Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: a product designed by Dutch designer Pepe Heykoop to be made in an Indian slum has been a runaway success, creating employment for 80 families within a year of launch (+ movie + interview).

Speaking to Dezeen in Milan last week, Heykoop said workers making his Paper Vase earned the equivalent of eight Euros per day, which is eight times the average wage in the Mumbai slum.

“The ambition is to have 700 people out of poverty in ten years time,” said Heykoop. “We are pretty much half way”.

Initially launched in February last year, Heykoop presented the vase at Ventura Lambrate in Milan this year along with a range of other products he designed as part of a project organised by charity the Tiny Miracles Foundation to lift people out of poverty in Mumbai.

Online orders for the vase are averaging around 100 per day, allowing the foundation to keep 80 families in regular employment.

However the other products proved unsuitable to the project, which struggled for the first couple of years.

“In 2012 we never thought this was actually happening and now there’s light at the end of the tunnel and there’s a really good vibe going,” Heykoop said.

The success of the flat-pack vase – which is made of paper and sewn together – has led Heykoop to develop another folded paper product. Prototypes of his flatpack Paper Lamp were on show at Ventura Lambrate.

“The paper vase was the breakthrough and for 2014 I have this paper folded light, which has the same principal and has been flat-packed in an envelope,” said Heykoop.

After they’re made, the products are shipped from Mumbai to Heykoop’s studio in Amsterdam then distributed to consumers worldwide. However, if the buyers live east of India then the designs are shipped straight from there to save them travelling all the way around the world.

The Tiny Miracles Foundation, set up in 2010, is half way towards its goal for 2020 to provide 150 families with a wage of ten euros a day – the UNICEF standard for a middle class wage – in return for their production skills.

Heykoop’s original ideas for the project were lampshades from lambskin, transforming traditional water carriers into leathery vases, but the products proved difficult for the community to produce and too expensive for consumers to purchase.

“I started off with leather lampshades; they’re like 550 Euros in the shop,” he said. “It’s nice when you sell a bunch of them but you have work and then you don’t have work for a few weeks. These ladies were coming to me and asking ‘can I work next month’, and I wanted to say yes but I couldn’t, because the products were not selling on a daily basis.”

Heykoop hopes to train the families in Mumbai to manage the distribution themselves, so the process becomes contained within the community after the programme finishes in six years time.

“This foundation stops in 2020 but it doesn’t mean that this workshop stops in 2020,” Heykoop explained. “If we stop the workshop in 2020, it will all collapse again. If the foundation stops providing the information, then they should be self sustainable.”

Here’s an edited transcript of the interview with Pepe Heykoop:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the project that you’re showing in Milan.

Pepe Heykoop: I’ve been a collaborator for four years with Tiny Miracles Foundation, which has been set up by my cousin. This community group that we’re aiming at lives in a slum in Mumbai and they used to be basketry weavers. They earned one euro a day for the whole family.

Most of them were illiterate, couldn’t count to ten it was like hardcore surviving on the streets. Then my cousin started the foundation and she asked me: “Pepe can you design some items that we can produce with them because we want to bring education, we want to bring healthcare but we also want to provide jobs so they can eventually pay for the healthcare and education themselves.”

So I went there and for me it was the second time in India, and it’s such a different world. When I started designing things, it was really heard to blend in with their way of thinking and their world and my world. It took two and a half years to find something that really worked.

Marcus Fairs: What’s the ambition of the Tiny Miracles Foundation? To employ people?

Pepe Heykoop: The ambition is to have 700 people out of poverty in ten years time. I’m only working on the creating jobs pillar and Laurien [Meuter] was taking care of the healthcare and education, other pillars.

Marcus Fairs: So the idea was for you to come up with some products that they could manufacture?

Pepe Heykoop: Well all of them can do basketry weaving with their eyes closed but I said I don’t want to do something with weaving or bamboo, because it has this ethnic look and this fair-trade image and I think we should focus on something new. That a product should sell itself. You want it because you like it, you buy it and then the story is a plus, an extra.

Marcus Fairs: You don’t buy it because you feel guilty, or feel sorry for people.

Pepe Heykoop: No, there’s a lot of good initiatives. You want to support them and then you get an ugly basket, you know what I mean. So these products don’t look like they’ve been made by these people living on the street and that’s where I wanted to go.

But it’s hard. It’s hard when people cannot count to ten to work with them but luckily there was this force within me to not give up and act like a pit bull, hanging on. We found something with the folded paper vase covering to be put around an empty bottle and shipped in an envelope. It comes as a gift and it works out really well. We’ve sold like 100 pieces a day at the moment and that’s why now, starting off with seven people in 2011, now we have over 80 people employed in 2014. We’e heading towards a goal of a group of 700 people, equal to about 150 families.

Marcus Fairs: So that’s the target?

Pepe Heykoop: This is half way. The project takes until 2020, so in four years we are pretty much halfway. In 2012 we never thought this was actually happening and now there’s light at the end of the tunnel and there’s a really good vibe going on since about one and a half years ago.

Marcus Fairs: Tell us briefly about the other two products.

