loop system that’s really open and accessible to anybody in the industry, and doesn’t limit our production of the shoes. So this is definitely not a limited drop, like just a few thousand pairs. This is really a toolkit that we can scale and use really broadly.
Tom Ravenscroft: What are the plans to scale this, or to implement what you’ve learned or what you’re doing on this to a wider product range?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: Yeah, I mentioned that the approach that we took here is really, really flexible. So from a material perspective, the key idea was to use the simplest form of waste materials and then use as little reprocessing as possible.
John Hoke talked about this as kind of opening up the aperture for what’s possible in Nike materials. In building Space Hippie, we wanted to focus on making a material toolkit that wasn’t limited to one style of shoe or another.
So we can adopt this and use it in any part of Nike from flyknit to more traditional cutting. Then from a design point of view, the things that are making our high-performance running shoes are also often things that make them lower impact.
Tom Ravenscroft: So this is a continuation of what you are doing anyway?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: This is just kind of carrying on to the next logical step. Absolutely. But it’s really important to recognise that like the future of sustainable footwear, or apparel – anything really – is not going to look any one particular way.
It’s not going to be a single miracle material that only we have access to. It’s going to have to be a larger transformation of the system and the way that we produce what we’re in apparel.
It’s gonna have to be able to deliver different kinds of products like our icons, like our running shoes, the whole range of things for different athletes and different bodies, all of these things.
But it’s gonna have to provide those things in a way that the planet and our own ingenuity can support and regenerate again and again. That’s really the key about this kind of idea of a thriving future. It’s not going to be just one thing, and it’s not going to be just one system.
Tom Ravenscroft: The climate crisis is now. So how quickly can a company-wide transformation happen?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: Our big commitment under this umbrella is Move to Zero. What that essentially means is zero carbon and zero waste.
So that almost certainly is fairly far away, because that’s a really, really lofty goal. But we have a bit of a roadmap because Space Hippie basically achieves 3.7 kilograms of carbon per pair. That’s what we know we still have to solve. We have to solve a lot more, but that’s a very concrete goal. How do we get past that? How do we beat that and move on to the next best thing.
So the technologies and the materials that will get us there are still to be invented. Right? But keeping that goal in mind and then moving towards it, and then moving beyond it eventually gives us a really quite concrete path.
Tom Ravenscroft: You’re treating it a bit like a sport?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: Yeah, but I think the reality, the amazing thing for me as a designer, about sport is the creativity and the improvisation that happens on the field. There are things that are very concrete – there’s the score, there’s the record – but the beauty of it is what is happening in the moment when you see people moving and creating in real time on the field. That’s the part that is to me the most like design.
Design is not usually about a series of numbers or a score sheet. It’s about that improvisation and that to me is really inspiring the between sport and design.
Tom Ravenscroft: In the beginning you said there are two global crisis. Do you think coronavirus will focus people on sustainability?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: Absolutely. I mean, I think there’s a couple of things. One of the things I feel a lot of climate scientists and people who have been engaged in this for a long time have pointed out is to say that this is not how you want to reduce emissions, right? You don’t want to do it through depriving people of a wonderful life, right? That’s not what the pursuit of a positive future should look like. It should look like a future that we want.
So I think what’s going to be very interesting about the pandemic is how it’s making us live differently, right now. It’s going to accelerate the adoption of things that have meaning. I think sustainability is one of those meanings, but there’s a lot of other ones right from all the things that Nike stands for in terms of purpose, like a thriving planet, sport as a positive influence. Those are inspiring.
Right now when we’re stuck in our homes, and we’re looking at our closets, and looking at our shoe collection, right? What I really hope is that it gives us a moment to focus on the things that really make people feel positive and powerful and make them smile.
I think that kind of product, and products that connects to people’s passions, are the ones that are going to endure and succeed in the future. And I think that that purpose of creating a positive and sustainable and thriving future is really one that connects with people and we certainly hear it from all of our athletes.
Tom Ravenscroft: So will coronavirus accelerate sustainable agendas?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: When we took the Space Hippie, both the shoes and the materials, around to all the different product teams at Nike, the response was super enthusiastic. People were really excited to take these things and begin to work with them.
