Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in this movie filmed during London Design Festival, leading figures from London and abroad explore the pros and cons of working in the city and discuss the threats to its status as one of the major design centres of the world.

“London is the most international and vibrant city there is, probably worldwide,” says Spanish designer Jaime Hayon, who lived in London for three years.

Eero Koivisto of Swedish studio Claesson Koivisto Rune agrees. “It’s truly multicultural in the same way New York is,” he says.

Patrizia Moroso, creative director of Italian brand Moroso, describes the city as “a sort of belly of the world.”

She explains: “Many young people, people from all over the world, are attracted [to the city] because London is open.”

Being an open city is one of the key reasons for its success, argues Kieran Long, senior curator at the V&A Museum.

“London has always been a place that is incredibly tolerant of new things,” he says. “The city is based on immigration.”

Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic agrees. “London is a remarkably successful place for attracting really smart, bright, gifted young designers,” he claims.

However, Sudjic warns that it can also be a difficult place for young designers to start up: “London is a very expensive place to be. You might find yourself migrating right out to the external edges of the city.”

“Production is not the most amazing,” adds Hayon. “You’ve got to travel a lot when you’re based in London and that’s costly and it’s complicated if you’re setting up a business.”

“Many young, fresh designers come from London, but you don’t have many strong brands,” observes Mimi Lindau of Swedish furniture brand Blå Station.

Sudjic agrees: “London has based its success on 150 years of having great art schools,” he says. “[Designers] come to study here and lots of them stay and build a practice, not necessarily based on clients here, but on clients around the world.”

London’s schools are one of the major reasons for the proliferation of architects based in the city, claims Alex de Rijke, co-founder of architects de Rijke Marsh Morgan and dean of architecture at the Royal College of Art.

“We’re spoilt for good schools for architecture here,” he says. “The overly large proportion of architects in London is obviously because the education system has been strong here.”

However, he adds a note of warning: “Schools are coming under threat from a lack of government funding.”

In September, the UK government announced changes to immigration rules that make it more difficult for international students to extend their leave to remain in the country once their course ends.

Long claims the move could endanger London’s status as one of the world’s leading design centres.

“Any political agenda that tries to limit the influx of international students to the UK is a disaster,” he says. “It’s a disaster for the schools, it’s a disaster for design culture here because, let’s face it, there’s no manufacturing here, there’s nothing else. What we are is a crossroads for great creative people.”

He continues: “We should keep London as open a city as it can be.”

See our earlier story on how the UK’s new immigration laws will affect design »

Sudjic agrees that London should not take its position in the design world for granted. “Design is a very competitive process, lot’s of places want to be the design capital of the world,” he says.

“London is a great place to be, but it can’t be complacent. It has to go on being interesting and attracting new people, smart people, and getting them to stay.”

We travelled around London in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.

See all our Dezeen and MINI World Tour movies »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »

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great creative people” appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: architect Alex de Rijke of dRMM talks to Dezeen about his practice’s Escher-inspired installation of staircases in this movie filmed outside Tate Modern in London. 

The Endless Stair installation, constructed on the bank of the River Thames as part of this years London Design Festival, comprises 15 interlocking staircases demonstrating a new cross-laminated timber material.

“Endless Stair is a prototype,” explains de Rijke, who is co-founder of architects de Rijke Marsh Morgan and dean of architecture at the Royal College of Art. “It’s a research project into making a new material, or a new version of a material, namely a hard wood version of laminated timber, which is generally soft wood.”

dRMM chose to create an installation of stairs to demonstrate the material because of the sculptural quality of staircases, de Rijke says.

“Stairs are one of the nicest things about architecture,” he explains. “Somebody once said sculpture’s gift to architecture is the staircase.”

He continues: “My team were interested in Escher’s endless stair as a conceptual conceit. We thought we would make a very simple version of Escher’s sophisticated ideas.”

To recreate one of Escher’s drawings in 3D would be impossible, and de Rijke admits that the installation is not literally endless.

“Endless Stair is obviously a real staircase with a real end,” he says. “The idea of Endless Stair is that it can be endlessly reconfigured; it’s something that can be recycled and reused. There are 15 flights in this example, and they can be reconfigured with more or less in many different contexts.”

De Rijke says that the sculpture is meant to be fun, but forms part of a serious research project.

“All useful architecture has its origins in some kind of experiment,” he says. “We wanted to make a new material and we wanted to apply it and we did so with a kind of sculpture, but actually there’s a serious intent behind it, which is the application at the scale of buildings and larger structures.”

We drove to Tate Modern in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.

See all our Dezeen and MINI World Tour movies »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »
See Dezeen’s map and guide to London Design Festival 2013 »

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is the staircase” – Alex de Rijke appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: the next stop on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour is our home town of London. In our first report, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs takes a trip through the east of the city and explains why the area has become such a hotbed for design and technology.

Starting off in Stoke Newington, a former village in the north-east of the city where Dezeen is based, Fairs follows the route of an old Roman road called Ermine Street to the city centre, passing through Dalston, Shoreditch and the City of London before ending up at the River Thames.

“These areas have come to symbolise the new creative economy of London,” says Fairs as he passes through Shoreditch, a former industrial district bordering the City of London where a proliferation of architects, designers and, increasingly, technology companies are based.

“They’re stuffed full of digital companies, technology companies, design companies; [there’s] a real focus of new types of creativity.”

Last year, Dezeen celebrated the rich diversity of design talent in the area as part of our Designed in Hackney initiative, which culminated in a day of talks and workshops with many of the borough’s upcoming creative companies.

“We plotted on a map all of the design studios in the area,” Fairs explains. “We found that the pins on the map were so dense you couldn’t see the map behind. It really felt that we’d discovered a critical mass of design talent that is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.”

There are a number of reasons why so many designers set up in London, says Fairs, despite the city being “really expensive, really competitive, really unfriendly to newcomers.”

“London is full of really amazing design schools, I think that’s a really important point,” he explains. “People from all around the world come to London to get their design qualifications; they make friends, they enjoy the culture and they stay and set up studios.”

Another major factor is money, Fairs claims: “There’s lots of money in London. That’s created problems – the property market has been going up non-stop – but it also creates wealth and wealth is the thing that turns the gears of creativity in many ways.”

The wealth of the city is most visible in the new skyscrapers being built to the south of Shoreditch in the City of London, where projects like Richard Rogers’ Leadenhall Building and Raphael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street, dubbed “The Cheesegrater” and “The Walkie-Talkie” respectively, are transforming London’s skyline.

“London used to be a place where world-class architects didn’t really feel like they could get any decent work” Fairs says. “But now London is really coming into its own.”

Of course, one of the main attractions of Shoreditch for the creative industries was that rents were comparatively cheap. Fairs says it is inevitable that young designers are now being priced out of the area, but is optimistic for the future of designers in the city.

“London is a big city,” he says. “People are already moving further to the east, to the south, crossing the river. London, I think, will always be able to regenerate itself.”

We travelled through east London in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music featured in the movie is a track called Temple by London band Dead Red Sun.

See all our Dezeen and MINI World Tour movies »
See all our stories about London Design Festival 2013 »
See Dezeen’s map and guide to London Design Festival 2013 »

The post “Shoreditch symbolises the new
creative economy of London” appeared first on Dezeen.