Georgia is using architecture to rebrand itself like Germany did after the Second World War according to architect Jürgen Mayer H, who has built a range of striking border checkpoints, airports and service stations in the country (+ slideshow).
“Georgia is a country in need of a lot of infrastructure and a lot of things that make the country run like a normal country,” the German architect said in an interview with Dezeen.
“So there’s an urgency. I sometimes compare it to Germany in post-war times when a town hall had to be built, a bus station had to be built, just to make the country work, and that resulted in some great contemporary architecture.”
His architectural practice, J. Mayer H, has worked on a dozen infrastructure projects across the country, which is strategically located in the Caucasus between Europe and Asia and which was part of the Soviet Union until 1991.
Following independence and the “Rose Revolution” democratic reforms of 2003, Georgia embarked on a major investment programme, hiring leading architects to renew the country’s infrastructure.
The focus on infrastructure is an attempt to rebrand the young country, which is on an important transit route between west and east, said Mayer H.
“Georgia has a very rich history in architecture but it’s also a very transitory country,” he said. “People drive and transport things from Azerbaijan to Turkey, and architecture along those transportation routes is maybe the only thing that you see when you drive through the country.”
These projects are helping Georgia forge a new identity, a decade after the period of civil unrest and economic crisis that followed the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.
“Georgia has a very rich history in architecture but it’s also a very transitory country and it’s in a period of change right now,” said Mayer H, in an interview with Dezeen in Miami last week, where the architect presented an artwork at the Art Basel fair.
“Nothing really happened after the Soviet regime and architecture works quite well to show there’s a certain reach towards modernisation and a transformation of the country, also connecting the country to the West,” he said. “These projects are a very visible sign to show that there’s a change going on.”
Mayer H. became involved in that change at the invitation of Mikheil Saakashvili, who was president of Georgia from 2004 until last month.
“He saw our Metropol Parasol project [in Seville, Spain] in a book and he was inspired to invite me to talk about projects in Tbilisi,” the architect recounted. “I think he had a really interesting vision to see architecture not only in buildings that we think are high cultural buildings, but also in very mundane structures.”
“To see that as an architectural contribution – how you welcome people entering your country or say goodbye with your checkpoint – I think that’s really impressive,” he added.
Saakashvili stepped down as president in November after serving two consecutive terms, so Jürgen Mayer H predicts a pause in the country’s architectural development. “I think now it’s a moment where they stop a little bit and the new government uses this moment to rethink if this is the right speed of transformation, if it’s the right direction,” he said. “But of course there’s so much curiosity in the country, so it’s just having a little break before it continues again.”
J. Mayer H. have three ongoing projects in Georgia: a 2500-square-metre private house; Saakashvili’s presidential library in the capital Tbilisi; and an train station that will connect west and east.
“The station is in the middle of nowhere in the high plateau,” he told us. “It connects Turkey to Azerbaijan so they have to change the width of the train tracks, so everybody has to get out and everything has to be reloaded with security and customs and checkpoints and everything.”
Perriand’s investigations into standardisation and modular furniture led Louis Vuitton’s designers to create garments that can be matched with each other in various combinations.
Returning from Japan in the 1940s, the French architect wrote: “A new way of living awaited me there: work, leisure, discovery, representation. I had made up my wardrobe with interchangeable ‘modules,’ as in my investigations of standardisation: four skirts, long or short, for the lower body and sweaters, blouses and bustiers for the top, all of which combined to give me at least 16 possibilities.”
This idea also informed adaptable garments including a reversible yellow jacket with removable sleeves. The bold colours and geometric shapes of Perriand’s designs influenced the tones and prints used throughout the collection.
Complimentary colours such as blue and orange are used together to create high contrast, while gingham checks and earthy tones add to the 1940s aesthetic. Expandable bags are designed to be easily changed for different occasions.
Charlotte Perriand is best known for her work with fellow Modernist designers Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé during the mid-twentieth century. Since her death in 1999, she has become more widely recognised as a designer in her own right as the result of exhibitions that featured her work, including MoMA’s Designing Modern Women.
