Dezeen Wire: New York Times architecture reporter Michael Kimmelman gives a glowing account of the efforts being made by New York City’s Department of Design and Construction to revitalise degraded public buildings and infrastructure.
He points to “a quiet revolution reshaping the city’s public architecture,” adding that careful investment is having a positive impact on neighbourhoods that are often overlooked – The New York Times
Dezeen Wire: in his latest article in The Guardian, design critic Justin McGuirk explains how the Finnish government’s use of design thinking offers an exemplar for other states and big businesses who need to generate creative solutions to large social problems.
Dezeen Wire: last week Dezeen reported on the opening of a new exhibition examining the creative processes of architecture practice OMA at the Barbican. Here’s what the critics have been saying about the show.
Writing in The Observer, architecture critic Rowan Moore describes the volume of exhibits on display as “opaque and baffling” before summarising the overall result as “a display of fierce energy and intelligence.”
In The Telegraph, the exhibition’s curators, Belgian collective Rotor, explain how they tackled the problem of representing architecture in an exhibition by presenting “a story of struggle and entanglement with the world as it really is, rather than with a world made to look good in pictures.”
In a review for Wallpaper magazine, Ellie Stathaki compares the stripped-back presentation style to a “construction site” before praising the exhaustive nature of the selection, which organises the exhibits around different aspects of the design process.
There are interviews with Rem Koolhaas filmed at the exhibition on Dezeen Screen and you can see all of our previous stories about OMA here.
Dezeen Wire: plans by football club West Ham United to move into London’s Olympic Stadium after next year’s Games have collapsed amid concerns over ongoing legal disputes. The stadium will now remain in public ownership, with prospective tenants paying an annual rent to the Olympic Park Legacy Company – BBC News
See all of our stories about the London Olympics here.
Dezeen Wire: the British Institute of Interior Design (BIID) has recommended that all interior design interns are paid at least the statutory minimum wage.
The move follows a change in the RIBA’s Chartered Practice criteria, reported on Dezeen Wire earlier this summer, requiring all UK architects to pay statutory minimum wage to students on placements.
Check out more debate about internship pay and fees for young designers in our #milanuncut feature.
Here are some more details from BIID:
Pay minimum wage to all interns, recommends BIID
The British Institute of Interior Design (BIID) has recommended that all interior design practice interns are “paid at least the minimum wage” in an internship policy statement produced to provide clarity and guidance for BIID members.
“Internships are on the rise in all industries, including interior design” says BIID President, Diana Yakeley. “We recognise that they can be highly beneficial to both interns and employers. However, the practice does raise significant legal and financial issues. The BIID’s policy statement provides clear advice on these matters. Whilst recognising that each interior design practice must make their own decision on the issue, it sets out our view that a written agreement should be in place to define the relationship between employers and interns. The Institute also recommends that all interns should be paid at least the minimum wage”.
The BIID policy statement stresses that “any form of internship given must be as beneficial and constructive as possible”. It provides guidance on the rights of interns and their entitlement to pay under the law. The policy statement also explains the differences between work experience and internship.
View or download a copy of the BIID policy statement here.
The BIID fully supports the Best Practice Code for High-Quality Internships, developed by the Gateways to the Professions Collaboration Forum, a government advisory group. This document is available for download at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills website.
Dezeen Wire: the Victoria & Albert museum has released details of a major exhibition showcasing the best of British design from the period following the 1948 ‘Austerity Olympics’ to the summer of 2012.
Scheduled for spring next year, British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age will present the most influential and inspirational examples of British fashion, furniture, fine art, graphic design, photography, ceramics, architecture and industrial products from the past 60 years.
See all of our stories about the V&A here.
The following information is from the V&A:
British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age
Sponsored by Ernst & Young
31 March – 12 August 2012
The V&A’s major spring exhibition will showcase the best of British design and creative talent from the 1948 ‘Austerity Olympics’ to the summer of 2012. It will be the first comprehensive exhibition to examine the ways in which artists and designers who were born, trained or working in the UK have produced innovative and internationally acclaimed works from post-war to the present day. Ranging from the Morris Mini Minor (1959) to the newly commissioned model of Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre (2011), the objects on display will aim to reinforce Britain’s status as a global leader in design.
