Dezeen promotion: design brand Luminaire will stock art and design titles published by Phaidon at its showroom in Miami from December.
Luminiare is launching a new partnership with British publishers Phaidon next month, when it will start stocking the books in the Luminaire Lab.
Visitors will be able to sit and read the publications in a dedicated seating area inside the space.
The partnership will be launched during Design Miami, at the Design+World 2013 event on 5 December taking place in the Luminaire Lab, 3901 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, Florida – RSVP to attend here.
Keep reading for further details from Luminaire:
Phaidon
Luminaire is proud to announce a partnership with Phaidon, the world’s premier publisher of books on the visual arts. The partnership is a meeting of the equal belief that we must celebrate the creative, and democratise access to design and design education. Phaidon books will have its own section in the Luminaire Lab with some seating, to create a reading environment for all visitors to enjoy and engage with the texts.
Based in London, Phaidon Press publishes books worldwide from a range of creative topics, including art, architecture, photography and design. Phaidon is also recognised for its award-winning Collectors Editions – luxuriously packaged, limited editions of books, usually with a signed print or specially-commissioned piece of art.
Luminaire is excited to launch this partnership as part of our third instalment of Design+World during this year’s Art Basel/Design Miami event. We invite everyone to stop by on 5 December, and experience good design up close.
Thousands of hexagonal skylights bring natural light into this new terminal that Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas have completed at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport in China (+ slideshow).
Terminal 3 more than doubles the capacity of the existing airport, which is located 32 kilometres north-west of Shenzhen’s city centre. It is set to open later this week and will facilitate up to 45 million passengers per year.
Studio Fuksas looked at the shapes of various living creatures when planning the layout of the complex. “The concept of the plan for Terminal 3 of Shenzen Bao’an international airport evokes the image of a manta ray, a fish that breathes and changes its own shape, undergoes variations, [and] turns into a bird to celebrate the emotion and fantasy of a flight,” said the architects.
A curving roof canopy constructed from steel and glass wraps around the airport, accommodating spans of up to 80 metres. Hexagonal skylights perforate the surface of this roof, allowing natural light to filter through the entire terminal.
This pattern, which the architects describe as a honeycomb, is reflected in the polished tile floor, as well as on the stainless steel check-in desks and gates designed especially for the airport by Studio Fuksas.
“The interiors have a sober profile and a stainless steel finish that reflects and multiplies the honeycomb motif of the internal skin,” said the architects.
The concourse is divided across three levels, allowing separate floors for arrivals, departures and servicing, and voids in the floor-plates create a series of double- and triple-height spaces.
Cylindrical white columns are positioned at intervals to support the arching roof and sit alongside air-conditioning vents designed to look like chunky trees.
Read on for more information from the design team:
Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, Terminal 3
The highly anticipated new terminal at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, Guangdong, China, will be operational from the 28 November, 2013.
The first airport by acclaimed architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas it is set to become an iconic landmark that will boost the economic development of Shenzhen – one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
Won by international competition, it has undergone a remarkably rapid process of design and construction, completing within 3 years.
The client, Shenzhen Airport (Group) Co., is so pleased with the striking design that it is taking the unusual step of trying to copyright it.
The terminal – the largest single public building to be built to date in Shenzhen – encompasses 63 contact gates, with a further 15 remote gates and significant retail space. It will increase the capacity of the airport by 58%, allowing the airport to handle up to 45 million passengers per year.
The sculptural 500,000 sq.m. / 5,381,955 sq.ft (approx) terminal, evokes the image of a manta ray and features a striking internal and external double ‘skin’ honeycomb motif that wraps the structure. At 1.5 km long, with roof spans of up to 80m, honeycomb shaped metal and glass panels punctuate the façade of the terminal allowing natural light to filter through. On the interior, the terminal is characterised by distinctive white conical supporting columns that rise to touch the roof at a cathedral-like scale.
The focal point of the design is the concourse located at the intersection of the building. Consisting of three levels – departure, arrivals and services – they vertically connect to create full height voids, allowing natural light to filter from the highest level down to the lowest.
Studio Fuksas has created an interior, as striking and elegant as the exterior. The spatial concept is one of fluidity and combines two different ideas: the idea of movement and the idea of pause. Carefully considering the human experience of such environments, Studio Fuksas focused on processing times, walking distances, ease of orientation, crowding, and availability of desired amenities.