Here’s some more information from Louis Vuitton:
Icônes Collection – Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2014
Some women leave behind an aura of radiance wherever they go. Time is their ally, the world their domain. Charlotte Perriand was one. A generous, multi-talented personality, this architect, designer, urban planner and photographer broke away from outmoded conventions, free to invent a new concept of timeless elegance. Fascinated with the “apparent simplicity” sought by the great creators, she envisioned a world in which beauty and function merge, holding forth the promise of a life infused with harmony. Pinpointing the indispensable, eradicating the superfluous, she traced the outlines of a fundamental modernity that foreshadowed the classicism of the future. Paralleling this quest, Louis Vuitton, dream-maker and inventor of a movable chic born of technical and aesthetic sophistication, offers a collection of iconic garments, pioneering a spare, timeless, dependable fashion vocabulary that adapts to every desire.
Like Charlotte Perriand’s colourful modular creations, each piece in the collection can be transformed to adapt to the wearer’s needs and moods. Combining elements, juxtaposing contrasts, each ensemble offers endless possibilities, resulting in a unique, modern wardrobe unfazed by fleeting trends. Delineating the silhouette of the woman whose look is “always similar but never the same,” rejecting standardisation, capturing the spirit of the times and freely developing its distinctive style, Louis Vuitton perpetuates its own legend while adding to that of one of the most inspiring women of the 20th century.
The Collection
Fresh as a breeze from the mountaintops, graphic as the stroke of an architect’s pen, the Icônes collection for summer 2014 invents a timeless feminine elegance, uniting fantasy with precision, lightness with respect for craftsmanship, and freedom with functionality.
All of the pieces were conceived to adapt to each woman’s imagination. Red gingham trousers paired with a matching blouse, delicately highlighted with a thin black lavallière, evoke the pleasures of a stroll in the sun. In a subtle allusion to Charlotte Perriand, whose creations inspired the collection, the prints and colours suggest the formal virtuosity of her designs. A common thread in the legends of Louis Vuitton and the architect, the theme of travel permeates the story behind these icons. The sun-coloured reversible jacket with removable sleeves is ready for any weather, anywhere in the world. A leather motorcycle jacket structures the fluidity of a silk dress in exotic earth tones, while muted shades reminiscent of Japan gracefully adorn the Milaris bag.
From trench coat to swimsuit, from shorts to evening gown, each icon in the collection recounts the story of a House inspired by a creative femininity imbued with light and an adventuresome spirit.
Travel
To break free from everyday routine, taking off toward new horizons, with open eyes and an open mind, and then return to create the elegance of tomorrow. From Louis Vuitton to Charlotte Perriand, travel, a bridge across time and space, a dialogue of cultures, has traced the outlines of an enduring art of living. From the dazzling brilliance of the poles to the steamy mists of tropical climes, colours, textures and materials embody the fulfilment of a shared dream. Silk lends a dress the lightness of a cloud, while leather links a trench coat to the House’s traditional craft. The exotic hide defining the ample forms of a Milaris, like the lightweight canvas of a flat expandable bag, conjures up visions of wanderings in the farthest reaches of the imaginary world. Piece by piece, this collection makes up a singular wardrobe that transforms the everyday into a journey with a unique style, a merging of beauty and function.
Functionality
According to Charlotte Perriand, “There is art in everything: in a movement, a vase… a jewel, a way of being,” and in “useful forms.” At Louis Vuitton, since the House’s founding, each creation has drawn its essence from the reality of the times, its inventive nature turning every moment into an art of living infused with harmony.
Like a joint manifesto, Icônes asserts the eminent functionality of each piece in the collection. Just like Charlotte Perriand’s colourful modular creations, each garment can be transformed to adapt to the wearer’s needs and moods. A trench coat for rain, shorts for sunny weather, a leather skirt for long, busy days, a silk gown for special occasions… But this functional chronology can be disrupted according to the whim of a moment: the modularity of each piece opens the range of possibilities that enables a personal style.
Their grace, intelligence and refinement give these icons that little something extra that transforms a piece of clothing into a symbol of elegance.
British architect Alex Graef has combined two art deco apartments in Vienna to create a home with clean white walls, restored oak floors and a row of artificial skylights (+ slideshow).
Alex Graef renovated the two nineteenth century apartments to create an occasional home for an art collector. The architect designed a series of bright spaces with large open walls and built-in shelves to create places for hanging paintings and displaying small sculptures.
One side of the residence contains the bedroom, library and kitchen, while the other side accommodates the living room, dining room and study.
A series of pre-Columbian sculptures are dotted throughout the apartment to tie the spaces together and are highlighted by new lighting fixtures.
