Hasta La Ideas

Opinion: a pizza crust stuffed with a hot dog could be the ultimate expression of contemporary design culture, suggests Sam Jacob in this week’s opinion column.

If this is all that’s left for design to do on this earth then maybe we are finally fulfilling that quaint Victorian statement that everything that can be invented has been invented.

That’s the second thought I had after seeing the latest product out of the gate from Domino’s secret diabolical research facility: the Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza. The first thought was where I was going to vomit.

Think of it for a second. Turn the idea over in your mind slowly: a pizza whose crust contains a hot dog. Yes, a sausage that loops around a pizza’s circumference like a mechanically-recovered meat Large Hadron Collider.

Crusts, of course, have troubled pizza makers for years. To the volume pizza industry crusts are dead air, the unfortunate bready by-product of the pizza-making process. Barren, boring margins to the infinite possibilities of a pizza’s surface daubed with cheese, tomato, pepperoni, chicken tikka and so on.

Previous attempts to transform these tasteless terrains have included stuffing them with cheese (acceptable in my book, at least in principle, because it’s just a rejigging of certifiable pizza ingredients) and so-called “crust-less” pizzas (weird, like a spineless book or a hairless cat). Other tactics have included transforming the pizza base into a sandwich of discs glued together with a garlic flavour emulsion (frankly revolting and a thankfully short-lived experiment).

But this ring of meat takes the biscuit. The Hot Dog Stuffed Crust is a fast food crossing of the streams, a hybridised foodstuff too far. But don’t blame Domino’s. It was apparently Pizza Hut who first introduced it. Domino’s version just ups the ante with mustard already lining the orbital sausage cavity. Pizza Hut has fought back with more innovation: the Hot Dog Pizza Bites Pizza: “pull-apart crust with 28 succulent mini hot dog bites, packed with delicious flavour” (in case you needed further explanation).

We might be appalled by the fact that this ever got off the drawing board and onto the back of a delivery moped driving around the very same streets that you and I walk. But I think I’m not alone in also secretly applauding the sheer ingenuity of this foul invention.

Let’s suspend judgement for a moment. For, as revolting as it may be, the Hot Dog Stuffed Pizza Crust represents a form of design thinking. That is to say, it isn’t a one-off incident but a product of the zeitgeist. It’s something that could simply not have happened say, 30 years ago. The HDSCP emerges out of a culture that we are all part of, that we all participate in, that we all contribute to. Frightening as it may be, all of us are responsible for the existence of the Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza.

Here are some of the things that I would argue enable humanity to conceive of the HDSCP; its cultural ingredients, in other words. Third Way politics that suggested you could be both left and right at the same time without being either. Hacking culture. Surrealism. Postmodernism (which might problematise the very idea of “pizza” and “hot dog” in the first place).

Robert Venturi (a better example of “both/and” you’d be hard pushed to find). Advertising. Pornography. Swiss Army knives. Photoshop. The convergence of uses that electronics has delivered since the digital watch first gave us a clock that was also a calculator (i.e. there’s not much ground to travel between the idea of a phone + camera to a pizza + hot dog).

All these phenomena (and many more) change the way in which we think. They alter our expectation of things, what we want them to do and to be. Design is something animated by forces outside of itself, shaped by the broad culture within which it practises. Objects, much as we’d like them to, can no longer be simple, natural or authentic because of the sheer complexity of contemporary production and consumption.

Much like food itself, the sensations of simplicity, naturalness and authenticity can only be created with spectacular and concentrated effort. The cult of the natural – so understandable a yearning in the face of things like the HDSCP – is as synthetic as everything else.

The Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza might be a revolting thought, but it is also an object that crystallises a trope of contemporary design culture. Its appallingness has a purity to it, a clarity that reveals tendencies that often lurk below the surface of design, hidden by good taste and convincing rhetoric.

If I were helping build the Design Museum’s new collection and wanted the object ne plus ultra of 2013, it would be this. An object so completely of its moment that if it was all that was left of civilisation, future archeologists could decode the entire socioeconomic structure of our society.

Sam Jacob is a director of architecture practice FAT, professor of architecture at University of Illinois Chicago and director of Night School at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, as well as editing www.strangeharvest.com.

