London Design Festival 2013: Japanese architect Jo Nagasaka has developed a range of resin and wood furniture for Established & Sons.
Jo Nagasaka of Tokyo practice Schemata Architecture Office peels away parts of the surface of Douglas fir boards to expose the grain, before encasing the wood in brightly coloured epoxy resin. The addition of the resin transforms the uneven texture of the wood into a smooth and practical surface, while variations in the depth of the peeled wood affect the intensity of the resin’s colour.
Peter Saville‘s career kicked off after designing posters for The Haçienda nightclub in Manchester, run by the Factory Records label.
Joy Divison: Closer, 1980
Saville went on to create the artwork for musicians represented by Factory Records, including rock bands Joy Division and Roxy Music.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark LP, 1980
His most iconic cover is widely regarded as Joy Division’s 1979 album Unknown Pleasures (main image), a diagram of pulses taken from an astrology encyclopedia. Disney added Mickey Mouse ears to the graphic for a T-shirt design last year.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Architecture and Morality, 1981
Saville’s design for Joy Division’s second and final 1980 record Closer shows a photograph of a tomb, which proved controversial due to the suicide of the band’s singer Ian Curtis two months before the album’s release.
New Order: Blue Monday, 1983
Saville continued to design covers for the band after they reformed as New Order, taking images from historical artwork out of context and adding modern typography with geometric graphics.
After designing for new wave group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark since 1980, the band asked Saville to create imagery for its latest album Electric English released earlier this year. It references the stripy hazard signs of his original Factory Records posters.
Saville also designed covers for English bands Pulp and Suede. He set up fashion film website SHOWstudio with his friend Nick Knight in 2000 and was made creative director for the City of Manchester in 2004.
Lisbon Architecture Triennale: following budget cuts, boycotts and lukewarm reviews, Lisbon Architecture Triennale curator Beatrice Galilee defends the event that opened in the Portuguese capital last week and explains why she believes architecture exhibitions don’t always need to be about buildings (+ interview).
“Architecture exhibitions don’t deal with the real experience of architecture; they deal with the design and concept of architecture,” Galilee told Dezeen. “Exhibitions are places to be occupied, not just things to be observed. [This] was an opportunity to push the boundaries of what an architecture exhibition can be about and about how it could be presented.”
Legendary Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza was reported to have snubbed the opening festivities of the triennale, which deliberately avoids focussing on the country’s globally renowned older architects and which challenged the orthodox approach to the curation of architectural exhibitions.
“It’s an event for the next generations of architects in Portugal not for established practitioners. We didn’t really compromise on that,” Galilee said.
Working alongside curators Liam Young, Mariana Pestana and José Esparza, Galilee presented a series of exhibitions that focus on public participation, rather than on exhibiting spaces and structures. Instead of showcasing the work of Portuguese masters, she chose to focus entirely on young architects and studios, a move that has prompted a “wall of silence” from established architects such as Siza.
“I think it’s a shame for the Portuguese architects involved that they don’t have the support of their masters,” she added. “But it’s not something that particularly keeps me up at night.”
New Publics civic stage curated by José Esparza
She also explains that her concept to not involve any famous architects was one of the reasons she was chosen as curator.
“We made the discipline of architecture our focus, not Portuguese architecture,” she said. “The discipline of architecture in Portugal is really cherished around the world. We wanted to do something different that would be appropriate for this time.”
Amy Frearson: Can you tell me about the history of the triennale?
Beatrice Galilee: The first one in 2007 was founded by a group of architects who went to the Sao Paolo Biennale and realised there weren’t any biennale structures in Portugal in architecture, any independent institutions of architecture in Portugal, so they founded the triennale. The first edition was quite traditional, it was comprised of exhibitions and a massive conference. It was quite well funded and I actually attended that as a journalist. I felt like it was quite an expensive conference, it was held in the expo area of Lisbon. It was kind of a success in the fact that it happened, but it wasn’t particularly original.
The second edition had a chief curator from the art world. Again, that was quite a major production involving a number of other institutions in Lisbon and looked at art and architecture, but the overall scene was talking about houses.