“A layer of directional spotlights highlight the sculptures, each of which is visible from another, and thereby directs the flow through the space,” Graef told Dezeen.
More lighting sits within three slices in the ceiling above the kitchen, creating the effect of a row of skylights.
“The artificial skylights and deep-recessed dimmable ceiling spots provide basic uniform light levels to the space,” added the architect.
Original oak parquet floors were restored on one side of the apartment, while the other side features new terrazzo flooring.
Sliding doors between rooms are upholstered in a textured white fabric.
The bathroom is contained behind newly added partitions and features dark tiled walls that contrast with the bright white of the rest of the residence.
London architect Alex Graef remodelled and furnished a large apartment in a 19th century building in Vienna for a non-resident client.
A deep plan, created by combining two adjacent apartments, was unlocked by demolishing all central partitions and inserting a series of gently rotated volumes containing bathrooms and ancillary spaces. An existing collection of pre-columbian miniature sculptures was used as a narrative device and installed as permanent client to host their often absent occupiers.
This created fictional views and axial relationships, which helped to determine and communicate a geometry that meets and transports often sparse but ever changing daylight deep into a large central space.
There it is met by a layered system of artificial lighting which looks to augment, complement and play, starting with a dominant central artificial skylight and using brightly lit wall faces and suspended lighting objects to mark moments and give structure to an otherwise free flowing spatial sequence.
The subtlety of light colour and intensity is enhanced by white as the dominant for all visible surfaces, helped by an interplay of different textures, reflections and refractions. Gaps between hard white volumes are filled by soft upholstered, white textured sliding doors, while inside surfaces of bathrooms and visible furniture use dark heavy materials and moments of bright colour.
Through large openings to an outer rim of existing rooms which are restored with their original wooden floors and traditional stucco, colour enters the white central space and further adds to its complexity and ever changing atmosphere.
Architects: Alex Graef Associated Architects Ltd (Alex Graef, Marek Dziubas, Christoph Eppacher, Natascha Madeiski, Heidi Lee, Thomas Dunning) Consultant Engineers: Hollinsky and Partners, Vienna
Paris designer Inga Sempé has added an armchair to her Ruché collection of furniture with quilted covers for French design brand Ligne Roset (+ slideshow).
Like Inga Sempé‘s earlier sofa and bed in the range, the Ruché armchair comprises a simple wooden frame with a loose padded cover draped over the top for comfort.
The piece has an asymmetric design, with one armrest the same height as the backrest and the other sitting just proud of the seat so that the user can drape their legs over the side.
“My idea was to offer different ways of sitting: normal, sideways, straight or slouchy,” Sempé told Dezeen. “As all edges are upholstered, there are no hard parts to avoid.”
“An armchair is almost as expensive as a sofa so I believe that it should be as comfortable as the main piece of the living room,” she continued. “Sometimes the armchair is more like the poor and less comfortable member of a range that includes a sofa.”
The design is available with the higher armrest positioned on the left or the right, and it’s intended to be used with an existing ottoman in the range.
The frame comes in natural or varnished beech, blue-grey or red, while the upholstery can be made up in a choice of Ligne Roset fabrics including velour, wool, thick cloth, microfibres or leather.
“I have to say that I was not behind the choice of the sofa’s colours,” she confided. “It often happens that the company does not want to involve the designer on the colours, and so one discovers it at the fair. Sometimes one could cry; sometimes one can be lucky.”
Ligne Roset will showcase the new piece at Maison & Objet trade show in Paris from 24 to 28 January 2014, where Sempé has chosen to present it in red and taupe.
“I have chosen this colour to contrast with the red structure, and to be rather happy and enlightening as it has to be presented at this dark time of the year in Europe,” she explained.
Artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz used twelve of his former flames as the inspiration for these 3D-printed shoes.
This image: Cry Baby. Main image: Honey
“I had been interested for years in creating a project that could revisit the relationships and women that had been so important at another time,” Errazuriz told Dezeen. “Like anyone else I have always found it quite incredible that when it comes to romantic relationships over the years, different people will represent a vital role in our lives even though later we might never see many of them again.”
Cry Baby
In 12 Shoes for 12 Lovers, each of the high-heeled shoes is designed for a woman Errazuriz previously had a relationship with, some of which lasted years and others just one night.