Pepe Heykoop: The paper vase was the breakthrough and for 2014 I have this paper folded light, which has the same principal and has been flat packed in an envelope. The weight’s really low.

These samples I’ve been making during the last week in the studio are prototypes, and I’m testing colours now and colours of the treads and we’ll see which one it’s going to be. This paper should be coated and then within three seconds you just pop it up and there’s a certain tension in the paper, which gives it shape. So then we’re going to sell this separately, the electricity and separately the shade, if you want to change it for a different colour.

It should also be a low price range. The Paper Vase is 19 euros in the shop and this one we want to have 35, 39 euros for the other. Everybody can buy it, because that’s the only way we can have these women working on a daily basis.

I started off with leather lampshades; they’re like 550 euros in the shop. It’s nice when you sell a bunch of them but you have work and then you don’t have work for a few weeks and then there’s work and then there’s not work. These ladies were coming to me and asking “can I work next month”, and I wanted to say yes but I couldn’t, because the products were not selling on a daily basis.

Marcus Fairs: So what techniques do they use to manufacture these?

Pepe Heykoop: There’s paper and sewing. Actually I started off in 2011 with the welding and way too complex techniques, and I had failure after failure. Then at a certain moment, I said I’ll get a folding class and I invited 30 women to come and fold a sheet of paper in half. None of them could do this correctly and then I was shocked because I thought “this is the final try” if folding a sheet of paper doesn’t work.

So then of course after some training, I made something like a game out of it, because I want this workshop to have a really positive vibe and I hate production in China where you’re not allowed to see how stuff is done. If you know where your T-shirt is coming from in these factories in Bangladesh, you don’t want to wear it. So I said we can do, of course we can do production in such a nice way as I can do it in Amsterdam. We can do it there as well and we don’t just take something but we also give something back. That’s the whole.

Marcus Fairs: Do they work from home or is there a workshop they go to?

Pepe Heykoop: We started off with a really dark crappy spot near the street; there were rats running round and cockroaches and rain was coming in, but you should start from something. Then in 2012, we changed into a bigger room and now we have a big room, a proper room that’s clean and light. There’s no rain coming in.

Marcus Fairs: And you said that people get paid to eat, one euro a day. Do you pay them the same, or do you pay them more than the average?

Pepe Heykoop: No no no, they used to earn one euro a day with basketry weaving for the whole family and we go up to ten euros a day, which is the UNICEF standard for middle class. Now it’s eight euros but by 2020, it will be something around ten. If you increase the salary ten times more, you will only ruin the system over there because they will hate each other; who can work with us and who can’t. So we integrate this amount in education and doctor visits. So now behind the scenes we are paying that and every year they should pay 10 percent more for education and doctor visits. So within ten years, they are paying this themselves gradually.

Marcus Fairs: And finally, do they make the products and also ship the products to the customers, or do they put them in a big crate and send them to you in the Netherlands and then you do it from there?

Pepe Heykoop: For the moment, we have everything sent to Holland. Except for orders that go to Japan or Australia, like the other way round, then we ship them directly. But it involves a lot of training, because there should be final checks, so we do some final checking in Holland but we want to train them to do that.

This foundation stops in 2020 but it doesn’t mean that this workshop stops in 2020. So the foundation helps with understanding how it works, with the doctor visits and the schooling and whenever they make the money. If we stop the workshop in 2020, it will all collapse again. If the foundation stops providing the information, then they should be self sustainable.

The post “These products don’t look like they’ve been made
by people living on the street” – Pepe Heykoop appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Alessandro Mendini recreated his iconic Proust chair in marble for an exhibition of products shown by Italian company Robot City at Ventura Lambrate in Milan.

Made for the Italian marble company’s Solid Spaces show, the new iteration of the Proust chair is an attempt to create an object with a “hyper-realist” appearance by using marble to create an “almost surreal” effect, said Robot City.

Originally created in 1978, the Poltrona di Proust chair became Mendini’s best-known work. It was the first in a series known as Redesigns, which brought together his academic theories on the importance of historical context for design and the significance of surface appearances in a fast-moving world.

The Proust chair was developed after Mendini stumbled across a copy of a Neo-baroque chair while researching ideas for a fabric pattern for Cassina, influenced by the work of French writer Marcel Proust. The original version of the chair was covered in a multicoloured fabric, with a pattern carried through in its hand-painted frame, enlarging and reproducing an artwork by Pointillist artist Paul Signac.

It was originally a one-off design, but its popularity led Mendini to produce variations in limited numbers.

This marble version is one of four creations by different designers produced from a single 38.7-tonne block of white marble, excavated from a quarry owned by Robot City leader Gualtiero Vanelli.

The designs “give unexpected twists to the interchange between form, function, visual appearance, ergonomics, tradition and innovation”, said Robot City in a statement.

“Each of them enhanced the expressive and functional potential of this ancient, fascinating material, transforming it into advanced contemporary expressions according to their personal style and language.”

The other three projects in the exhibition included shelves by Paolo Ulian, an undulating glass-topped table by Stefano Boeri, and a table with three rabbit-shaped chairs by Stefano Giovannoni.

