Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our third report from New York, Willy Wong, chief creative officer for the city’s marketing and tourism agency, introduces the new NYCxDesign festival and explains why the city is starting to put more money behind its design industries.
Wong explains that one of the motivations behind NYCxDesign was a report by the Centre for an Urban Future think tank, which identified the untapped economic potential of New York’s design sector.
Intro NY 2013
“A few years ago there was a report that identified design as an industry that the city should really embrace,” says Wong. “There should be a moment in time when the city actually celebrates all of the great design that happens in New York.”
Lighting installation in New York designer Lindsey Adelman‘s studio in NoHo
“In 2009 they discovered that there were almost 40,000 designers in New York, and that’s a huge concentration compared to other cities in the US,” he continues. “So there’s a real reason to invest in the sector.”
3D printers by New York company MakerBot on show at ICFF
The influx of visitors that come to New York each year for the big design shows is also good for the economy, Wong goes on to explain.
“Events like ICFF bring in close to 30,000 people a year, and that’s just for ICFF,” he says. “Whenever we are taking on an initiative, we are looking at both the qualitative cultural effects but at the same time the economic impact.”
Wong believes that the city’s current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who has been in office since 2002, has “focussed on design as a competitive advantage for the city,” citing the High Line as an example of the kind of project that has helped to improve New York’s built environment. “There’s a real consideration on transforming what it means to be a city.”
In the Design Interactions department of the Royal College of Art‘s graduate exhibition this week Minsu Kim presents three dishes, each exhibiting a different behaviour: wriggling around, waving tentacles or puffing up as though breathing.
“This project explores new culinary experiences through developments in synthetic biology, and finds its lineage in haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy,” the designer adds. “What if food was able to play with our cutlery and create hyper-sensations in our mouth?”
Royal College of Art graduate Bilge Nur Saltik has designed dimpled glassware that creates kaleidoscopic effects (+ movie).
Pieces in Saltik‘s OP-jects collection are patterned with concave cuts around their lower portions, which act like a series of magnifying glasses and warp views through the glass.
When placed on a purposefully designed tablecloth covered in brightly-coloured triangles they create optical illusions.
Water contained within the vessels distorts the reflections further, so imagery is constantly changing while drinking from a glass.
The collection includes a carafe, tumbler and two different bowls. A set of rippled glass wall tiles were also created as part of the project.
Saltik studied on the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art and is exhibiting her glassware at Show RCA, which continues until 30 June.
This playful series by Royal College of Art graduate Bilge Nur Saltik contains daily life objects with optical illusions.
Presented at Royal College of Art graduate show in London this week, the playful series contains glassware, wall tiles and a tablecloth to reveal this secret, magical and playful lenticular effect. The function of the objects triggers the effect of illusions and it reveals hidden visual secrets.
“I am manipulating the information brain receives by distorting the image with layering different materials. Playing with colour and geometrical patterns enhance the optical illusions. These objects designed to change the pace of our ordinary life. They will surprise you by unexpected change and distortion on what you see during simply drinking water.”
Glass pieces cut by hand to get concave cuts and sharpen edges. Different size cuts works like magnifying glass. They distort and multiplies the pattern underneath cause a psychedelic experience.
Bilge Nur Saltik is graduating from Platform 18 of the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, where the show opens to the public from 20–30 June.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our penultimate movie recorded at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan, New York designer Stephen Burks discusses the importance of having a design identity and journalist Henrietta Thompson explains why designers are starting to expand into retail.
Stephen Burks
Stephen Burks of Readymade Projects was one of the guest speakers at the series of workshops that were hosted in the MINI Paceman Garage during Milan design week.
Stephen Burks giving his talk
“I really impressed upon the students that it was important to understand their own identity before choosing manufacturers to work with, before running off and making something,” he says of his talk. “I think now they have a better sense of what that identity can be.”
Henrietta Thompson
Henrietta Thompson, editor-at-large at Wallpaper magazine, believes that changes in manufacturing are enabling more and more designers to produce and sell their own products.