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is a product of the zeitgeist” appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our second film recorded at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan last month, MINI head of design Anders Warming describes the centrepiece installation in the space and Joseph Grima, editor-in-chief of Domus magazine, reflects on a difficult period for Italian design.

“We wanted to create a sculpture that shows the development of MINI as a design product,” says Warming of the installation, which features the new MINI Paceman. “From an idea created by people in dialogue with engineers, at the end of the day [it] becomes innovation for the road.”

Grima of Domus is the second interviewee in our Dezeen and MINI World Tour Studio, which we set up within the garage. He believes that Italian design is going through a period of transition.

“I think it’s interesting that at the Triennale the annual design museum exhibition is very much on the theme of the great masters and the past and Italian design almost searching for comfort in its own history,” he says. “I think everybody realises that possibly an era is drawing to an end and a new era is beginning.”

Grima believes that Italy’s economic and political problems are hampering the progression of its creative industries. “It’s one of the paradoxes of Italy that on the one hand it’s one of the most innovative, creative countries in the world,” he says. “On the other hand the actual governmental, bureaucratic [and] economic framework of the nation… one would be forgiven for thinking it had been designed to suppress any sort of creative, vital energy.”

Despite this, he detects a spirit of optimism in the city. “There’s a collective hope that a new idea will be born, something new will emerge,” Grima says. “The digital technologies that we talked a lot about last year, they lend themselves also to being combined with traditional knowledges regarding materials, the kind of hands-on skills of the artisans that exist in this region and are unrivalled anywhere else. I think some manufacturers are really seriously beginning to think about how they can engage a completely different model of design industry.”

Unlike many cities, such as London, the education system in Milan is based on an apprenticeship model, which Grima suggests could be another reason the city is struggling to keep up with it’s competitors. “The great tradition that was born here was not born from the tradition of schools, it was actually the direct contact between the masters and the craftsmen,” he says. “That’s something that’s now in a little bit of a crisis because it is not as easy to perpetuate and the world has moved more towards the schools model.”

The system has also failed to produce a new generation of great Italian designers, with the major Milanese brands choosing to import talent from around the world instead. However, Grima does not think this is necessarily a problem. “I don’t think you can expect to survive by perpetuating the past,” he says. “I think Milan still has an undisputed role as the design capital of the world and as long as it is able to look out to the world and capture, be the arbiter in a way of what is interesting and what is innovative in the design world, that’s something that can be equally as important.”

See all our stories about Milan 2013.

The music featured in this movie is a track called Konika by Italian disco DJ Daniele Baldelli, who played a set at the MINI Paceman Garage. You can listen to more music by Baldelli on Dezeen Music Project.

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for Italian design” appeared first on Dezeen.

London designer Benjamin Hubert has created a chair that looks like it’s wrapped up in a cloak for Italian brand Moroso.

Named Talma after a type of cloak, this chair by Benjamin Hubert for Moroso, has a fabric cover wrapped snuggly around its frame.

The chair is composed of a softly padded textile folded around a lightweight CNC-shaped steel frame with integrated support straps.

The stretchy fabric is custom made by Innofa and is secured in place with a series of zips and two fastenings at the front.

Talma was presented by Moroso at the Salone Internazionale Mobile in Milan last month, where the brand also launched a family of chairs influenced by the shape of a hood. 

Other chairs we’ve recently featured by Moroso include a chair with a backrest wrapped in rush and a chair made from a single loop of material.

Benjamin Hubert also unveiled an armchair that weighs just three kilograms in Milan.

We interviewed the designer at our Dezeen Live event during 100% Design at the end of last year, where he talked about the importance of branding for designers.Watch the interview »

See all design for Moroso »
See all design by Benjamin Hubert »

See all our stories about chair design »
See all our coverage of Milan 2013 »

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for Moroso appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Saint Laurent has opened the doors to its new flagship store in Paris, the first to be designed by Hedi Slimane since he became creative director of the fashion house last year.

Located on Avenue Montaigne near the Champs-Élysées, the art deco-inspired Saint Laurent store features a marble staircase encased by rods of nickel-plated brass.

Black and white marble has been used for the walls, floors and a row of shelves, above which hang nickel-plated bars for displaying clothes.