The post Alessandro Mendini revisits Proust chair
for marble exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: designers Luca Nichetto and Lera Moiseeva collaborated to create a ceramic tableware collection to accompany a porcelain coffee set, for an exhibition at Spazio Rossana Orlandi.

The Cheburashka table set for ceramics company Dymov was designed by Luca Nichetto and Lera Moiseeva to enhance and reinterpret the ritual sharing of food.

A large collective container has oversized handles and a lid that when placed upside-down becomes a flat surface for the serving spoon, which can also hang from either handle.

Two smaller bowls complete the set and can be stacked upside-down on top of the main container’s lid, creating a totem shape for storage.

Hand-engraved lines on the surface of the ceramics resemble a fishing net, appearing to wrap the containers.

“Cheburashka” is the ancient Russian word for the floats used by fishermen to support their nets and also the name of a popular big-eared Soviet children’s character, who bears a resemblance to the main container in the collection.

After being formed on the potter’s wheel and dried, the surface of the red clay pieces are polished using a hard smooth surface to close the pores and shine the material.

The pieces are fired at 950 degrees and then smoke-fired in an air-tight kiln filled with smoldering embers of wood chips and sawdust.

A chemical reaction allows the clay minerals to absorb the smoke and gives the products their dark appearance. Finally, the objects are polished using natural beeswax provided by local beekeepers.

Cheburashka was exhibited as part of the Walk the Line exhibition at Spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan last week.

The set was paired with Nichetto and Moiseeva’s Sucabaruca porcelain coffee range for the Mjölk gallery in Toronto, which was designed with the similar principal of enjoying hot drinks with others.

“The idea is to show that the same kind of approach can create two objects that are completely different, one in porcelain and the other in ceramic, but with the same kind of energy and the idea of sharing with guests,” Nichetto told Dezeen at the exhibition.

Photography is by Lera Moiseeva and Luca Bragagnolo.

The post Luca Nichetto and Lera Moiseeva create ceramic
tableware for shared meals appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: London studio Doshi Levien has designed an armchair for Danish brand Hay with a curving high-backed seat that resembles a traditional Japanese fan.

The Uchiwa chair by Doshi Levien takes its name and its rounded shape from a rigid hand-held fan, which is made from a circular piece of paper attached to a bamboo handle.

The chair’s moulded polyurethane shell is upholstered in either soft down with a quilted cover for use in domestic interiors or more durable moulded foam for the contract market.

Designer Jonathan Levien told Dezeen that Hay gave the studio an open brief to create a comfortable armchair, with the condition that it should also be affordable.

“In a sense it was as free as any other project in creative terms, only we had to make a piece with economy of production in mind,” said Levien.

The designers spent seven months developing the product – focussing on refining the upholstery process to reduce the amount of stitching required and achieve the required affordability.

“Most of the work in an upholstered piece goes into the stitching, so we found a way to minimise this while coming up with an expressive gesture through clever pattern cutting,” Levien explained.

The chair’s shell is injection moulded in a rounded shape ,with folds on the rear adding structure and creating sharp lines that contrast with the soft upholstery of the seat.

The expansive shell is supported by a compact oak frame that matches the curve on the underside of the seat and is also available in a stained grey finish.

An accompanying foot stool has also been developed and Doshi Levien is working with Hay to expand the Uchiwa collection by introducing a low back version of the chair.

Uchiwa was presented by Hay at their space during last week’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile. Doshi Levien also exhibited projects for several other manufacturers, including a collection of patterned rugs that reference tribal Indian embroidery, a cabinet resembling a multicoloured patchwork and a lounge chair with a woolly headrest.

The post Doshi Levien bases Uchiwa armchair for Hay
on a traditional Japanese fan appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: designers from MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group have created a shape-shifting table that reacts to human presence with a series of 1,000 tiny motors built into the frame (+ movie).

Named Transform, the table is divided into three separate surfaces, where more than 1,000 small squares attached to individual motors that are hidden from view.

When a user passes their hand across the surface, the individual squares rise up in sequence and create a ripple effect.

The table can also create abstract shapes on its own, and transfer objects across the surface, thanks to a series of pre-programmed animation sequences.

Transform was created by Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer and overseen by their professor Hiroshi Ishii.

“A pixel is intangible,” Ishii told Dezeen. “You can only use it through mediating and remote control, like a mouse or a touchscreen. We decided to physically embody computation and information.”

According to the team, the concept is a look at how furniture could evolve in future. It forms part of the MIT Tangible Media Group’s Radical Atoms project, which explores human interaction with materials that are reconfigurable by computer.

“We don’t want the furniture to become more important than the motion. We want to make it feel like it’s a unified design and they are not separate,” said Amit Zoran, one of the product designers on the project.

Transform changes shape by a series of sensors that detect movement above the surface. However, the table could change according to the emotions of people around it, and create a melody to soothe those around the table, said its creators.

“Imagine, this is equivalent of the invention of a new medium. Painting, plastic, and computer graphics. It has infinite possibilities,” said Ishii.

The project was part of Lexus Design Amazing exhibition, which premiered in Milan last week.

The post Table top by MIT designers ripples
when people are nearby appeared first on Dezeen.