So that was something that started months and years ago. But what the current moment is doing is it’s bringing a really intense focus on to that. I think that’s what’s really powerful for our design teams and our product teams right now is that sense of focus.
On the one hand, you focus because you’re in your own home, but on the other hand, again, it gives a really good moment to say: ‘What are the elements that are most meaningful out there in the world, to our athletes, to people, to our consumers? And how do we be sure that we’re really focused on delivering that?’ From that point of view, absolutely. It’s elevating this purpose as one that’s directly connected to the kind of world that we want to make.
Tom Ravenscroft: So how do we can get to a pollution-free world? And what role does to companies like Nike or other major corporations have in that?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: The question is, how do we get here in a really positive way instead of, you know, a completely non-positive way.
I think that the role for big companies, and brands with the scale and scope of Nike, is to do things for people and provide things for people that they cannot do for themselves. So we know that our customers are really passionate about sustainability and they’ve got concrete choices that they can make and that they already are making around food and where their food comes from.
Whether you are using public transportation, or biking, or driving all of these things are choices that people can make. Whether they go out and vote, or protest around climate change. All these are ways that people are directly engaging. But what they can’t do, as modern humans is, make a fantastic shoe for themselves to wear.
That’s the kind of thing that a company with Nike’s resources can provide. So what we want to be doing is provide those things to modern humans that they can’t provide for themselves. And then when we do that, we can lead the much larger industry.
Nike is a company with massive scale, but still a relatively small part of the overall footwear and apparel industry in the world. We’ve got the voice to lead the way on this, it’s always going to be leading in partnership, because if you don’t get everybody to come along on that same journey, then again, it’s too small of a solution.
But we’ve really got the position to lead. And so the examples I’d say, for this that are very concrete ones are things like recycled materials. So when I mentioned those, like billions of plastic bottles, it’s making sure that solutions aren’t just done as a one-off, or as a headline, that we are looking at solutions that can have a really big impact, but can also have a really big impact at scale.
And that’s just super critical, because the industry really is global. So they have to be materials that can be adopted globally that can be sourced globally, and really have that kind of an impact. So materials is huge. And then the other is driving things like renewable energy. So, the European headquarters using 100 per cent renewable energy, but then also Nike’s commitment, just on all of our owned and operated facilities is to be 100 per cent renewable energy. I think that’s by 2025.
But here in the United States, we’re already there with all of our owned and operated facilities. So really big commitments like that, that are more about pushing markets is the role that large brands and large organisations can play. And then beyond that, it’s really that I think again, it’s back to inspiring the daily conversation.
Tom Ravenscroft: Finally the Space Hippie, how much is it? Is it equivalent to your other new issues? Or is there a sustainability premium?
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz: It’s totally equivalent pricing. There’s a little bit of a range because we’ve got the one through four and each one is a little bit different and then built a little differently.
But yeah, very normal Flyknit shoe range pricing. That was really important for us. There were two things that were just critical to us. One was this idea of just fun and humour even though this is a heavy problem. We start talking about all of this stuff. And we didn’t want the product to deal with that problem in that way. We wanted it to be about celebrating the potential for this and, and having fun with this challenge saying like, hey, let’s let this bring out the best. And let’s have some, let’s have some fun with it.
Then the other was access. So both in terms of pricing and sizing. All these shoes are universal sizing, so the full women’s and men’s size run. It’s a performance product. It’s a high-end product, but it’s not an exclusive product. Because that again, this idea that sustainability has to be something that really is accessible. And so both of those things like having fun and having it be for everybody, those were really really key.
Gucci‘s creative director Alessandro Michele has announced that the Italian brand will be disregarding the fashion calendar’s “stale” deadlines, holding shows just twice a year instead to reduce waste.
In a series of entries shared from his personal diary, called Notes from the Silence, Michele inwardly reflects on the environmental damage of the fashion industry and the part his brand has played in this, and his decision to stop following the same cycle.
He explains that Gucci will be abandoning the traditional fashion rota of staging five shows per year under the seasonal labels of cruise, pre-fall, spring-summer and fall-winter.