Stand-out features of the interior design include stylised white ‘trees’ that serve as air conditioning vents, and check-in ‘islands’, gates and passport-check areas with a stainless steel finish that beautifully reflect the honeycomb patterns from above.
The honeycomb motif translates through into many aspects of the interior and at different scales – from the larger retail boxes to smaller 3D imprints in the wall cover.
The Studio Fuksas designed Terminal 3 is of critical importance to the future of Shenzhen as a booming business and tourist destination, and will bring benefits to the region as a whole.
Studio Fuksas are engaged on two further phases of the airport extension, scheduled to complete in 2025 and 2035 respectively.
News: British company Fripp Design and Research has developed 3D-printed prosthetic eyes that could be produced much faster than existing handmade versions, reducing the cost by 97 percent.
Currently, prosthetic eyes are moulded in acrylic and painted by hand to match the patient’s eye colour. This process is time-consuming and expensive, whereas producing the eyes using a 3D printer enables up to 150 eyes to be made in an hour.
“To hand-make a prosthetic eye takes between four and eight hours depending on the individual painting the eye,” the company’s founder Tom Fripp told Dezeen. “Because only one eye can be done at a time, the waiting time in the UK for an eye is approximately ten weeks. With our system we can 3D print up to 150 in one hour and post process approximately five per hour, each one different.”
All of the components are printed from powder in full colour using a Z-Corp 510 machine before the resulting form is encased in resin. Compared to the existing handmade production method, this helps to remove any variation in quality and significantly reduces the cost of each eye, which is currently up to £3000 in the UK.
“Because each one is produced from the same system the consistency is the same and the cost is drastically reduced to approximately £100,” said Fripp.
By printing eyes in batches, each with a slightly different hue, Fripp pointed out that it is possible to accurately match the look of the prosthesis to the patient’s existing eye: “Although we have not perfected colour matching yet, because we can print so many in such a short space of time the colour change between each one is so slight that the chances of getting a good match is very good.”
The eyes are available in small, medium and large sizes and Fripp claimed that accurate reproduction of existing eyes is the next stage for the product’s development: “The technicality in customising an iris is very demanding and although we haven’t perfected it yet, we are working on it!”
Speaking to Dezeen at the 3D Printshow in London earlier this month, Fripp said the project was at an advanced stage of development and should be ready to implement “within 12 months.”
He added that there had been strong interest from India, where less advanced surgical procedures result in a high number of patients losing their eyes. “Because of the high number of relatively poor individuals in the country, they tend to simply go without,” said Fripp “However, our system will allow them to purchase a prosthesis.”
Images are courtesy of Manchester Metropolitan University and Fripp Design and Research.
News: the scornful response to Kanye West‘s recent pronouncements on architecture is part of the “long history of making fun of black people” in America, according to an African-American design student organisation.
“There’s a long history in the United States of making fun of black people that actually make it,” said Héctor Tarrido-Picart, co-president of the African American Student Union (AASU) at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
He told Dezeen: “We read it as him being mocked for being an ambitious black man.”
Tarrido-Picart made the comments after his organisation spent two hours discussing the lack of black representation in architecture with rap star West, who visited Harvard Graduate School of Design last week and gave an impromptu speech to students. “I really do believe that the world can be saved through design,” said West in the address.
Kanye West at Harvard Graduate School of Design (photo by joseramonsierra). Main image: West with members of the AASU (photo by Kim Kardashian)
West also spoke of his passion for design in a recent interview with The New York Times in June and during an interview with BBC Radio 1 in September, in which he spoke of “going to the Louvre, going to furniture exhibits and understanding that, trying to open up and do interviews with this, learning more about architecture”.
However West also expressed frustration at the opposition he has faced: “Taking one thousand meetings, attempting to get backing to do clothing and different things like that. Like, getting no headway whatsoever.”
Tarrido-Picart believes the ridicule and resistance is due to the “remnants of the racist society that we have grown up in,” which prevent African-Americans crossing over into “higher realms of culture” such as art, design and architecture.
“Why [does] racism still exist in an era where Obama is president and cultural figures like Jay Z and Kanye West create culture,” asked Tarrido-Picart. “But when it comes to trying to expand their creativity to other fields, [they] run into walls that could not be better described than remnants of the racist society that we have grown up in?”