The previous two editions were quite internal, involving almost everyone on the Portuguese architecture scene. So for the third edition, they decided to have an open call and not choose somebody from within the same pool of people. They just decided to make it more international.
New Publics civic stage curated by José Esparza – photograph by Delfino Legnani
Amy Frearson: What are your aims for this one?
Beatrice Galilee: I applied with a proposal to look at all the ideas around architecture. Architecture exhibitions don’t deal with the real experience of architecture; they deal with the design and concept of architecture. So I wanted to look at all the other work and disciplines that influence architecture and disciplines that architecture is influenced by. They were really happy because I didn’t have any famous architects in my proposal or my curatorial team, so that’s one of the reasons they said they chose me, as well as because I’m British, again because they wanted it to be something more international. So I applied with that team, with Liam Young, Mariana Pestana and José Esparza. They asked for three exhibitions and a public programme as part of the proposal so it was quite defined from the beginning – what I was and what I wasn’t allowed to do.
Real and Other Fictions curated by Mariana Pestana – photograph by Delfino Legnani
Amy Frearson: Can you tell me a bit more about the theme Close, Closer?
Beatrice Galilee:As a group, the idea was to explore the alternate universe of architecture, beyond the aesthetics and proportions that architects deal with; to try and be more public and open about an exhibition. So it was an opportunity to push the boundaries of what an architecture exhibition can be about and about how it could be presented.
We’re not representing architecture, we’re presenting it; exhibitions are places to be occupied, not just things to be observed. So thats the kind of big shift we’ve tried to explain to people: it’s not about demonstrating projects but about commissioning spaces and places that are used and occupied during the triennale.
Real and Other Fictions curated by Mariana Pestana
Amy Frearson: Can you give me some examples?
Beatrice Galilee: We made this huge stage in Casa de la Figera to host our public programme. Afterwards will be occupied by various different people and groups; there will be a skateboarding competition on it, a university public programme, a number of associations and institutions have asked to use the stage, even a horse riding group want to use it. It’s a public programme in that sense; the idea is that its about the city.
The same with The Real and Other Fictions exhibition [a series of installations that explore the former uses of an old palace]. It works on several different levels. It has to be occupied, it has to be used as architecture does. We wanted to explore not just what an architecture exhibition could be but how architecture is understood. Its not about showing ideas that happen elsewhere, its not really that kind of design.
The exhibition The Institute Effect is a kind of homage to the institution. Institutions play a huge role in the field of contemporary architecture, and the individuals behind the institutions become the people who make the decisions about the landscape of architecture. Instead of showing what it is that they do, we’re inviting them to come and make a public programme for Lisbon. So it’s kind of an embassy or season of institutions that keep putting on festivals and talks. The idea is that as a triennale, we’re not international curators that come in and leave again. It has an element of time to it, it sinks in and works for a city, works for people who take time to come back to it and make use of that intelligence and those ideas.
The Institute Effect co-curated by Dani Admiss – photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
The Future Perfect is a kind of experience, an opportunity to walk into someone else’s dream about the visual and aesthetic shape of the future, as well as the atmosphere around it. The programme is a combination of who else is responsible for architecture, what else architecture is. Can we present that in a new, innovative and exciting way?
Alongside that there were other programmes. Associated Projects was a call for anyone to be a part of the triennale, that was also really exciting because it made the triennale into a platform for other people’s projects. We had 100 associated projects, which ranged from architecture installations, a run, urban walks, coordinated clothes wash and research into the pedagogical systems of architecture. Not only did we commission the people we did, but we were also able to commission other people to talk about what they really wanted to.
The Institute Effect co-curated by Dani Admiss – photograph by Luke Hayes
Amy Frearson: How has the establishment reacted to the programme?
Beatrice Galilee: Because the first two triennale exhibitions had been so heavily influenced by Portuguese architecture, I think people felt that the Lisbon Architecture Triennale was an opportunity to promote Portuguese architecture to the world. I think there was an expectation that the third one would do it again. Because we made the discipline of architecture our focus, not Portuguese architecture, I think people were unsure of what their place was in this event.