“There’s certainly a shift happening in the way that designers are taking much more control over exhibiting their own work and also selling their own work,” she says. “So you’ve actually got a new dynamic opening up and a lot of the galleries and the shows that you go to are actually retail environments as well.”
“You have a lot more designer-makers, so they’re making things in limited editions, which they’re then able to sell,” she adds.
“Because of all these new technologies coming in, which enable the way things are made to change dramatically, things can be made much cheaper. You’ve got 3D printing, which is completely changing the landscape as well. [A designer] can sell things online and actually distribute [their own work] fairly easily now.”
It’s not just designers that are moving into retail, Thompson suggests. “Magazines are getting into retail, exhibitions are getting into retail,” she says.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be as cut-and-dry as ‘I’m a producer’, ‘I’m a designer’, ‘I’m a retailer’, ‘I’m a magazine’. Now everybody is doing all of those things all together.”
Fashion designer Ying Gao has fabricated a pair of dresses that writhe around and light up when someone stares at them (+ movie).
“We use an eye-tracking system so the dresses move when a spectator is staring,” Ying Gao told Dezeen. “[The system] can also turn off the lights, then the dresses illuminate.”
The gaze-activated dresses are embedded with eye-tracking technology that responds to an observer’s gaze by activating tiny motors to move parts of the dresses in mesmerising patterns.
One dress is covered in tendrils of photo-luminescent thread that dangle from ruched fabric. On the other, glow-in-the-dark threads form a base layer with fabric cut into ribbons loosely bunched over the top.
With the lights off they create an effect similar to glowing sea creatures.
The project was inspired by the essay entitled “Esthétique de la disparition” (The aesthetic of disappearance) by Paul Virilio (1979).
“Absence often occurs at breakfast time – the tea cup dropped, then spilled on the table being one of its most common consequences. Absence lasts but a few seconds, its beginning and end are sudden. However closed to outside impressions, the senses are awake. The return is as immediate as the departure, the suspended word or movement is picked up where it was left off as conscious time automatically reconstructs itself, thus becoming continuous and free of any apparent interruption.”
The series comprising two dresses, made of photoluminescent thread and imbedded eye-tracking technology, is activated by a spectators’ gaze. A photograph is said to be “spoiled” by blinking eyes – here however, the concept of presence and of disappearance are questioned, as the experience of chiaroscuro (clarity/obscurity) is achieved through an unfixed gaze.
Super organza, photoluminescent thread, PVDF, electronic devices.
“We do New Talents because we like to support the young designers,” Suermann says. “Normally it’s very hard for them to get into the big fairs. We do this New Talents area, with a low price, to give them the chance to show their products to a big audience.”
Suermann then shows us the main exhibitor area where “around 300 international designers from more than 30 nations” showcase their products, before taking us to an exhibition called Refugium: Berlin as a Design Principle focussing on work by Berlin-based designers.
Main exhibitor space at DMY Berlin
“The Refugium is curated by Max Borka, a journalist and curator for contemporary design,” Suermann explains. “This year we have a cooperation with him to organise the Berlin part of our festival.”
Next, Suermann shows us the pieces that are up for contention for the annual Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany. “The German Design Award is open for German designers of course, but also for international designers,” Suermann says. “To apply you need to have won a prize before.”
3D-printed ceramics by students from HBKsaar university
Finally, Suermann takes us to the area of the festival where university students showcase their projects, from 3D-printed ceramics to hand-woven textiles.
“This year we have around 20 universities from ten different countries,” Suermann says. “We are one of the biggest platforms in Germany for the universities.”
A bandage pack containing a bone marrow donor registry kit has won a White Pencil at the D&AD Awards (+ movie).
Help! I’ve Cut Myself and I Want to Save a Life kits, which can be bought over the counter, contain plasters and bandages for covering small cuts, as well as cotton swabs. A small amount of blood from a cut can be caught on a swab and posted to a marrow donor registry in a pre-paid envelope, which also comes in the simple green and white package.