West visited Harvard Graduate School of Design while in Boston for a concert, following an invitation from the AASU, who invited the star to meet them following West’s BBC Radio 1 interview.
“I have reached the glass ceiling – as a creative person, as a celebrity,” West said in the interview, adding: “When I say that it means I want to do product. I am a product person. Not just clothing but water bottle design, architecture, everything that you could think about. And I’ve been at it for 10 years, and I look around and I say, ‘Hey wait a second – there’s no one around here in this space that looks like me’.”
Tarrido-Picart said: “We were struck first by the depth of knowledge that Kanye West actually had on architecture and second, because of the real question that he raised, which is [that] when you’re a very clearly a very talented and creative person and you choose to expand that creativity to new fields, you run into a wall. And that wall isn’t a wall that’s revolving around your creativity but a wall that’s revolving around the colour of your skin.”
He added: “That resonated a lot with us and we decided to send out a personal letter to Kanye West in which we expressed the same concerns and reverberated and resonated with what he was saying in that interview.”
Kanye West at Harvard Graduate School of Design (photo by dashamikic)
“He agreed with us in terms of us in identifying with the fact that he was a very creative person and wanted to start creativity in the realm of design and architecture, and he thought that the fact that the colour of our skin plays a very limiting factor,” said Tarrido-Picart. “It’s not just about under-representation but also an active question that racism is very much alive in the United States.”
“He questioned us about what culture is and trying to surpass that by going into higher realms of culture, so art, design, architecture,” he continued. “He sees that as the natural next step.”
The AASU has signed a non-disclosure agreement with West so cannot reveal the precise nature of their discussions with the star, but it is understood that they agreed to work together to raise awareness of, and tackle, the under-representation of minorities in American architecture.
“We’re going to try and maintain an active discussion with Kanye,” Tarrido-Picart said. “He expressed a deep interest in this being something that is not just short term, but actually long term in terms of actually shaping the future of landscape of what design and culture is going to be, not only in the United States but around the world.”
He added: “What we hope to do is to raise the question that Kanye has [raised in a] very serious manner in our industry.”
Below is a statement issued by the AASU following its meeting with West:
Why the African American Student Union met with Kanye West at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
This past summer, members of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s African American Student Union (AASU) were stirred by a series of interviews with Kanye West referencing his growing interest in design.
Mr. West’s very public frustration with the limits experienced by Black designers and artists energized and excited the group, prompting a series of internal conversations. Framing these discussions was the fact that only 1% of licensed architects in the United States identifies as being African-American. We discussed how this severe under-representation of African Americans in producing the built environment which have a range of effects upon our collective lives.
Subsequent to these discussions, the AASU decided to reach out to Mr. West.
We were tremendously excited that Mr. West, well-aware of these challenges, desired to meet us as well. This Sunday, he met with the AASU privately to discuss how we might pursue meaningful change together. Mr. West is an artist at the center of this generation’s cultural production and shares in our group’s optimism that transdisciplinary design practice can – as he stated Sunday – impact the world in positive ways. One of these ways is by encouraging the development and legitimacy of African American designers in their professional and academic practices. We are fortunate that the GSD has provided us with a platform in which this dialogue can occur.
We look forward to continuing this conversation with Mr. West, and through these efforts, we aim to catalyse a more inclusive design culture.
Sincerely, The Harvard University Graduate School of Design – African American Student Union
Spanish architecture collective Map13 combined a traditional Spanish construction technique with digital design tools to create this vaulted brick pavilion in a Barcelona courtyard (+ slideshow).
Named Bricktopia, the structure was designed by Map13 using a Catalan vault – a method where plain bricks are laid lengthways across gently curved forms to create a series of smooth low arches.
“Unlike the construction that can be seen these days, this project aims to restore the expertise and imagination of the building hands,” explained the architects.
The structure was conceived using three-dimensional modelling software program Rhino and a plugin called Rhinovault. This enabled the architects to test the geometries of the structure and adapt it so that only compression stresses act on the vault.
This approach is based on a prototype developed by researchers Philippe Block, Matthias Rippman and Lara Davis at the Technical University of Zurich.
Photography by eme3
“This research collects the material tradition and the constructive knowledge of tile vaulting and combines them with contemporary computational tools,” said the designers.
Photography by eme3
The structure was built by architecture students and volunteers, who used criss-crossing metal rods and pieces of cardboard to outline the basic frame.