Ultimately it’s an event for the next generations of architects in Portugal not for established practitioners. We didn’t really compromise on that. We thought maybe we should do an exhibition for the older generation so that they don’t get upset, but we decided that sometimes you have to take a position. We wanted to do something that would supported a different type of architecture practice, a bit more about exploration and invention than about famous names. Because I don’t think there’s really a gap in the market for exhibitions on Portuguese architects because they’re so famous and so well known. The discipline of architecture in Portugal is really cherished around the world. For example there was an exhibition of Portuguese architects in Montreal and last year at the Venice Biennale and in Milan. We wanted to do something different that would be appropriate for this time.
So in terms of animosity, its kind of more like a wall of silence from that generation rather than explicit animosity because no one has criticised me personally. That’s what I have experienced personally and I don’t know what they think.
Future Perfect curated by Liam Young – photograph by Miguel de Guzmán
Amy Frearson: It’s rumoured that Álvaro Siza deliberately left the city because he he hadn’t been involved.
Beatrice Galilee: Yeah he went to Milan for the launch of the new Domus magazine. There was a comment in one of the exhibitions saying: “Why have you gone to Milan?” It’s a bit of a shame really. I can’t imagine British architects being like that if they’ weren’t involved in London Festival of Architecture or Italian architects behaving like that if they weren’t in the Venice Biennale. Its a shame because they’re on the board of the triennale. I think it’s a shame for the Portuguese architects involved that they don’t have the support of their masters. But it’s not something that particularly keeps me up at night.
Cohen Van Balen at Future Perfect – photograph by Catarina Botelho
Amy Frearson: The biggest issue affecting Portugal today is the economic crisis. How has the triennale addressed that?
Beatrice Galilee: In some ways we adjusted by simply managing to exist. The crisis-buster grants [funding given to ten projects that benefitted local communities] were really a direct response to the crisis. It was a real pleasure to see so many of them, such as an ice cream van pulling up, and all of the projects that were made with our grants that were popping up and were really excited and were working really well. It was great. The public programme is really trying to address that.
There’s one practice campaigning for Portuguese architects to stay in Portugal. And that’s their message – don’t leave, your ideas are needed here and you’re needed here. Your thinking is needed here. You can change the city, don’t leave. And thats a really powerful message from a young Portuguese practice. They want their colleagues and their collaborators to think twice before they go to leave to get work in other countries.
So of course the programme isn’t entirely devoted to discussing the crisis, but there’s loads of really exciting things that come out of it. Some people say you’re almost glorifying the crisis but it’s not the case at all. We’re trying to be really productive and proactive. I think that’s the good thing that happens when people come together, you can get inspired and get ideas and a lot of the programme is almost trying to design those moments of conversation like what can we do together, as a group, as a generation, to stop architects leaving the country.
Marshmallow Laser Feast at Future Perfect – photo by Delifino Legnani
Amy Frearson: Was your budget cut?
Beatrice Galilee: I think we ended up with 50% of what we started with which is pretty drastic. It is not exactly what we wanted from the beginning, but I’m just really proud of the curators and participants who slogged and slaved and fought to participate in this, and driven to do it despite all the cuts. Its like a programme that exists in spite of everything. I’m amazed that we did it at all and there are no regrets in a way, we did it, its opened and it happened. Of course there are more things that if we had more money, we would have done it, but then we could also have not done anything.
Designer Hella Jongerius and architect Rem Koolhaas have renovated the North Delegates’ Lounge at the United Nations buildings in New York (+ slideshow).
Working alongside a team of Dutch creatives that included graphic designer Irma Boom, artist Gabriel Lester and theorist Louise Schouwenberg, Jongerius and Koolhaas have reconfigured the layout and added new furniture to the lounge – one of the key spaces in the complex designed during the 1960s by a team of architects including Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer.
Koolhaas’ OMA began by removing a mezzanine that had been added in 1978, opening up a view towards the East River. Hella Jongerius then added a bead curtain made from hand-knotted yarn and 30,000 porcelain beads.
Furniture is arranged so that one end of the lounge accommodates formal meetings and the other is more suited to coffee and drinks. Jongerius designed two new pieces for the space – the Sphere Table and the UN Lounge Chair – which are accompanied by original Knoll chairs.
A new bar is made from black resin, while the existing information desk is retained and repositioned alongside the original clock and signage.