Heart Breaker
“The idea was to try and review those past sexual and romantic relationships from a distance of time,” said Errazuriz. “To expose yourself to scrutiny and judgment and invite others to check their own romantic relationships with their beauties, flaws, failures and success.”
Heart Breaker
The shape of each shoe represents how he remembers its counterpart: either by a nickname, a personal attribute or sexual behaviour.
The Boss
First in the series is Honey, a shoe formed from a yellow honeycomb pattern modelled on a girl that was too nice for him.
The Boss
Red shoes in the collection include Heart Breaker, which has an arrow through the back, Hot Bitch that appears to be melting and The Jetsetter with an aeroplane model forming a stiletto heel.
G.I. Jane
The green G.I. Jane shoe has a small soldier figurine on the toe, made for a girl who went commando on their date and who’s father was an army colonel.
The Virgin
A pure white effigy of the Virgin Mary forms the heel on another, with her garments flowing into the front of the design. Other models are named The Ghost, The Rock and The Boss.
The Rock
All of the shoes were digitally modelled then 3D-printed from PET plastic using a Makerbot Replicator 2.
Jet Setter
“It’s the first time we used a 3D printer,” Errazuriz told Dezeen. “The idea was to create digital sculptures on 3D programs that could then not only be used to fabricate one-off shoe sculptures that could be purchased by an art collector, but also have the potential to be turned into injection plastic moulds.”
Gold Digger
The collection is on show at a pop-up shop for Brazilian shoe brand Melissa in Miami until 6 January.
Danish architects COBE and Transform have completed an aluminium-clad museum of maritime history in Norway with a zigzagging profile modelled on the shapes of local wooden buildings (+ slideshow).
Located south-west of Oslo in the harbourside town of Porsgrunn, the Maritime Museum and Exploratorium was designed by COBE and Transform to relate to the scale of its surroundings, which include a number of small wooden residences and warehouses.
Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj
The architects broke the volume of the building down into eleven blocks, with asymmetric roofs that pitch in different directions. Combined, these shapes give a zigzagging roofline to each elevation.
Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj
“We wanted to understand the area’s characteristics and then we wanted to strengthen it but at the same time create something new and contrasting,” said COBE founder and director Dan Stubbergaard. “The abrupt building structure of downscaled building volumes and the expressive roof profile are, for example, clear references to the area’s historic small wooden buildings, which all have their own particular roof profiles.”
Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj
“This interpretation of the area’s pitched roofs and small wooden building entities sets the final frame for a unique and characteristic contemporary building,” he added.
Aluminium shingles give a scaly surface to the outer walls and roof of the museum, and pick up reflections from the river that runs alongside.
Opening today, the museum’s exhibition galleries chart the town’s maritime history and tell the story of its dockyard industry.
A grand staircase leads visitors up to a large exhibition hall on the first floor, while smaller galleries and events rooms are housed on the ground floor.
Transform principal Lars Bendrup said he hopes that the building will help to revitalise the formerly industrial section of the town.
“Our general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside,” he said. “With the new museum, the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river that for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside.”
Photography is by Adam Mørk, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from COBE and Transform:
Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium
Today is the grand opening of a new spectacular Maritime Museum and Exploratorium in the Norwegian town Porsgrunn. The building is designed by the Danish architects COBE and TRANSFORM, and has already, before the opening, become an architectural landmark of the town.
From backside to frontside
Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is situated in the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn, 100 km south west of Oslo. The new museum will tell the story of the town’s dock yard industry and its maritime history, which has employed thousands of people from the whole region. In addition, the attractive location of the museum right on the riverside opens up an important process for the city concerning the future extensive urban renewal of the entire Porsgrunn Harbour area.
“Porsgrunn is an industrial town, which is reflected clearly in the museum’s surrounding context. It consists of small to medium sized industries in the shape of small characteristic wooden buildings. It was important to create a museum with a high level of sensitivity towards these surroundings, yet at the same time for the new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium to stand out as a spectacular contemporary building and become a landmark of Porsgrunn,” Lars Bendrup explains, owner of TRANSFORM, and continues: “Our general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside. With the new museum the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river, which for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside.”
New meets old
The new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is composed of eleven smaller square volumes, together amounting to almost 2,000 m2. Each volume has a different roof slant that assembled make up a varied roof structure. A characteristic aluminium facade, locally produced in Porsgrunn, not only holds the dynamic building structure together, but at the same time it reflects light and colours from the surrounding Norwegian mountain landscape.