Gucci cuts number of annual shows from five to two
Instead, the fashion brand will present shows irregularly just twice a year on its own terms. Michele shared the news from his Instagram account on Sunday 24 May.
“Two appointments a year are more than enough to give time to form a creative thought, and to give more time to this system,” Michele stated in a virtual press conference broadcast from his Rome studio on Monday 25 May.
The decision, he says, comes in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led him to rethink “the meaning of [his] actions” and “change a lot of things in the way [he] work[s]”.
“We understood we went way too far,” he writes. “Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in… We usurped nature, we dominated and wounded it.”
“Now that the devastation caught us unprepared, we have to think about what we would not want to be the same as it was.”
“Our history is littered with crises that taught us nothing,” the entries continue. “With economic collapses and social devastations that were tackled by imposing the same recipes from which they originated.”
“This present, then, entrusts us with important responsibilities… this crisis has somehow amplified such transformative urgency, which can’t be deferred anymore.”
This is why, Michele writes, he has decided to pave the way for a less destructive future, “away from deadlines that the industry consolidated”.
“I will abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities”
The Italian brand has no plans for a show in September – when it would typically showcase its latest collection as part of Milan Fashion Week.
“It’s a foundational act, audacious but necessary, that aims at building a new creative universe,” he says. “A universe that essentialises itself in the subtraction of events and that oxygenates through the multiplication of sense.”
He hopes that other designers will join him in his change of pace and approach towards fashion, to create a future that “contains the hug that today we cannot give each other”.
Gucci’s news comes at a time when fashion weeks across the globe are starting to transition to digital formats in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
This includes London Fashion Week, which will take place online between 12 and 14 June, and Milan Fashion Week, which will be held digitally from 14 to 17 July.
Paris’ haute couture Fashion Week will also be going ahead online only from 6 to 8 July, followed by Paris’ menswear fashion week from 9 to 13 July.
London designer Adam Nathanial Furman‘s Democratic Monument is a proposal for town halls around the UK that would feature bright tiles and a diverse mix of architectural styles.
As civic buildings, Democratic Monuments would be brightly-coloured combinations of styles and materials, reflecting the unique combinations of communities that make up different cities around the country.
The town hall would house offices, chambers for the local council, spaces for the mayor, libraries, galleries and halls for events and ceremonies.
Local soil, sand and stone could be incorporated into the building exterior by mixing it with the concrete to produce different colours that would act as a “vertical index” of the region.
“The idea is that the architecture acts as an armature, or a framework for the display of a multitude of different, locally representative artworks,” Furman told Dezeen.
“It would ideally be a full gamut representing the different schools, or approaches to art in a given city at a given time – a visualised cross-section through the creative life of a city in built form.”
Intricate murals executed in colourful tiles would cover the cathedral-style facade and interior spaces in an expression of what the designer calls “chromatic joy”.
These decorative mosaics of ceramic tiles with digitally printed decals would be designed by local creatives.
Mixing together architectural styles in one stand-out building, suggests Furman, would be a much more accurate reflection of a city than a uniform appearance.
“In great contrast to the rest of our cultural output, our physical environment is crushingly uniform. Our cities are forced to become more and more like the architectural equivalent of those group photos of dignitaries at the EU where everyone is male, white, wearing a suit, and frankly, utterly miserable,” said Furman.
“Architecture that can contain multitudes tries to turn this on its head, and literally turn the architectural object into a vehicle for the celebration of all of the contrasting and diverse tastes and cultures that exist at any one time in our cities.”
Reflective, translucent or glittery finishes would make spaces glow under lights, and colourful marbles would be mixed with terrazzo and powder-coated steel surfaces.
Tiled plazas for public gatherings would surround the building, merging with the patterned alcoves and arches of its facades.
Although he created Democratic Monument three years ago, Furman believes the project’s ideals are more pertinent than ever.
“In my eyes it’s more and more relevant, especially with Covid-19,” said the designer.
“I feel that the need for civic expression, communal pride embodied in actual physical places which celebrate not similarity, but togetherness in difference, would absolutely be fantastically important,” he added,
“Power is so centralised now, we feel so distant from it, there are no places where we feel decisions are actually made near us, that relate to our lives, that we can actually go to to protest, to celebrate, to cry.”