Graham Douglas, a member of creative agency Droga5, came up with the idea after his twin brother was diagnosed with Leukaemia and an unknown bone marrow donor saved his life.
“Unfortunately, the marrow donor registry is one of the most underrepresented donor programs in the world,” says Douglas. “It’s no wonder really – most people think registering as a marrow donor is painful and complicated, when really all it takes is a couple of drops of blood.”
Douglas’ idea aims to catch potential donors when they are already bleeding, and give them all the necessary components to send their sample to a donor registry easily.
He set up the scheme with pharmaceutical company Help Remedies and international marrow donor registry DKMS, and registrants have tripled as a result.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our first movie from the German capital, DMY Berlin founder Joerg Suermann shows us around his favourite neighbourhood of Kreuzberg and tells us why he believes the relaxed atmosphere and low cost of living that attracts many designers to the city can also trap them there.
Our MINI Paceman outside Berlin Tempelhof Airport
“Berlin is a never-finished city. The living cost is not so high here, which means the people have time to think and time to make experiments,” says Suermann. “This is quite a comfortable situation for the designers.”
“But we have also problems,” he continues. “We have not so much industry in Berlin, we have not so many companies that need design. But we have a lot of creative people and so the competition is really hard here.”
Berlin Wall East Side Gallery
Suermann moved to the city in 1993, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had divided the city for nearly 30 years. Ten year’s later, in 2003, he founded DMY International Design Festival Berlin.
He says the lifestyle of Berliners has only recently started to change. “I think now, after 20 years [living in Berlin], it’s changed a bit. Now the money is also coming to Berlin, we can feel it. The rent is going much more expensive. But it has also a positive side: for the designers they get more contracts here, they have more work.”
Crack in one of the remaining sections of the Berlin Wall
However, there are still many areas of the city where the cost of living is still low compared to other cities, Suermann says. One such example is Kreuzberg, the central Berlin neighbourhood where he lives and works, which was formerly bordered by the Berlin Wall. “Nobody wanted to live in Kreuzberg, so a lot of foreigners moved here because the rent was really, really cheap,” he says.
Bridge over the river Spree into Kreuzberg
“Now a lot of creative people also come into this area [and] the mix is really interesting. It’s quite lazy – it’s really nice that you can have this easy neighbourhood so near to the centre [of the city].”
Famous Kreuzberg punk club SO36
“We have a lot of galleries here, studios, clubs, bars, cafes,” Suermann continues, pointing out SO36, one of the first German punk clubs to emerge in the 1970s, as well as Burgermeister, a burger restaurant located under a railway bridge in a former public toilet.
Burgermeister restaurant in a former public toilet
“You can start on Friday evening with your party and then continue until Monday morning,” he says. “For Berlin it’s typical; there are a lot of people going out after breakfast.”
But Suermann sounds a note of caution to those young designers expecting an easy ride once they arrive in the city. “A lot of young people come to Berlin and they think, ‘okay, I’m now in the hotspot and I [will] get successful here.”’ he says. “But after a while they find out it’s a really hard fight here.”
River-side bar in Kreuzberg
“If you don’t go outside [of Berlin] you will [get] stuck here. You can have a nice life here, but you have a low income and you’re stuck. And then it’s really complicated to come out of this situation.”
“Most of the successful designers have their studios here, they live here, but they’re working with companies outside from Berlin. I think that’s really important.”
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our fourth movie recorded at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan, MINI head of design Anders Warming introduces the workshops that took place in the space and journalist Justin McGuirk explains why he sees OMA’s Tools for Life collection as a nostalgic reaction to the decline of industry in the city.
The MINI Paceman Garage hosted a week-long series of workshops in which students were tasked with coming up with a new product or identity for MINI and pitching it to the car brand.