The completed structure comprised four vaulted spaces with curved openings that form doors and windows.
Bricktopia was constructed as part of the Eme3 International Festival of Architecture, which took place in June, and was used to host a programme of summer events including talks, activities and film projections.
Photography is by Manuel de Lózar and Paula López Barba, unless otherwise stated.
Here is some more information from the architects:
Bricktopia, Contemporary Crafts Festival EME3
Bricktopia, by the architects of the international collective Map13, is the winning project in the “Build-it” category at the International Festival of Architecture Eme3 held from the 27th to 30th of June in Barcelona. It can be visited during this summer at one of the courtyards of the former factory Fabra i Coats, in the district of Sant Andreu.
This intervention configures a new square where different activities can be performed, both under the building and around it. It includes bathing public spaces and sundecks, a bar and a stage for enjoying the summer 2013.
It is a vaulted structure made of brick using a traditional construction technique called tile-vault (or “Catalan vault”). It has been designed with new digital tools to optimise the structure through geometry. The proposal is the result of the academic research currently carried out by Marta Domènech Rodríguez, David López López and Mariana Palumbo Fernández, co-founders of the group Map13, with the help of different Professors from different fields and various schools of architecture.
This construction takes as a reference the prototype built by Philippe Block, Matthias Rippman and Lara Davis at the Technical University of Zurich, with which they demonstrated the reliability of “RhinoVault”, a plug-in for Rhinoceros, used to design the pavilion.
As “Bricktopia” is a pilot project which makes this traditional technique work to its limits, its implementation has required the expansion of the team, which has been enlarged with Paula López Barba and Josep Brazo Ramírez. The construction has also required the effort of Eme3 festival that gives support to young talented people to carry out their projects, the sponsorship of the companies that contributed with workforce and materials and the help of volunteers and students of architecture.
This research collects the material tradition and the constructive knowledge of tile vaulting and combines them with contemporary computational tools. This project, developed in the enclosed area of a nineteenth-century factory made of brick, uses the same material raising a new topography in the old courtyard. However, it is opposed to the industrial construction offering a concave and protected space that links the origins of all cultures.
The vaulted pavilion sets out the contemporary validity of this traditional system, native of Catalonia and widely used in various parts of the world for centuries. It is economical, sustainable, with formal and functional versatility and nowadays it is also offering the possibility of being built in developing countries for roofs, stairs, drainage systems, etc.
Unlike the construction that can be seen these days, this project aims to restore the expertise and imagination of the building hands. “Bricktopia” has been built by excellent builders who have made an unprecedented craftsmanship. The challenge that requires good layout in tile vault construction, specially with a complex shape like this one, suggests the work as an opposite to the mechanical work.
Folded steel staircases lead to elevated rooms atop freestanding metal towers inside this old industrial building in Brussels that adn Architectures has converted into an open-plan apartment (+ slideshow).
Belgian studio adn Architectures added the two-storey structures on opposite sides of the space, loosely dividing a living room at one end from a central dining area and adjoining kitchen.
The architects used a mixture of solid and perforated metal to vary the transparency of the more secluded spaces within the towers, which comprise a bathroom and a utility room on the main level, and a bedroom and study on the upper levels.
Cantilevered staircases made from folded steel lead separately to the top-floor spaces and face one another across the dining area.
Describing their intervention as “two volumes and three pieces of furniture,” the architects explained that they wanted to create a simple interior with a limited palette of materials and colours.
The pieces of built-in furniture mentioned are a kitchen counter, a bookshelf and a double-height wall of storage, which stretch along the two long sides of the apartment.
Concrete ceilings are left exposed and three columns come down to the meet the new flooring, which is made up of a polyurethane screed.
Here’s a project description from adn architecture:
Loft FOR
Let’s get straight to the point: an imposed decorum, four walls and a few windows, functional needs to sleep, eat read and wash. Two internal bodies that embrace the envelope without touching it, opaque, translucent, airy, abstract.
A place: An unfinished surface of 96 square meters: walls made of terracotta blocks, raw concrete ceiling, windows on two of the four walls and two technical ducts.
A program: Designed it for a couple who want a loft conversion type of interior design with efficient use of space.
An answer: Seek purity of form and functional simplicity.
Means: Creation of a minimum of two new volumes and use of a very limited set of materials.