Furman created Democratic Monument for the New Typologies exhibition at the Architecture Fringe 2017, which was curated by architects Lee Ivett and Andy Summers.
The curators commissioned Furman to explore what a contemporary town hall with an expressive facade could look like.
“I, of course, got so terribly excited, with a huge amount of pent-up frustrated creative energy unleashed on the project,” said Furman.
“The design of monumental and symbolically meaningful public spaces and buildings is real passion of mine, and the fact that the Architecture Fringe properly funds those commissions, I could spend a good amount of time immersed in its design.”
A big part of the Democratic Monument project was a 1:100 scale model that was produced by Furman’s sponsor, specialists Lee 3D, using 3D-printed plaster.
In conversation with Dezeen founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs for Virtual Design Festival, Furman described his aesthetic as part of a vanguard movement he calls New London Fabulous, which rejects minimalism in favour of colourful and expressive design.
Talking material innovation in light of the brand’s new premium activewear category, Mobilité
Many of the fabrics, designs and mindsets behind underwear and its production are outdated. To be honest, the men’s undergarment industry has long suffered from a drought of fresh ideas. Underwear, let’s say, has gone stale. It’s been the mission of Swedish design company CDLP to upend that. Defined by their materials—which offer wearers everything from breathability and softness to shape-retention and durability—CDLP continues to release items crafted from luxury Lyocell from sustainably-grown wood. But what began with various trunks and briefs has now expanded to socks and T-shirts. Everything they produce, in meticulous European facilities, adheres to their rigorous standards.
Mobilité, the brand’s new premium activewear category, introduces a new fabric to their roster: recycled PES fiber. The fabric delivers moisture-wicking and anti-odor capabilities and it’s also quick-dry. That, coupled with the capsule collection’s designs, delivers greater flexibility, range of motion and mobility. They’re also silken to the touch and altogether handsome.
To learn more about the brand and the launch, we spoke with CDLP co-founder and creative director Christian Larson who offered us insight on the debate over boxers versus briefs and the materials that will define the future of comfort and performance underneath our clothes.
What was the impetus for Mobilité?
Andreas [co-founder] and I have always trained to stay in shape, but since starting our company, we’ve had to give it some more sincere attention for sure. With this came the discussion of what made the perfect underwear for working out. Andreas does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and I do cycling—but neither of us do it to win the Olympics. Winning is not a goal for us; rather, it’s our wellbeing. Around this holistic perspective, we wanted to create a line of essentials for wellbeing. For us, it came down to “mobility,” for the body as much as for the soul.
What sort of research and development goes into an activewear capsule like this?
As with everything we do at CDLP, it’s our subjective view on what makes the perfect performance underwear, but since the purpose was different from our core collection, we kind of had to start all over again. Starting with the fabric, the priority had to be comfort and performance, and we were interested in finding sustainable options in this area—as we try and do for all our products. We settled for a recycled PES fiber that offers fantastic comfort, great support and moisture-wicking and quick-drying properties as well as a luxurious feel. The length was a big discussion and we decided to involve our customers on this one, asking people for their preference when it came to working out in underwear.
Can you talk about product development for your core collection, as well, from a material standpoint?
Most men’s underwear is still made of cotton, which is to us, a terrible choice of fabric for underwear. Cotton absorbs moisture, doesn’t hold color or shape, and is agreed to have a heavy environmental impact. When we tested our first design from our core collection in Lyocell—all fell into place. Lyocell is a future-oriented fabric made from wood-pulp in a closed-loop process ensuring it’s kinder to the environment than cotton, but with many improved features for comfort, functionality and luxury. Basically, it’s a “responsible” fabric, but with added features and feel—rather than a step down in quality that many responsible options are. To us, it’s the winner of what’s on the market right now.
However, we constantly work with research and development and currently there are some interesting options that we’re monitoring, but nothing that beats Lyocell for underwear yet. This has also become our reference for all other product development. It can’t just be about sustaining; it has to beat the norm, too. Otherwise, how are we going to change the world?
How then do you make the values of your brand and products clear in campaigns? How do you distance yourself from competitors in this way?