Jongerius was responsible for the colour palette, adding an orange carpet alongside the purple, blue and green upholstery.
“The renovation and redesign of the lounge is a gift from the Netherlands to the UN,” said the designers.
Dezeen recently filmed a series of interviews with Jongerius discussing her latest projects and why she chose to relocate to Berlin. Watch the movies »
New interior for United Nations North Delegates’ Lounge (New York)
More than sixty years after the opening of the UN North Delegates’ Lounge, Hella Jongerius has redesigned the lounge in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas, Irma Boom, Gabriel Lester and Louise Schouwenberg.
Their aim was to create a space of both comfort and professional informality. The team carefully edited the history of the space, retaining some of the iconic Scandinavian designs and creating a new perspective on the works of art already on display. They removed the mezzanine that had blocked the view of the East River, restoring the open architectural space.
Jongerius designed two new pieces of furniture for the lounge: the Sphere Table and the UN Lounge Chair, produced by Vitra. For the East Facade Jongerius designed the Knots & Beads Curtain, with hand-knotted yarn and 30,000 porcelain beads made from Dutch clay by Royal Tichelaar Makkum. Jongerius was also responsible for revitalizing the colour palette, selecting the furniture and designing the cradle-to-cradle Grid Carpet.
The UN buildings in New York date from 1951, six years after the foundation of the UN. Referred to as ‘A Workshop for Peace’, the complex was designed by a team of architects including Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and Wallace K. Harrison. In 2009, the UN launched a large-scale renovation project, which is now nearly complete. At the request of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hella Jongerius formed a team to redesign the lounge and bring it into a new era. The renovation and redesign of the lounge is a gift from the Netherlands to the UN.
The lounge will be officially opened on September 25, 2013 by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands and the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frans Timmermans, in the presence of Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Year: 2013 Material: Various Dimensions: Various Commission: United Nations/ Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Category: Industrial production
London designer Paul Cocksedge’s first solo exhibition, at Friedman Benda in New York, features a table folded from a single sheet of steel (+ slideshow).
Paul Cocksedge‘s Capture exhibition at New York City’s Friedman Benda gallery includes two new pieces by the designer.
The first is a table made from a curved Corten steel sheet, which balances on one end and curves back on itself to create the top.
The half-ton sheet folds at an angle so the top and base point in different directions.
His second new design is a large black domed lamp, which glows with a white light across the entire 1.6-metre-wide base.
Hand-spun from aluminium, the hemisphere is tilted to direct the light at an angle.
Friedman Benda will present Paul Cocksedge: Capture the British designer’s inaugural solo exhibition, 12 September – 12 October 2013.
Capture will introduce new works developed by Cocksedge over the last four and half years that push the mediums of light and structure, including a large-scale light installation, a collection of dramatic, seemingly impossible, hand-wrought dome lamps, and Poised, a series of unyielding steel tables inspired by the delicacy of paper. Known for exploring the limits of technology, materials, and manufacturing capabilities, Paul Cocksedge Studio has produced both commercial and experimental work, as well as a series of high-profile public installations around the world. Capture finds Cocksedge presenting a new series of concepts informed by his studio’s commitment to technological ingenuity, expanding the boundaries of physics, and the creation of works that are both thought provoking and unexpected.
The works include Capture, a 1.6-metre hand-spun aluminium dome that appears to “hold” the peaceful glow of a warm white light. The piece is informed by a process of reduction – a recurring theme in Cocksedge’s work – as it subtracts the typical infrastructure around light, instead creating a hemisphere that seems to stop light from escaping.
For White Light, Cocksedge will create a room within the gallery in which everything and nothing changes. For this work, the designer will create an illuminated mosaic of precisely calibrated and positioned coloured panels on the ceiling of the gallery. The ceiling will slowly fade from a spectrum of colours to a warm white light, while the room itself will remain unchanged, demonstrating the ways in which we do and do not perceive the interplay of colour and light.
The inspiration for Poised comes from the elegance and amenability of paper. Half a ton in weight, the steel table appears improbable upon investigation. Created following an intensive series of calculations regarding gravity, mass, and equilibrium, the table looks as though it is about to fall, but is perfectly weighted and stable.