Dan Stubbergaard, founder and creative director of COBE, elaborates: “It is a sensitive art adding new to old in a historic area. First of all we wanted to understand the area’s characteristics and then we wanted to strengthen it but at the same time create something new and contrasting. The abrupt building structure of downscaled building volumes and the expressive roof profile are for example clear references to the area’s historic small wooden buildings, which all have their own particular roof profiles. This interpretation of the area’s pitched roofs and small wooden building entities sets the final frame for a unique and characteristic contemporary building.”
He continues: “The goal was to create a house that not only understands and shows consideration for its surroundings, but also contributes with something radically new and different.”
Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium Porsgrunn, Norway Client: Telemark Museum Architects: COBE and TRANSFORM Engineers: Sweco Gross area: 2.000 m2 Construction period: 2011-2013 Total construction costs: 34 mio.
News:Jony Ive is now more important to Apple than Steve Jobs was when he died and the company “would be in trouble if he left”, according to the author of a new biography of the computer giant’s chief designer (+ interview).
“But in a way it is a testament to Jobs,” Kayney told Dezeen. “What he did in the last 12 years was build a company that could survive without him.”
Since Jobs’ death in 2011 Ive, Apple‘s senior vice president of industrial design, has become perhaps the most important figure at the company. Last year Ive was given responsibility for software design on top of his role as chief of hardware design.
He added: “It’s not clear whether Ive has created a design department that could survive without him. I think that Ive is so central to what Apple does that it would be in trouble if he left.”
Kahney, editor and published of Cult of Mac, has spent the last twelve years writing about Apple. His latest book tells the story of how Jonathan “Jony” Ive went from being “a scruffy British teenager” to the most famous and successful designer in the world.
The key episode in the Ive story is the way he helped returning Apple CEO Steve Jobs save the company with a string of revolutionary products starting with the iMac in 1997.
“The company was going to go out of business,” said Kahney. “If it had failed they would have definitely gone out of business. It was a big success and made Ive a famous designer.”
In his interview with Dezeen, Kahney explains how Jobs and Ive created a unique design-led culture at Apple that has driven the company’s phenomenal success. “At Apple, nobody can say no to the design department, said Kahney.
He added: “I don’t think any designer has ever, in the history of industry, ever had such resources at his disposal. It’s mind-boggling.”
Leander Kahney, author of Jony Ive – The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products
Following dozens of interviews with former Apple employees, Kahney speculated on the future direction Apple will take under Ive’s design leadership.
“They’re looking at technology-enhanced clothing,” he said. “People are talking about watches but I don’t think they’re going to make a watch. I don’t think it would make any sense. A lot of people don’t wear watches.”
He added: “They’re working with all the world’s major automotive companies to bring iOS to cars. That could be a huge deal. Thats where most people listen to music.”
Here’s an edited transcript of the interview with Kahney:
Rose Etherington: What’s the book about?
Leander Kahney: It’s a biography that traces [Ive’s] background, his education, his early career in London, then his recruitment to Apple. And then at Apple, about all the major products that he worked on.
Rose Etherington: What has been Ive’s most important moment at Apple?
Leander Kahney: Well I guess the turning point was the iMac back in ’97 with Steve Jobs. It changed Apple. Jobs forced Apple’s internal culture to switch from an engineering-led one to a design-led one. That forged the relationship between Jobs and Ive, which led to the other successful products.
The iMac was the product that saved Apple. The company was going to go out of business. If it had failed they would have definitely gone out of business. It was a big success and made Ive a famous designer.
Rose Etherington: So the iMac was more important than the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad?
Leander Kahney: Well I guess without the iMac they wouldn’t still be here; there would have been no subsequent products. It’s difficult to say that there’s only one important product. They had other successful computers but they couldn’t compete against Microsoft and the iPod really changed that. It turned Apple from a niche computer maker into a much broader consumer electronics company.
Of course the iPhone and the iPad are probably the most important products because they are changing the entire status of computing. It’s the biggest change in 30 years. There’s certain computer devices and it’s switched from desktops to mobile devices.
Rose Etherington: What enabled Ive to make such a big impact as a designer?