Organisation: Two volumes are built and three pieces of furniture are installed to structure the volume.
The two metallic volumes on the ground floor welcome the two functions that require doors that close: the bathroom and the laundry room. The top floors of the volumes conceal a bedroom and an office.
The position of these volumes alongside technical ducts determines different volumes with different qualities.
The three pieces of furniture then structure and give function to the remaining space: a long kitchen cabinet in a narrow space between the entrance and the laundry room, a wall of storage near the entrance and a library in the more intimate space that leads to the balcony.
The materials are polyurethane screed for the floor; solid or perforated metal for the structuring elements, stratified MDF for the furniture, with a paint finish to exacerbate the texture of the various materials. The ceiling is kept as is to remind of the pre-existing unified volume.
This rusty metal tower was designed by Austrian studio Marte.Marte Architects to help tourists locate excavated Roman ruins on the outskirts of a town in western Austria (+ slideshow).
Stefan Marte of Marte.Marte Architects created the structure between the remains of two Roman villas at the location of an ancient traffic intersection in Brederis. Few traces of the original buildings remain, so the new installation provides the only landmark above ground level.
“The tower-like sculpture is designed to make the excavation site visible for miles around,” Marte told Dezeen.
Primarily constructed from Corten steel, the ten-metre tower has a glazed lower section that exposes a hollow centre, allowing visitors to look down to the underground remains.
A platform extends from one side of the structure to create a standing area, while an adjacent wall displays replicas of Roman objects. Both were also constructed from pre-weathered steel that has been riveted together.
“Corten steel was chosen for its naturalness and purity, making it the ideal material for an expressive landmark in the vast, open landscape,” added Marte.
“The texture of the stainless steel rivets is reminiscent of the intricacy of Roman chain armour.”
Stones unearthed during the archeological dig were used to build low walls above the ancient foundations of the two villas, revealing the original locations of walls.
Here’s a short project description from Marte.Marte Architects:
Roman Villa, Feldkirch 2008
The excavations at the roman villa in Brederis offer important insights on Roman settlement history in the Feldkirch area.
A walk-in sculpture was planted between the remnants of the foundations of two different house types. The disc-like tower and the space creating wall fragments along a trapezoid-shaped plateau stage the location in front of the collection of findings.
The use of Corten steel throughout permeates the site with an historic aura and underscores the sculpted effect of the free form that helps make the excavation site a landmark.
Artists Studio Job customised a Land Rover Defender by adding a golden horn, a tongue and a stained glass window in celebration of the iconic vehicle’s sixty-fifth birthday.
Studio Job took the black four-wheel-drive vehicle, painted it glossy white and embellished it with elements made from bronze, wood, ceramics and other materials to create the Automobile sculpture for Land Rover, which the artists compare to “a Popemobile for an African chief”.
Photograph by Zero40
“It all got totally out of hand!” said the studio’s founder Job Smeets. “The moment that black lady entered our workshop, inspiration started to flow out of our ears. One idea after another.”
The studio looked to the vehicle’s different uses, from royal transportation to African ambulances, for ideas and starting points for the add-ons.
Photograph by Zero40
“Defender is an emotionally charged icon,” said Smeets. “On the one hand it’s the car that is used in Africa as an ambulance, taxi or agriculture machine; on the other hand it’s also the Chelsea Tractor that pampered ladies use to drop their children off at the hockey club. It’s used as a fire truck and it’s the queen of England’s favourite automobile. So, it’s a very diverse vehicle.”
A giant bronze rhino horn was added to the bonnet and a tongue sticks out from the front grille. Flag poles are mounted on the front bumper and fire engine lights sit on the rail around the roof.
Photograph by Zero40
Three of the wheels have had their rims replaced with a model of the Capitol building in Washington DC, a birthday cake and a pulley cog. The fourth has been substituted for a wooden cart wheel.
Studio Job first released images of the design while it was still in progress earlier this year. Now complete, the piece is on display at the PAN Amsterdam gallery until 1 December. Movie is by Dave Hakkens.
Here’s some more information sent to us by Studio Job:
Hotch-Potch on Wheels
Studio Job and Land Rover – sparks were bound to fly. Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel were invited to come up with a special version of the car to celebrate its 65th birthday. The result is a masterpiece, a summary of their whole oeuvre in all its layered facets.