Underwear has become a crowded market, so it’s key to be clear about who you are and how you stand out. Obviously, this has to start with a great product. And then, the rest needs to be quite personal. We wanted to be a new voice in underwear, changing both the product and the perspective of men. To do this, I picked up my cameras and started to photograph the men around me, the story which has become our visual narrative. There is no strategy really, I shoot our friends as I’d like to portray them. This perspective I guess is quite hard to copy. Also, you either like it or you don’t.
Can you talk about what you know about the different types of wearers: those seeking briefs versus boxers, etc.
It’s really interesting, because when we started CDLP, one part of the vision was to broaden men’s view on being a “this or that” style of wearer. Instead, we wanted men to look at choosing underwear based on occasion and emotion, perhaps a bit more as how women have traditionally opted for their underwear. Over the past two years we have seen our customer purchase behavior evolve—before carts would be limited to one, maybe two styles. Now carts are filled with a broader range of underwear. We see the customer experiment with different fits: building a wardrobe, if you like, of styles for different moods or occasions.
How do your T-shirts match the values of your underwear?
So many brands aim to create “the perfect T-shirt”, so what could we bring to the table, and what is the perfect T-shirt? Lyocell has been a clear winner as the fiber in our underwear, so we started to experiment to see how this could be used in another base garment: the T-shirt. It needed to be mixed with something to give it more texture, so we opted to mix the Lyocell with some fine Pima cotton. The result is a wonderfully light, smooth and breathable T-shirt—the perfect T-shirt!
Do you have a dream project down the line?
Yes, we look at many men that inspire us in our lives, not necessarily style icons, but everything from creatives to entrepreneurs—and many would be strong collaborations for something. At the same time, we are so pleased to see our brand growing with new customers around the world, that we’re already living the dream.
Can we talk about collaborations? How have some of your notable collaborations—like Grand Hotel Tremezzo and Sting—taken shape? What are you looking for in a collaborator?
Collaborations and special projects are effective ways of providing fresh context, both from a design and story perspective. The Grand Hotel Tremezzo was a joy to make, designing a swim collection for a favorite destination of Andreas and mine. But when people think of Lake Como, it can easily feel a bit old school. I wanted to bring some fresh energy into it, and asked two of our friends to step into an ornate Italian villa but behave as if the world was about to end and they just had one hour left to live. They put on a song and started to dance with each other, and it became this electric energy of two men sharing a spontaneous dance together in an odd location. It simply became that perfect crossover that I hoped for, between old and new, between an old brand and a youngster. That’s what a great collaboration is about.
How did you develop your in-store experience in Stockholm?
The store needs to be an experience for people to experience CDLP. We put all the effort into creating an experience of one of our campaigns, and skinned the whole store as the lobby of the Grand Hotel Tremezzo. Point of sale is secondary to us. If people have a good time and feel the brand, that’s the success. Perhaps they buy in-store, online, or through one of our partners eventually—or not. Delivering the experience has to be the priority.
Take it from your friendly neighborhood heroes (your healthcare workers) that sanitizing your hands and wearing a mask is crucial when you step out. Masks were a fashion accessory even before the pandemic, so everyone adopted wearing it a lot faster than the habit of sanitizing. Most of the time we forget we touched something in shared public places and our hand goes straight to our face – yikes! To make sanitizing easier, especially when we are outdoors, a designer has created this conceptual Spiderman-inspired wearable sanitizer that lets you be a discreet hero without a bodysuit.
The designer wanted to solve the behavioral perception and usage when it came to traditional sanitizer bottles. He wanted to create something that was innovative, ergonomic, easy to carry, and made it hassle-free to sanitize frequently when you go outside. I, for one, do get lazy if I have to constantly remove the bottle from my backpack when I am carrying groceries in my hand and a wearable sanitizer would truly be a blessing. The smartwatch-shaped personal gadget has a refillable container for the sanitizer liquid and will dispense it with a simple press. We can’t wait to see this concept sketched out with more details.
Its shape is simple and unobtrusive if you have to wear it daily. You can mount it on a wristband or even attach to your watch/fitness trackers – the power is literally in your hands, and you already know that with great power comes great responsibility.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