Leander Kahney: Probably Steve Jobs. Ive was at Apple for five years before Jobs returned but he struggled to get his designs made by the company. But then when Steve Jobs came back, [Ive] was one of the most important voices at the table. He empowered him. Over the next ten years, Ive became more and more important and more central to what Apple does. Jobs said: you’re going to do it his way or the highway.
Rose Etherington: Would Ive have had the same success at a different company?
Leander Kahney: He would have absolutely failed at another company. At the same time we shouldn’t give too much credit to Jobs. Jobs got all the credit for the products, but Ive is a singular designer, an extremely talented designer and design leader. A team of ten people would have been there before Jobs came back and are still there now. Apple became a unique design-centric corporate culture.
Rose Etherington: You’ve titled the book The Genius behind Apple’s Greatest Products. Is Ive really a genius?
Leander Kahney: He was a design prodigy. He showed exceptional skill and intelligence as a teenager. And of course his relationship with his dad is, I guess, quite similar to his relationship with Steve Jobs in that his dad nurtured his talent and set him down a path. He received a great education at Newcastle Polytechnic. The genius I think of both Jobs and Ive was a very humanistic approach to products. They were focused very much on solving real world problems. They always wanted to do something that was a little bit hard to define.
When they were doing the iPhone, the brief for the product was to make a phone that people can love. People were like how does that translate into anything? But they did the same thing to the iPod, make a music player that people could love. I think that setting goals like this immediately sets you apart from other designers. It’s not like how can we make a cheap MP3 player or undercut the competition? They were setting goalposts in a completely different part of the playing field.
Rose Etherington: So his success is down to sheer talent and hard work?
Leander Kahney: I wish it was. That contributed but he made his own luck. I think the key was really Steve Jobs. Ive said himself, if he took this to another company, he would not be as successful. He’s quoted as saying that.
Rose Etherington: Did you uncover anything that you think didn’t fit with Ive’s famously shy and modest personality?
Leander Kahney: I did. Obviously didn’t put them in for libel reasons. I’ve not mentioned that. His story is basically, he’s brilliant as a kid, he’s brilliant as a student, in his early career and at Apple. He’s very much the opposite of Jobs, there was no crazy screaming, no fruitarian diet, Buddhist retreats, no out-of-wedlock children. He’s very much what he appears to be. Polite, conscientious, hardworking. It doesn’t make for drama in a book really.
It’s just interesting how important he is to Apple. Jobs was almost lionised after his death and became known as the world’s greatest CEO ever, but I think the world thought the main narrative is that Apple is now doomed because Jobs is dead, without him they’re going to be lost. The point for me is how central was Jony Ive to the product creation process, the creativity of the companies. Jobs enabled the culture, but Ive and his design team came up with the products.
Rose Etherington: How do the rest of the design team feel about Ive’s celebrity?
Leander Kahney: No one really has acknowledged their work. I think there was some jealousy there because Jobs was so secretive. He kept such a tight grip on what information came out of the company, that he was given credit for everything.
Rose Etherington: Why has the design-led culture been so successful for Apple?
Leander Kahney: They created this R&D lab inside the company that has the freedom and resources to investigate all these new products almost at leisure. They are able to work on products behind the scenes until they’re ready. Often they find that they go down a path and they find that the path leads to a dead end. They restart the product again in a different direction. They’ve done this with almost every product. The iPhone is a good example: it took two and a half years of huge investment in time and resources to develop that thing behind the scenes.
Other companies have much more pressure about markets and timetables, and all these external factors that get them to rush products to the market. Samsung is sort of the opposite of Apple. First of all it copied what Apple has done. Also, they tend to do a range of products. They take a range to the market and see what’s successful.
Whereas Apple does the opposite, they work behind the scenes and do a range of phones that no one sees then they’ll release the one that their designers deem the best one.
Rose Etherington: So Apple’s designers are allowed to try things out as many times as they need to, until they get it right?
Leander Kahney: Exactly. This is what leads to major breakthroughs. When the iPod was successful, they were looking for some way to meld the iPod and a phone. They made a bunch of different devices including one that used the scroll wheel, which they actually made but it didn’t work very well. So they tried something else. They ended up making about six different prototypes before they found one that they were happy enough with. And then when [the iPhone] came out, it was fundamentally different from everything that has come before.