In addition to these new works, Cocksedge will present three architectural models that take conceptual threads from Capture and White Light and reapply them to architectural settings outside of the gallery space. Central to Cocksedge’s work is an appreciation for the ways in which people respond to and interact with his designs. As a result, potential real world applications of these new works will be explored in a series of architectural models.
Here’s another project from Dutch firm Mecanoo: a sports college in Eindhoven featuring a black brick exterior with perforations in the shape of athletes (+ slideshow).
Mecanoo completed the sports centre last year in Eindhoven’s Genneper Park for students at Fontys Hogescholen – a local science university. It houses swimming pools, indoor sports facilities, a 15 metre-high rock-climbing wall and student classrooms.
“The sports complex’s logistics are sophisticated and provide maximum opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction between sports and education,” said the architects.
“The teaching areas can be sealed off so that only the sports halls are accessible, for example at sporting events or sports association gatherings,” they added.
Images of cyclists, gymnasts and other athletes decorate three of the facades, plus more are printed onto brightly coloured walls inside the building. There are also sporting motifs adorning some of the pieces of furniture.
A large window offers a view from the main reception area towards the climbing wall, which is slotted into a corner.
Other facilities include a canteen, a multimedia library and a sports laboratory, plus there’s a car park underneath the structure.
The building generates its own electricity and heating from solar-panels on the roof.
Terraces and seating line the perimeter, leading down towards trees and large grassed areas in the surrounding parkland.
Starting in 2012, 2200 students and teachers will make daily use of sports facilities in their own building, including the National Swimming Centre, the Tongelreep and the Indoor Sports Centre.
Fontys Sports College, with state of the art sports facilities and a comprehensive sustainability concept, will house Fontys Sports College’s three curricula which are currently housed at the Sittard and Tilburg locations. Mecanoo has created a social sports facility design that contributes to the vibrancy of Genneper Parks.
The intelligence of this building is that most of the sports accommodations are located on the first floor. This creates not a closed off sports box, but a completely transparent ground floor which is in relationship with the environment. The compactness of the building’s layout provides the advantage of room left for a stage to the building – in the form of a plinth – inviting athletic and social encounters in the outdoors. The glass plinth gives way to a black brick facade beginning on the first floor and sculpturally building up and around the rest of the building.
The literal highpoint of the building is the climbing wall which is situated at the corner of the building and acts like a beacon. A huge glass window offers a distant view of the climbers. The sports complex’s logistics are sophisticated and provide the maximum of opportunities for cross disciplinary interaction between sports and education.
It is possible to see into the sports halls from the corridors, study areas, the restaurant and the entrance halls. Simultaneously, sport and education are logistically separated. The teaching functions can be sealed off so that only the sports halls are accessible, for example at sporting events or sports association gatherings. Also in the evening, the building is lively, contributing to the security of Genneper Parks.
The building is equipped with a sustainable energy system, making it largely possible to provide for its own energy. The educational features in this compact building are efficiently oriented to the north.
To save on cooling, the south side features a building canopy. The energy roof makes use of solar energy. Further the excess of heat and cold of the buildings in the vicinity is being used and stored in two buffer tanks in the garage.
Sports complex of 16,500 m2 with 5 sports halls of which several meet the NOC * NSF requirements, 1 with 400 seats, a 15 meter high climbing wall, a restaurant, a library and educational facilities as a multimedia centre and a sports lab, and a parking garage with 200 parking spaces.
London Design Festival 2013:Amsterdam designer Roel Huisman has created a desk with an ash lamp and glass vase embedded in a thick slab of resin.
Writing Table by Roel Huisman is the first in a new series of polyester resin tables by the designer.
It features ash legs, an aqua-coloured resin table top, an inset glass vase, a desk lamp and a small storage compartment that is concealed by a sliding ash writing surface.
Huisman added coloured pigment to a transparent polyster resin to achieve the desired pastel tone. The material was then cast, milled, sanded and polished.
“I like to combine the polyester with wood, a natural combination since the resin was developed for the naval industry,” said the designer.
Two ash poles make up a pivoting desk lamp, which is connected to a power source by a bright green cable.