Anders Warming
“The MINI community spreads into the design community, and that’s why we do these workshops with young students,” Warming says. “Sometimes one very straight thought, especially from a younger generation, actually helps nail things and makes them very simple and honest.”
Warming led the first workshop himself. “It’s not just a one-way street, where I might be teaching about how to do design,” he says. “It’s my view on design and what [the students] spontaneously think of that.”
But McGuirk doesn’t believe the Tools for Life collection, which includes a motorised table and chair that rise and fall at the press of large red buttons, are meant to be practical pieces of furniture.
“If you look at the way that Knoll is presenting this furniture it’s the standard spiel about adaptable, ergonomic furniture,” he says. “But it’s got nothing to do with that. The whole thing is just a performance and I think it is deeply nostalgic for industry.”
“It’s an interesting time to launch a product like that,” he continues. “Here we are in Milan where the city’s industry and the country’s industry is visibly in decline – it’s almost this message that industry is dead, so now we can turn it into luxury. But also, it turns industry into a fetish.”
Another piece in the Tools for Life collection is a counter made of three swivelling stacked blocks. McGuirk says: “It’s one of those classic designs that purports to solve all of these different problems, but actually solves none of them. So it’s actually completely useless.”
“It comes clearly from an architecture studio, and one that’s not overly concerned with form as well.”
Glass lamps by Bethan Laura Wood for W Hotel Mexico City
Jon Stam from Canada, Bethan Laura Wood from the UK and Seung-Yong Song from South Korea were each sent to a new W Hotels branch and asked to create work for the hotel influenced by their destination.
Jon Stam with his Claude Glass mirror for W Hotel Verbier
After visiting Verbier, Stam collaborated with local photographer Guido Perrini to show digital images of the resort in all seasons in the centre of a black mirror. Turning the object changes the speed at which the images are shown.
Bethan Laura Wood with her glass lamps for W Hotel Mexico City
Wood designed a series of colourful glass lamps that combine Aztec patterns and Art Deco shapes following her trip to Mexico City. She worked with Italian and Mexican glass specialists to create her table lamps, wall lights and chandeliers.
Seung-Yong Song with one of his Wheeljek mirror for W Hotel Bangkok
Song travelled to Bangkok, where street food carts became his reference for a range of portable furniture, which includes a mirror, storage compartments and a table.
Seung-Yong Song’s Wheeljek mirror for W Hotel Bangkok
Following Design Trips to W Hotels around the World, Designers Have Created Pieces Inspired by Local Communities to Later be Installed at W Hotels in Verbier, Bangkok and Mexico City
Continuing its commitment to innovation in design, W Hotels Worldwide today unveiled the works of the 2013 W Hotels Designers of the Future Award winners during Design Miami/ Basel (June 11-16, 2013). Now in its fourth year, the collaboration between W Hotels and Design Miami/ seeks to give emerging designers a global platform from which to showcase their work.
This year for the first time the three winning designers were sent to specific new or renovating W Hotels to solve a particular design challenge or need. In addition to being showcased at Design Miami/ Basel, the newly commissioned, site-specific works will later be installed at W Hotels in Verbier, where the W brand’s first ski retreat will debut later this year; Bangkok, which opened in December 2012; and Mexico City, which will soon undergo renovation.
“Design has been core to the DNA of the W Hotels brand since our inception in New York City nearly 15 years ago,” said Paul James, Global Brand Leader, W Hotels, St. Regis and The Luxury Collection. “The W Hotels Designers of the Future Award allows us to work with the best emerging design talent from around the world, while providing a global platform of exposure for these young talents during Design Miami/ Basel and beyond.”
For this year’s commission, the winners, including Seung-Yong Song (Korea), Jon Stam (Canada) and Bethan Laura Wood (UK), have unveiled their interpretation of the brief, entitled “Making Connections.” Each designer’s project facilitates exchange between local communities and the international visitors who pass through them, whether for business or leisure. The goal of these projects is to deepen the appreciation for the distinct regional characteristics found in each destination.