Jobs did this his whole career, starting with the Apple 2 and the Mackintosh. Then with Pixar, where they completely reinvented computer animation. Then back at Apple with the iMac, the iPhone, the iPad. People think that Jobs was the genius that dreamt up these products but what he really did was create companies that had this process, that invested in this process, that leads to breakthroughs.
It’s the design-driven process. The investment in the design leads to breakthroughs. If we go back to the original Mackintosh in 1984, it was very similar. He had a very small group of engineers and programmers who worked for three years to invent this radically different machine. Those days, products were made in 18 months; this was twice as long. They had hundreds and thousands of problems.
They other thing about the designers is that a lot of people think designers are the people who make the outsides of things look good, but what these guys are the sort of primary inventors. They take care of a product from its conception all the way through to its manufacture, working out how these things can be made. In other companies, in other cultures, it’s the designers who make the product and the engineers who deal with manufacturing. These guys are in charge of the product from dawn to dusk.
Rose Etherington: And there are no other companies that are doing this at the moment?
Leander Kahney: There’re a few, but they’re not as big as Apple. No one has the size and influence of Apple. A lot of companies outsource their design but there are quite a few design-driven companies like, I would say, Tesla the car company and Sonos, which makes music components.
Rose Etherington: Is there anyone else working in the way that Ive does at Apple?
Leander Kahney: That’s a good question and I haven’t really researched it. There’s not many examples to be honest. The problem with a lot of companies is they copy the object, the product; they copy what’s already been produced. But they don’t copy the culture. It’s really hard to copy the culture because it requires such large-scale changes. It took Steve Jobs 12 years to create this culture with Apple.
Rose Etherington: It was more of a struggle than a single turning point?
Leander Kahney: Exactly, it was more of a struggle. The engineers were pushing back, and saying this doesn’t make any sense, saying it’s quicker to do it this way, the way we’ve been doing it. And it took 10-12 years of pushing back against that to come up with a much more design-centric way of making products.
These same compromises still exist. But Apple now has amazing resources. One of the biggest breakthroughs in design in the last few years is what they call the unibody process which is where they take a big hunk of metal and they remove material to make a structure and a case for a computer for an iPhone or an iPad. Before what they used to do is take lots of components and screws and glue them together. That was an additive process. By changing it to a subtractive process where they take material away, they are able to make really really thin and light cases.
To do this, they had to buy the world’s supply of computer milling machines. They’ve been spending about two billion dollars a years since 2009 to make these incredibly sophisticated factories. By comparison, when a company like Intel makes a new factory to make chips, they spend about 3 billion dollars. They do that once every five or ten years. Apple’s been spending about three times that amount every year for about 14 years now.
Rose Etherington: So resources come into it a lot then?
Leander Kahney: I don’t think any designer has ever, in the history of industry, ever had such resources at his disposal. It’s mind-boggling.
Rose Etherington: What is it like to work in the design department at Apple?
Leander Kahney: It’s a very nice, very privileged life. They’re very collaborative. Everything they do is as a group. They have two or three brainstorming sessions a week, 3 hour meetings, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The whole design group gets together around a kitchen table and they hash out whatever they’re working on. Sometimes it’s a model presentation or details of a speaker grill.
There’s only one private office in the design studio and that’s Jony Ive’s. All the other designers work in a big open-plan space. They are very well compensated, they all have lots of shares in Apple. They tend to work sane hours. The engineers they work with work insane hours – nearly 120-hour weeks – and spend months on end in distant factories in China. [Being a designer is] the best job in Apple for sure.
Rose Etherington: What sets it apart from other design departments in other companies? What’s really unique about it?
Leander Kahney: Well, the power they have. Other companies get pushed back by the executives or the factory. But at Apple, nobody can say no to the design department. You have to find a way to make it work. You can’t say no. You say okay, we’ll find a way of doing this. And I heard a lot of that from the engineers and operations people.
Rose Etherington: How did this culture come about?
Leander Kahney: I think it became obvious that that’s what they needed to do. I don’t think [Jobs] had this idea or manifesto. I think Jony Ive said they wanted to start machining products. But machining products is so expensive. Each machine can be up to three million dollars. If you’re doing this on an industrial scale, that’s a huge investment in machines. Most people use the standard techniques for mass production, moulding, casting, stamping.