Land Rover Defender has turned 65. That means this robust cross-country vehicle long ago passed the minimum age to qualify as an old-timer. In order to enhance the vehicle’s history and aura, Studio Job was asked to take this 4×4 in hand. A great car requires a great vision, which in this case carried a certain risk – after all, with Studio Job one ever knows what to expect. In their own way, they have created an ode to the vehicle that makes many of us dream of adventures in distant Africa. Eventually, it has turned out to be more than simply a revised or pimped vehicle. The result is a sculpture that questions escapism, power relationships and above all Studio Job’s own work.
Detail of the partially complete sculpture. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani
“Designing a car is the same as when, as a designer, you’re sometimes given the chance to redefine a hotel: it’s a higher goal. You don’t get such important commissions every day,” says Job Smeets, who, together with Nynke Tynagel, forms the duo behind Studio Job. “On top of that, Defender is an emotionally charged icon. On the one hand it’s the car that is used in Africa as an ambulance, taxi or agriculture machine; on the other hand it’s also the Chelsea Tractor that pampered ladies use to drop their children off at the hockey club. It’s used as a fire truck and it’s the queen of England’s favourite automobile. So, it’s a very diverse vehicle. We’ve approached that golden carriage in our own way, maybe not so much from the angle of this one car but rather from the phenomenon of the holy cow in general.”
Detail of the partially complete sculpture. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani
It has become a pièce de résistance. The Land Rover has been submerged in a Studio Job “bath”, with all that this implies. Like a project that has got out of hand, the Land Rover has been dissected and interpreted, ridiculed and celebrated, laden with stories and adorned with a variety of materials. The motor has remained in place but driving the vehicle is anything but a comfortable experience. One of the four wheels has been replaced by a cartwheel; another wheel has been given a miniature version of the Capitol for its rim. A gigantic rhinoceros stands in all its glory like a golden phallus on the bonnet, and a headlight has been replaced by a candle that hardly gives any light in the dark. The seats have been upholstered in wax prints made by Vlisco, the brand that produces exclusive materials specifically for the African rich. The stained glass windows in turn display magic masks from remote tribes.
Detail of the partially complete sculpture. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani
“As you would expect from someone who knows nothing about making a car, our approach got completely out of hand,” says Job Smeets. “The numerous elements kept accumulating. The car literally sticks its tongue out. It wants to be something that it actually isn’t. It’s become a great concoction, monumental and cynical. But isn’t that also true for power and class structures? Those are surely also inventions. A fictive status symbol that other people supposedly look up to. It’s also a nudge at designers who are asked to design a concept car and who then invent a stylish-looking apparatus that is launched with all the necessary bells and whistles. So we also take aim at the car industry: I can already imagine the chief sitting in this modern carriage, with the chauffeur in the front and his various wives and children in the back. A Popemobile for an African chief, personalised in a bizarre way.”
Detail of the partially complete sculpture. Photograph by Rahi Rezvani
It is either an extremely layered or a completely failed project that can be interpreted in different ways: as a pamphlet against outward appearance, as an ode to a holy cow, as a painful joke or as a rather unsubtle protest. But besides this layered approach and the humour, the most captivating storyline is that of Studio Job itself. Even though they keep their cards close to their chest, this sculpture is at the same time a parody of their own work. Apart from the many details that clearly breathe the world of Studio Job, the sculpture has above all become a sampling of the many exclusive materials and monumental techniques that Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel have used during recent years. It is a narrative hotch-potch on four wheels, from bronze, wood and crystal to textiles, ceramics and stained glass. Studio Job have again shown that they are masters in the use of all these materials, expressed in the most varied shapes. In their unique way, they know the power of the materials and how to combine them in a completely idiosyncratic manner in this single sculpture.
What a perfect way to celebrate Land Rover’s 65 birthday!
Zero40 (white coated Defender) photo R. Rezvani (black Defender during ‘making of’ in March 2013) video D. Hakkens fashion Viktor & Rolf.
A nomadic city moves from place to place like an enormous tank in this conceptual proposal by architecture graduate Manuel Domínguez.
Entitled Very Large Structure, the futuristic megastructure is designed to wheel itself from one location to another to find better economic and physical conditions. Rather than using up the resources of the places it visits, it would be able to produce its own energy and establish new buildings before moving on.