The experiences I have had in designing for theatre performances and living in an interior I designed myself have made me become more and more interested in the interaction between the objects that I design and it’s users. The pieces I design are meant to easily blend into your interior to form a pleasant everyday encounter.
This writing table is the first of a series of tables in polyester resin and a continuation of the Shelves series. Polyester resin is used for its amiable appearance. The resin that is used has a base that is transparent and non-coloured. With pigments we achieve the desired colour and opaque quality. The piece undergoes a series of steps in which it is casted, milled, sanded and polished.
I like to combine the polyester with wood, a natural combination since the resin was developed for the naval industry.
I use ash-wood to accessorise the tabletop with several functional elements; a lamp, a vase and a small storage compartment to become an object you will enjoy for it’s humble aesthetics and elegant functionality.
This volcano museum in western Hungary features walls of dark concrete and Corten steel designed by Budapest studio Foldes Architects to reference the colours of volcanic rock and lava (+ slideshow).
Located on a flat plain between the city of Celldomolk and a former volcano, the Kemenes Volcanopark Visitor Centre tells the history of the surrounding region, which five million years ago was home to many volcanoes.
Foldes Architects won a competition to design the museum, using materials and forms that subtly reference the shapes and colours of volcanoes.
“Instead of the straight translation of the brief, such as creating a volcano-shaped museum building, we wanted to capture the true substance of the location,” said architect Laszlo Foldes.
“The raw materials, the homogeneous grey of the concrete, the lava-inspired colour of the Corten steel and the flue-like arrangement of the space deliver the spirit and essence of a volcano,” he added.
Corten steel boxes puncture the rectilinear volume of the five-storey building, forming self-contained screening rooms and exhibition spaces that project out towards the landscape.
The entrance leads into a full-height atrium. A small skylight five storeys above lets in a beam of light and is intended to recreate the feeling of being inside a volcano.
Concrete walls are left exposed inside the building, while steel staircases ascend to exhibition spaces on all four upper floors.
Here’s some more information from Foldes Architects:
Volcano Visitor Centre opened in Hungary, designed by Foldes Architects
Though Hungary, located in Central Eastern Europe, is not rich in active volcanos, a large expanse of the country used to be volcanic some 5 million years ago. However, this does help ensure good quality soil for high level wine production, one of Hungary’s largest export products.
The iconic Kemenes Volcanopark Visitor Centre lays 200 km west of the capital Budapest, and has been realised following a national architectural contest announced in 2009 by the Celldomolk City Council, when Foldes Architects celebrated their winning entry from the competing 44 projects. The chosen plot for the centre highlighted a flat area between the city of Celldomolk and the 5 million year old Sag Hill, a former volcano.
“Instead of the straight translation of the brief, such as creating a volcano-shaped museum building, we wanted to capture the true substance of the location. According to our concept, the raw materials, the homogeneous grey of the concrete, the lava-inspired colour of the Corten steel, and the flue-like arrangement of the space, deliver the spirit and essence of a volcano.” – Laszlo Foldes, chief designer of Foldes Architects.
Upon entering the vast interior of the building, the visitor meets two engaging attractions. At first sight the vertically open space captures the eye. Five floors above, a small window lets in a beam of light offering the ‘eruption’ point on the flat roof. On the opposite side, the industrial materials of the facade appear consistent with the interior: naked concrete walls, dark grey resin flooring, steel staircase and corridor, and the Corten steel cubes also visible from the outside. The varied height and location of bridges link the different sizes and positions of the Corten boxes. These offer a range of functions, from screening rooms to interactive installations area, and present the fascinating history and typology of volcanos. To create a more refined interior, the exhibition texts are situated directly on the wall without any supporting board.
If you ever wanted to imagine walking through a cubist painting, this building is a great example of how it might feel to wander into Picasso’s Guernica. While passing below the red cubes, grey walls and bridges of the building, you have a real opportunity to comprehend the transience and vulnerability of human existence bracketed by such a formidable force of nature.