British Design 1948-2012 will tell the story of British fashion, furniture, fine art, graphic design, photography, ceramics, architecture and industrial products over the past 60 years. Highlighting significant moments in the history of British design, the exhibition will look at how the country continues to nurture artistic talent, as well as investigate the role that Britain’s manufacturing industry has played in the global market. It will also examine the impact that Britain’s ideas-driven, creative economy has had on goods and design industries world-wide.
Drawing on the V&A’s unrivalled collections and complemented by works drawn from across Britain, the exhibition will bring together more than 300 objects. It will chart the development of British design in all its forms featuring much-loved designs such as a 1961 E-type Jaguar car, a Brownie Vecta camera by Kenneth Grange (1964), an Alexander McQueen evening gown from the Horn of Plenty collection (2009), a six metre model of Concorde, fine art by Richard Hamilton and David Hockney, textiles by Lucienne Day (1951)and Laura Ashley (1983) and a Moulton bicycle (1964). Alongside these well-known pieces will be works on museum display for the first time including Kit Williams’ golden hare jewel from Masquerade (1979) and Brian Duffy’s original photograph for the cover of David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album (1973), as well as recent discoveries such as a Brian Long Torsion chair (1971) and furniture by Max Clendinning (1960s).
Professor Martin Roth, Director of the V&A, said: “As people around the world will be focussing on the UK in the summer of 2012 this is an ideal moment to showcase British innovation, taste and creativity. We are also delighted to be hosting a series of British themed displays across all the collections in the Museum to accompany the major spring exhibition.”
The exhibition will be structured around three themes; Tradition and Modernity, Subversion, and Innovation and Creativity and will broadly follow a chronological framework.
The first gallery will focus on the tensions between tradition and modernity in the years following World War II. The opening section will investigate how key events such as the the Festival of Britain (1951) and the Queen’s Coronation (1953) played an important role in promoting modernisation and preserving British traditions and heritage. The work of designers such as John Fowler, John Makepeace and Michael Casson will demonstrate the revival of traditional craft techniques and show a renewed fascination in the British landscape as a source of inspiration. Along with this preoccupation with the past, however, came a drive to modernise British life. Urban regeneration projects such as The New Towns Act (1946) served to promote Britain as a progressive nation. On show will be models and architectural drawings created for New Towns such as Harlow and Milton Keynes. The economic recovery of the late 1950s and 1960s also generated new kinds of consumer demand. Designers including David Hicks, Max Clendinning and David Mellor and high- street stores such as Terence Conran’s Habitat were embraced by a growing, affluent middle class who developed a taste for modern, European-inspired design for their homes.
The second section of the exhibition will be dedicated to the subversive nature of British design from the 1960s to the 1990s. The British Art School system has long acted as an engine for cultivating radical artistic talent. Richard Slee, Zandra Rhodes and Damien Hirst are just some of the internationally recognised artists to have graduated from British art schools and examples of their work will be featured in the exhibition. The central gallery will be divided into studios structured around a central ‘street’ space that will explore the counter-cultural movements from 1960s ‘Swinging London’, through to the 1970s punk scene and the emergence of ‘Cool Britannia’ in the 1990s. British street culture has long fuelled the country’s creative spirit, with the work of fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, photographers David Bailey and Terry O’Neill, performers David Bowie and Brian Eno, graphic designers Peter Saville and Barney Bubbles, and furniture designers Tom Dixon and Mark Brazier Jones, all illustrating the impulsive radicalism of British art and design.
The final section of the exhibition will explore British creativity in relation to manufacturing industries, new technologies and architecture. During the post-war years, Britain was internationally renowned for its inventive product design and globally recognised for its feats of engineering from the Mini to Concorde. Since the oil crisis of the early 1970s traditional British manufacturing was in decline, while the nation’s service industries started to expand. The strength of Britain’s advances in new technologies will be illustrated by objects such as the Sinclair ZX80 home computer (1980) and Jonathan Ive’s iMac for Apple (1998). There will also be an immersive computer-gaming installation at the centre of the final gallery, featuring specially designed projections of five video games developed in Britain: Elite (1984), Lemmings (1991), Tomb Raider (1996), Grand Theft Auto (1997) and Little Big Planet (2007). The last section will also examine Britain’s expertise in architecture and structural engineering and will display architectural renderings and models of the Falkirk Wheel created by RMJM (2002), Foster & Partner’s 30 St Mary Axe building (2004) and a newly commissioned model of Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre
(2011), opening in the summer of 2012.