“The W Hotels Designers of the Future Award has become an important incubator for emerging talents, allowing the winners to develop a project and directly interact with the receptive audience at Design Miami/ Basel,” said Marianne Goebl, Director of Design Miami/. “This year, the award is brought to yet another level by incorporating a research trip. We are thrilled to see the designers’ experiences reflected in their projects in a meaningful and engaging way.”
Designers ‘Making Connections’ Around the World
Seung-Yong Song’s Wheeljek Collection was created for W Bangkok and takes its inspiration from the fluidity and flexibility of the city’s ubiquitous street food carts. Observing the ingenuity of the design of this everyday object, Song was struck by the many uses of the carts in the bustling capital; it is at once a means of transporting goods, a kitchen, a restaurant and a bar. His collection takes the street cart concept and transforms it into an object which can be adapted to suit the user’s needs and modified into various forms and sizes, from cart to table to storage.
Designed for W Verbier, Jon Stam’s Claude Glass is an abstract timepiece that captures the landscape of the small Swiss village throughout the seasons. Stam has collaborated with local photographer Guido Perrini to capture Verbier within a digitized black mirror where one can speed up or reverse time by turning the object. As most tourists experience the destination during its world renowned ski season, Claude Glass provides a medium for a different kind of travel, showcasing the picturesque locale all year long.
Bethan Laura Wood’s Crisscross is a glass fixture created for W Mexico City and designed to evoke a cascade of floating flowers. The work combines a range of influences taken from the city, from its colorful markets and graphic displays of flowers to the Aztec-meets-Deco architecture and triple-relief Baroque detailing. Wood has enlisted the specialist skills of two different worlds of glass – artisan Pedro Myver, a Pyrex master in Italy, and Nouvel Studio, the Mexican colored glass specialists – to make work that crosses the boundaries of local and global, acting as a conduit for creative communication.
Started in 2006 at Design Miami/ Basel, the Designers of the Future Award recognizes up-and-coming designers and studios that are expanding the field of design. Each year, three designers or studios are selected as a way to honor a variety of approaches in the constantly evolving landscape of contemporary design. The Award moves beyond pure product and furniture design to acknowledge technologically and conceptually vanguard pieces that work across multiple disciplines, offering the next generation of design creatives the opportunity to present newly commissioned works to an influential audience of collectors, dealers, and journalists at Design Miami/ Basel.
The W Hotels Designers of the Future Award also draws attention to design practices that exemplify new directions for the design field, and as W Hotels continues to grow globally, the Award provides the W design and innovation teams with access to the world’s brightest talent in contemporary design. The objective for W Hotels is to create a vision of how guests may conceptually interact with cutting-edge and technologically advanced design solutions throughout hotel Living Rooms (the W brand’s re-interpretation of the hotel lobby) and guestrooms globally.
The winners were selected by an international jury that included Jan Boelen of the Design Academy Eindhoven and Z33; Tony Chambers of Wallpaper* magazine; Aric Chen of M+ Museum Hong Kong; Alexis Georgacopoulos of Ecole Cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL); Marianne Goebl of Design Miami/; Benjamin Loyauté, author, curator and journalist; and Mike Tiedy of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, parent company of W Hotels Worldwide.
Qualifying candidates for the W Hotels Designers of the Future Award must have created original works in the fields of furniture, lighting, craft, architecture and/or digital/electronic media. Candidates must have been practicing for less than 15 years and have produced a body of work that demonstrates originality in the creative process, while also exhibiting an interest in working in experimental, non-industrial or limited-edition design.
Previous winners of the W Hotels Designer of the Future Award, including Philippe Malouin, Markus Kayser, Tom Foulsham, Asif Khan, Beta Tank, Graham Hudson, Mischer’Traxler, Random International, Studio Juju and Zigelbaum & Coelho, continue to celebrate their successes. W Hotels guides each award winner from the conceptual stage to a level, which ultimately provides a global platform whereby they can expose their work to guests and design enthusiasts alike.
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