Jony Ive wanted to start machining products and usually you only machine prototypes, unless you’re someone like NASA. It’s not used in mass-produced consumer goods. But he would push for this. They started very small with the G4 Cube but slowly, product by product, they used more and more of these techniques. And Jobs pushed for that so that culture developed.
Rose Etherington: Why haven’t other companies been able to emulate this culture?
Leander Kahney: Well I don’t think it’s well understood. Apple regards this as an industrial trade secret and they do not talk about it. They don’t want their competitors copying them. It’s one of the secrets of their success. Also a lot of companies, it’s such a hugh fundamental change. Apple in the late 90s were going to die [so they had to] do something really radical. The manifestation was the iMac but the real thing was what they did internally. It was an experience that allowed them to completely refashion their company. Not a lot of companies do that: change the entire way that they do things. You have to have a company like Apple who were about to go out of business.
Rose Etherington: So Samsung and Mircosoft just aren’t in enough trouble?
Leander Kahney: You have to be really on the ropes to do something as radical as that.
Rose Etherington: Do you think Apple is too comfortable now to make those huge shifts that they have done in the past?
Leander Kahney: I have heard this a lot and of course they haven’t come out with anything epoch-defining since Jobs died. They’ve been in this kind of maintenance mode where they’ve released new iPhones and iPads [which are] very much like what they were before. There’s not much that has really surprised people.
This was true when Jobs was still alive as well. There was a long period where they had nothing that was completely revolutionary. They have a bunch of stuff in the lab but of course what they’re working on is secret so no one really has the details but there’s lots of clues that they’re looking at three major areas. One is TV and entertainment and living rooms. They call it Apple TV. I think that’s kind of misleading; I think its going to be a more ambitious product.
The other thing is wearables, they’re looking at technology enhanced clothing. People are talking about watches but I don’t think they’re going to make a watch. I don’t think it would make any sense. A lot of people don’t wear watches. What do you need a watch for? There’s some really interesting bio-sensors coming on the market that can track your heart rate and not just that, they can track your depth of breathing, the blood-glucose levels. You might need some real-time help, monitoring. That might have a more universal impact.
The other thing is getting into automobiles. They’re working with all the world’s major automotive companies to bring iOS to cars. That could be a huge deal. Thats where most people listen to music.
Rose Etherington: There’s a sense that Apple is doing fine without Steve Jobs, but what would it be like with Ive?
Leander Kahney: Ive is now more important to Apple than Jobs was when he died, which I think it a hugely controversial statement. But in a way it is a testament to Jobs. What he did in the last 12 years was build a company that could survive without him.
It’s not clear whether Ive has created a design department that could survive without him. I think that Ive is so central to what Apple does that it would be in trouble if he left. Jobs was the CEO but he wasn’t really the CEO – Tim Cook was the CEO. Cook ran Apple day to day whilst Jobs hung out with Jony Ive and created new products. Jony Ive has now got the same job that Jobs had.
Rose Etherington: What’s next for Apple? Can you go much further with a flat glass screen?
Leander Kahney: I think that’s true. If you look at the iPhone, it’s really like the original iPhone. It’s faster, it’s more capable but it’s a slab of glass. Software is definitely where the opportunities lie. I think we’re going to see different sizes of phones. I think Apple is going to come with bigger plans for next year but the basic functionality isn’t going to change so much.
A lot of the internal improvements are easy to overlook but if you look closely, it makes a huge difference in the experience of the product. I think that’s overlooked. It’s much better than it used to be. You used to have to plug your phone in all the time. Sometimes it wouldn’t even last a whole day and now it’s two or three days. Sometimes longer if you don’t use it that much. There’s still rumours about adding different sensors to it. It would be nice adding some intelligence to the camera: robot vision. I think there’s definitely a lot of room for change.
Voice control and Siri are also really important. It’s full of opportunities really. We’re just getting started with huge changes in computing. We add sensors to everything and everything is connected to the internet. It’s just beginning really and I think Apple is going to be central player in that. There will be all kinds of devices with all kinds of interfaces. Some will be finger-based, some will be voice-based.
Leander Kahey: He’s also interested in software. He wasn’t in control of that; now he is so his experience, going all the way back to his college days, was always about the interaction. There aren’y many companies that control both the hardware and the software, there aren’t many companies that are as innovative as Apple. Most of their competitors use Android software from Google so they’ve outsourced software. So I think that they are always at an advantage.
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