“The VLS is a territorial manager, a synergistic machine within its environment,” explained Domínguez. “It is not a machine that uses the local resources until it finish them and then leaves to the next one, in fact is the other way round, since its aim is to restore the territory.”
With a length of 560 metres, the city would be made up of three levels. The lowest would function as a warehouse and construction area, while the middle would accommodate mechanical functions such as waste disposal and air conditioning, and the top storey would be used as a living deck where new architectural structures can be tested.
Domínguez says the project could actually be built, as he based it on preexisting systems and technologies that include mining machinery, transport infrastructures, eco villages and robotics.
“I think it’s feasible because it’s made with existing technology but I’m not sure if it’s desirable,” he said.
The structure is based on a giant gantry crane. A total of 36 oversized crawlers would allow it to move, propelled by the kinds of electric engines used in large sea vessels.
“VLS is a theoretical utopian project trying to be as realistic as it can get, and even though everything is technically calculated as if it was going to be constructed, I perfectly know and assume it’s just an assertive investigation,” said the designer.
Opinion: as MoMA launches an online exhibition investigating design’s relationship with violence, Dezeen columnist Justin McGuirk looks beyond objects like 3D-printed guns and drones to ask “what do our weapons say about the systems they support?”
Blood gutter. I’ve often thought that this is one of the more evocative phrases in the English language. It synthesises the opposites of nature and culture: the spilling of the life force on one hand and its neat canalisation on the other – the macabre and the civilised. It sums up perfectly design’s relationship with violence.
A blood gutter, in case you’re not aware, is the groove along the blade of a hunting knife or bayonet. Also known as a blood groove, this channel is commonly understood to make the blade easier to withdraw from the body of the unfortunate human or beast you’ve just plunged it into. The theory goes that the groove creates a pocket of air between the blade and the blood-slick wound that prevents suction. As everyone knows, suction is a right pain when you’re trying to extract a blade from the body of your collapsing foe.
However, I was disappointed to learn that the suction theory is pure myth. The blood gutter – also known more technically as the fuller – is in fact designed to make the blade lighter and stiffer. Nevertheless, it’s a myth with a long and proud history, born in the days of bayonet fighting. Since US Marines in boot camp are still apparently taught that these grooves solve a chronic suction problem, let’s continue with our design analogy. The brunt of which is this: the blood gutter evinces an exquisitely explicit relationship to the mechanics of the violent act. It represents precisely the kind of close-up attention to detail required of the designer of weapons in general, whether we’re talking about designing the head of a dum-dum bullet (designed for maximum impact) or the reliable firing mechanism of an AK-47.
It goes without saying that such design requires a temporary suspension of morals. This kind of blinkered engagement in the minutiae by those who are just doing their job is how we’ve managed to post-rationalise the horrors of the Holocaust, which political theorist Hannah Arendt famously encapsulated in “the banality of evil”. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer faced a similar dilemma in creating the atomic bomb. In his case, however, he had designed a weapon so earth-shatteringly destructive that he thought it might even serve the interests of peace. As he wrote to the secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson, after Hiroshima: “We believe that the safety of this nation… cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible.” This is like the designer trying to get the client to rethink their agenda, but in Oppenheimer’s case it was too late to rewrite the brief.
What triggered these thoughts was the New York Museum of Modern Art‘s new online curatorial project, Design and Violence. Initiated by MoMA’s Paola Antonelli and co-curated by Jamer Hunt of Parsons The New School for Design, it is a sort of exhibition as web platform, and it is intended to probe the notion of design as an inherently benign discipline – an approach that is certainly overdue from the design establishment.
While the site is too nascent to merit a review, it does raise some interesting questions. Chief among them, to my mind, is whether the curators of this project really have the stomach for it. Are they prepared to go into the gory details (one wonders if this, indeed, is why the exhibition is online and not in the museum itself) and are they willing to push their argument to its logical conclusion, which is that design is complicit in economic and political systems that are themselves inherently violent?
Thus far, the project is focused on objects. While that may be predictable, the objects themselves are less so. Social critic Camille Paglia has written about the stiletto heel, which she describes as “woman’s most lethal social weapon”, and which is at least suggestive of violence. Others have written about the box cutter, Cody Wilson’s 3D-printed pistol and the Guardian Angel handbags designed by Dutch accessory brand Vlieger and Vandam. These felt handbags are embossed with the shapes of knives and pistols, and as such they adopt the usual position of luxury consumer goods to violence: desperate for a frisson of edginess. It is the same shortcut to controversy taken by Philippe Starck some years back with his gun lamps, redolent with Carry On film camp – “Ooh er, missus, aren’t you naughty?”