Project name: Kemenes Volcanopark Visitor Center Location: Celldomolk, Vas County, Hungary Program: Specific museum building to represent the volcanic history of the territory Type: competition commission
Area/Size: 965 sqm Cost: 1.238.000.EUR Client: Celldomolk City Council Project by: Foldes Architects
Opinion: in his first Opinion column for Dezeen, Dan Hill reflects on the recent sale of Finland’s two most iconic design brands – Artek and Nokia – and suggests what the country’s design industry should do next.
“John le Carré said the only way to write about a place was after visiting it for a day, or after a long life once you’d moved there… Time between those two lengths didn’t lend more certainty, just detail,” wrote Rosecrans Baldwin in Paris I Love You But You’re Getting Me Down.
Within a single week, not long after football’s transfer deadline day, Nokia’s “devices and services” division, which contributed hugely to Finland’s economic and cultural growth over the last two decades, moved to Microsoft for a Gareth Bale-esque $7.71 billion. This deal was swiftly followed by Artek, formerly owned by the Swedish investment company Proventus, joining furniture’s Champions League, via Vitra.
Although this small country of five million people has also produced Iitala, Marimekko, Kone, Fiskars and others, these two firms bookend a first era of Finnish design, with Artek founded by the Aaltos and co. in 1935 and Nokia’s dominance of the global mobile phone sector six decades later. Where do these “exits” leave Finnish design?
Under Marko Ahtisaari, a coherent and bold design culture had recently emerged at Nokia, with their Lumia phones drawing on a distinctly European heritage to produce an object, at least, that moved beyond Apple and Samsung. However, the wider culture around Nokia over the last decade had already – and fatally – betrayed a lack of understanding of the value of design. The software suffered badly and although intriguing handsets occasionally emerged, one felt that design was generally no more than an indulged child amidst what was really a masterful engineering and logistics machine, wrapped in the PowerPoint Palace’s bureaucratic managerialism.
Once Apple, and then Google, had deployed a richer, strategic approach to design in order to seamlessly orchestrate people, apps, media, devices and the interfaces between them, Nokia had no answer. Neither did Microsoft, for that matter. Hence these massive brands were left looking like the two kids picked last in the school playground, staring awkwardly at their boots, red-faced and uncomfortable in last year’s kit. With no other option than each other, Microsoft bought Nokia’s design function – minus Ahtisaari, who is moving on – simply to stay in the game.
Meanwhile, Artek had been looking forward, with Ville Kokkonen’s seasonal affective disorder-defying lamps building on imaginative research. As with Nokia and Ahtisaari, Artek benefits from thoughtful designer leadership in Kokkonen; both draw from wide-ranging perspectives well outside of traditional design practice. Yet Artek’s essential problem is that the entire furniture business is struggling for cultural relevance. Furniture is important for putting things on, yet unlike in the mid-twentieth century, it says less and less about our age. We know that, as architecture theorist Kazys Varnelis puts it, “technology is our modernity” now; inner space, not interiors.
So the questions posed by these acquisitions are more fundamental than those of the balance sheet, where both moves make sense commercially. The question is cultural: Artek was born with an avant-garde mission, whilst Nokia was the first to capitalise upon the most influential cultural object of the last three decades. So this week of deals actually poses the question: what does Finnish product design do now?
There are two obvious trajectories to ascribe, twin arcs towards a twenty-first century industrial design.
The first is in a new form of interactive object, as active partners of people, socially and culturally, via Internet of Things technologies, absorbing the essence of Varnelis’s “new modernity”. Here objects can be augmented with emotional expressiveness and responsiveness, with variable character and identity, via interactions across diverse social relations and contexts. In other words, what’s Finnish for Little Printer or Fuelband? Nest or Glass? Or better, whatever’s next?
Might this be a big ask for a culture whose national stereotype is the taciturn man likely to embark on a devastatingly lengthy Finnish silence at any moment? Like all stereotypes, this is both true and not true, and fortunately there are enough (North) polar opposites to refute it. Yet their late urbanisation means Finns rarely possesses a naturally social culture. It is a culture rooted in the tangible, the material, the output of designer Tapio Wirkkala‘s and Kaj Franck‘s peerless craft. After all, Nokia lost it when Apple veered towards people over things.
The Finnish language is at its most beautiful in the ancient series of soft, weathered words denoting the physical reality of landscapes and bodies; “chipped sounds, words eaten away by ice and silence”, as novelist Diego Marani has it. Yet there is effectively no word for “please”.