For this major exhibition the V&A will be working with leading British designers. The 3D design will be created by Ben Kelly Design, exhibition graphics by London-based consultancy GTF (Graphic Thought Facility), visual identity and accompanying catalogue will be produced by Barnbrook Design and audio visual installations by Soda. British Design 1948-2012 will be accompanied by a season of new displays across the Museum focusing on different aspects of British design.
Exhibition Designers
Leading UK Interior Design practice Ben Kelly Design (BKD), are creating the 3D exhibition design. Barnbrook Design, one of Britain’s leading graphic design studios, will be designing the accompanying exhibition catalogue as well as the visual identity for the exhibition. GTF (Graphic Thought Facility), London-based design consultancy has been appointed for the exhibition graphics, and London agency Soda will be creating the audio visual installations.
Dezeen Wire: a teenage design student’s simple and poignant graphic reworking of Apple’s logo that replaces the bite out of the apple with a silhouette of Steve Jobs has generated a huge amount of online interest as well as a job offer for its designer.
The design, by 19-year-old Hong Kong student Jonathan Mak, was posted on Mak’s blog in August but has so garnered over 180,000 visits and 1,300 comments since the death of Apple co-founder Steve Job’s death this week – via Reuters
Dezeen Wire: historians and campaigners are warning that the 358-year-old Taj Mahal near the city of Agra in northern India will collapse in two to five years if urgent action is not taken to maintain rotting wooden foundations – The Daily Mail
Dezeen Wire: architect Norman Foster has paid tribute to Apple founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, who has dies aged 56.
Foster + Partners are working on the new Apple campus to be built in Cupertino, California, and released images of the design just a week before Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple in August. Read Foster’s full statement below
Tribute to Steve Jobs, Chairman of Apple
6 October 2011
With my colleagues I would like to pay tribute to Steve Jobs. Like so many millions our lives have been profoundly and positively influenced by the innovations pioneered by Steve and Apple, names which are inseparable.
We were greatly privileged to know Steve as a person, as a friend and in every way so much more than a client. Steve was an inspiration and a role model. He encouraged us to develop new ways of looking at design to reflect his unique ability to weave backwards and forwards between grand strategy and the minutiae of the tiniest of internal fittings. For him no detail was small in its significance and he would be simultaneously questioning the headlines of our project together whilst he delved into its fine print.
He was the ultimate perfectionist and demanded of himself as he demanded of others. We are better as individuals and certainly wiser as architects through the experience of the last two years and more of working for him. His participation was so intense and creative that our memory will be that of working with one of the truly great designers and mentors.
Norman Foster Architect
Chairman + Founder of Foster + Partners
Dezeen Wire: Organisation in Design are now accepting applications from designers and companies wishing to exhibit at Ventura Lambrate 2012 in Milan next April.
The third edition of Ventura Lambrate design district in the north east of Milan will be open from 17 to 22 April 2012.
See all our stories about Ventura Lambrate 2011 here.
For more information and to get involved, send an email milano@organisationindesign.com
Here are some more details from Organisation in Design:
Ventura Lambrate 2012
Organisation in Design, is very pleased to announce the opening of the Ventura Lambrate 2012 exhibitor application.
This will be the third edition of Ventura Lambrate, the only completely curated design district of Fuorisalone.
From Tuesday April 17th, 2012 to Sunday April 22nd, the most talented expressions of the international design world will be on the Ventura Lambrate stage, for a public composed of press, professionals and design enthusiasts.
By showing a diverse mix of craftsmanship and technology, poetry and intellect, nature and science, uniqueness and democracy, Ventura Lambrate 2012 leads visitors to discover the best outings of the international design world, make new business and get inspired.
Ventura Lambrate invites renowned and established designers, as well as emerging young designers, cultural institutions and galleries, interesting initiatives and creative collectives to apply for Ventura Lambrate 2012.
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