By contrast, novelist William Gibson has a ditty here on the unofficial embroidered patches used by classified military units – internal “marketing tools” with Velcro. Such insignia are symbols of pride laced with the threat of violence. This feels like fertile territory, but why stick with the military? Gibson himself has a character (in Pattern Recognition, if I remember correctly) who is allergic to brand logos and has to cut them out of her clothing. That fictional leap suggests a rich vein of violence inherent in consumer society.
Ordinary objects can be horrifically violent. What springs immediately to mind is that staple of British pubs, the pint glass. Somehow only the casual violence of the drunken Brit could turn a noun into such a vivid verb: to “glass” someone, or to smash a pint in their face. None of your Tom and Jerry invulnerability there, nor, indeed, any of the designer’s meticulous method – just a harmless object swept up in an improvised attack. Glassing is apparently such a problem that a few years ago the Design Council commissioned a re-engineering of the pint glass so that it wouldn’t break on impact. Safely back in cartoon territory, you can imagine the mystified look on the aggressor’s face – like Tom staring down the barrel of the misfired gun – as he realises that he’s only bruised his opponent.
Such “invisible” weapons are represented in Design and Violence by the box cutter (known to British readers as the Stanley knife). It was just an ordinary household object until the terrorists in the hijacked planes on 9/11 turned it into a tool of asymmetrical warfare. But the upshot of that event is that it is no longer just the terrorists who use invisible weapons. In its War on Terror the US relies heavily on unmanned drones that deliver death out of nowhere. The question here is, what do our weapons say about the systems that they support? Ironically, drones are the Obama government’s response to the criticisms of his predecessor’s methods. Liberals kicked up such a fuss about extraordinary rendition (the kidnapping and torture of suspects) that the Pentagon decided it was easier just to assassinate targets from high altitude. At least three thousand people have been killed by drones in Pakistan alone, and yet the outcry has been less vociferous, perhaps because the means are more clinical.
The Liberator, Wilson’s 3D-printed pistol, is another case of a design that is sinister not because it is deadly but precisely because it looks harmless. It’s as though we’ve entered an era of uncanny weapons. Plastic guns, like toys that kill. Windowless planes, like eyeless faces, that can see where they’re going. Freud defined the uncanny as an ambiguity as to whether something is really alive, and the new generation of weapons elicit uncertainty as to whether they are really real: they’re like simulacra, or literally like models.
The designs of these weapons represent two opposing theories of violence. The first is that violence is simply a force of nature, and is only wrong if it is used to the wrong ends. In other words – and this is how eighteenth-century lawyer and politician Maximilien de Robespierre justified the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution – the ends justify the means. That is more or less the US government’s attitude to extra-legal drone strikes: the War on Terror justifies assassinations on foreign soil and any civilian collateral damage, however unfortunate. The design of drones reflects precisely that attitude: unmanned and thus anonymous, operated by joy-stick wielding technicians thousands of miles away, they exude moral detachment.
The other theory of violence inverts that logic: here, the means justify the ends. This is epitomised by the 3D printed gun. It is clearly important to Wilson that guns be readily available, hence making his design available under a creative commons license, but the design is the product of a rather childish libertarianism. In protecting his Second Amendment right to bear arms, it’s all me, me, me, and damn the interfering government or any sense of the collective good. By this logic, not only does the law uphold his right to have a gun and to use it in self-defence, but the design method – open source, creative commons, available for distributed production – lends the object an air of righteousness. The generous language of the “sharing economy” is being used to justify the potential use of violence.
In that sense, both the drone and the 3D printed gun display a sense of impunity. Their designs perfectly reflect the moral positions – in my opinion, both illegitimate – of those who wield them. Far more potent, then, than the weapons themselves are the systems that give rise to them. In fact, we could forget about weapons altogether and talk only about systemic violence. We could talk about the social violence caused by neoliberal capitalism, or the environmental violence caused by disposable consumer goods. This is a whole other argument, for another day, but one that I hope Design and Violence – or @desviolenz, as its Twitter handle goes – will not balk at.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