But despite this granite-hard pragmatism, there is evidence elsewhere of a supreme facility with the social (and no, Rovio, makers of Angry Birds, I’m not looking at you.)
There is the gloriously levelling ritual of cheek-to-cheek encounters in the sauna, a unique social space recently revived by NOW in Helsinki. Equally, the päiväkoti day-care system for pre-school children is one of the finest learning environments you can imagine, setting up the nation’s world-class results. It is human-centred, with an emphasis on both material and environmental exploration – most time is spent outdoors – as well as carefully tended social, cultural and emotional growth.
Then we must note the Nordic region’s unlikely but deserved emergence as a culinary leader, well-represented in Helsinki. This provides more evidence, with its emphasis on the nuanced, often intangible differentiators of quality, service, provenance, ritual and theatre.
Could Finnish design culture augment its innate facility with the inert via this empathetic understanding of people, ritual and service?
If that is a move outwards from the object, there is another trajectory in the opposite direction, towards a different kind of performative fabric, via architecture at the atomic scale.
The 50,000 Nokia employees not bought by Microsoft – still under the Nokia brand, focused on networks, mapping and advanced technologies – recently received a €1 billion EU grant for research into graphene, the “indistinguishable-from-magic” one-atom-thick material that is the thinnest and lightest yet produced, 300 times stronger than steel, transparent, bendable and highly conductive.
Similarly, Finland has Aalto University’s world-renowned Nanotalo lab, with its focus on biomimetic nanocomposites, particularly derived from Finnish timber. Artek’s Kokkonen is a regular visitor. Yet its facility is separated from the design faculties, lost in the university’s misguided attempt at an urban plan without the urban. Connect the power of this research to Finland’s design culture and its potential becomes tangible, just as with 1930s modernism that fused science and engineering with design in order to produce Artek.
Finland could take its design culture forward once again, now all that is solid – stone, fabric, ceramic, glass – has melted into an air of vertically-integrated software, services and media. Perhaps the next evolution is in digital/physical hybrid objects possessing familiar and treasured materials woven with two-dimensional nanocomposites, and allied with responsiveness, awareness, and character by virtue of having the internet embedded within. Finland might be perfectly placed to pick up that gauntlet. But will they?
Despite a culture borne of survival, Finland has an incredibly high standard of living. You might occasionally need to summon a bit of “sisu” on a pitch black, minus 20 degrees January morning, but it’s nothing a Woolrich parka can’t fix. In deep summer or deep winter Helsinki – don’t ask about November – it is difficult to imagine anywhere better.
Yet in places, that success bred complacency, and by “places” I mean the pre-iPhone era Nokia and some of its other heritage brands. These last weeks suggest that Finnish design can no longer afford to be complacent. Nokia single-handedly contributed a third of Finland’s entire corporate research and development as recently as last year; that is unlikely to happen again. Similarly, Artek has to try hard to prevent the sheer weight of its gilded past from holding it back. People might say, “those E60 stools won’t sell themselves!” Actually, they probably will. What they sell next is the question.
So building on and respecting these rich legacies is important, but moving on is more important. Again, Finland has every chance to do so.
Soon the Finns will witness “ruska” spread across the nation, from Aalto’s moonbase-style buildings in Rovaniemi near the Arctic Circle, down to the rapidly greying Baltic off the capital. Ruska occurs when birch, larch and rowan trees explode into russet tones of richly saturated purples, reds, yellows and oranges, before shivering off their leaves for winter. It’s an extraordinary vivid and life-affirming cycle.
Finnish design needs a similarly florid and dramatic replenishment. While the trajectories sketched above are mere suggestions, the recent seismic activity at its two most iconic brands, Artek and Nokia – one a tremor, the other a quake – provides the perfect opportunity for re-imagining Finnish design in the twenty-first century.
Dan Hill is CEO of Fabrica, a communications research centre and design studio based in Treviso, Italy. He is an adjunct professor in the Design, Architecture and Building faculty at University of Technology, Sydney, and his blog City of Sound covers the intersection between cities, design, culture and technology.
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.