The monochrome interior is reflected in the black and white photographs accompanying the opening of the store.

Formerly known as Yves Saint Laurent, after its founder, the fashion house’s name was changed soon after Slimane took over as creative director last spring.

Saint Laurent’s Sloane Street concept store in London is set to open in the autumn.

Other fashion boutiques we’ve featured lately include a shop in Warsaw with an upside-down living room on its ceiling and a Milan boutique featuring glass silhouettes of male and female figures – see all shops on Dezeen.

An exhibition of high fashion inspired by punk recently opened at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – see all fashion design.

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flagship store in Paris appeared first on Dezeen.

Warsaw studio Moko Architects has unveiled plans to build a diving and indoor skydiving centre outside Warsaw by surrounding a pair of abandoned cement silos with a tower of shipping containers.

The facility is proposed for the industrial district of Żerań, where a series of channels transport water between the city and Zegrze Reservoir, and a number of abandoned factories, warehouses and silos stand empty.

Moko Architects has designed a ten-storey structure where diving and skydiving activities can take place inside the cylinders of the converted silos. The first will be filled entirely with water to allow divers to plunge to depths of 25 metres, while the second will contain an underwater “cave” at its base and a skydiving tunnel at its top.

Shipping containers will be stacked up around the outside of the silos to provide offices and training facilities, as well as hostel accommodation, an exhibition area, a reading room, sports shops and a summer cafe. Balcony terraces will also be created on each floor by the irregular arrangement of the containers.

Construction is due to start in 2015.

Other architectural projects that use shipping containers include offices for an organic farm in China, a hotel in Germany and a sea-facing observation deck in South Korea. See more shipping container architecture.

Here’s some more information from Moko Architects:

Modernising the existing silos at the Żerański channel into a Diving and Indoor Skydiving Centre open all year round

The area for the investment is located ca. 12 km away from the centre of Warsaw. This is a part of a house factory in Żerań which operated in the past. Today, there are abandoned halls, warehouses and non-developed area. Main facilities include wholesale warehouses of construction materials and other products. The Żerański channel flows through the entire area, which creates a unique municipal landscape.

The collection of elements described above has a huge potential. The channel is a great water communication route between the City and the Zegrze Reservoir which provides the opportunity of doing water sports and staying active. The remains of the factories, warehouses and silos may be attractive for investors interested in their modernisation into lofts, offices, studios or erecting new buildings which will interline into the surrounding landscape.

This area is also becoming a popular place for amateurs of extreme sports, artists or people who like exploring abandoned buildings.

Our design assumes development of a Diving and Indoor Skydiving Centre open all year round in the old silos where bulk cement used to be stored in the past. The existing facility is a perfect base for this investment and will be the only place in Poland where people wishing to learn the skills of diving will have the opportunity to safely train at the depth of 25m under control. The well located in one of the silos is connected to the “cave” of the other cylinder. This is an ideal place to train wreck diving. The diameter of the well is 7m.

Apart from the cave, the second silo will feature a technical area as well as an Indoor Skydiving Centre. This place will make dreams about flying come true. In the “tube” where air will flow at high speeds, you will be able to safely train skydiving.

The Diving and Indoor Skydiving Centre will feature additional functions for people who will only visit the centre for a few hours with their families as well as for organised groups coming for training sessions lasting a couple of days.

The ground floor will feature the entrance area with exhibition space, professional magazines reading area, external café open in the summer season as well as a workshop. Level 1 will house sports stores. Level 2 and 3 will feature offices and administration. Level 4 will feature a hostel for indoor skydivers while level 5 will house training rooms and changing rooms for skydivers as well as the entrance to the area where the practical training of indoor skydiving is conducted. Level 6 will house a hostel for divers, level 7 will feature training and presentation rooms for divers while on level 8 there will be changing rooms separate for women and men. The will also be a buffer zone for divers to directly access the place where they start diving. At the same level, the facility will also feature a warm-up room. In the retained control room area at level 9 a small bar with a view onto the city panorama is designed. There will be terraces on all levels where you can relax after training while watching the industrial scenery intertwined with the Żerański channel.

The modules forming the space for additional functions are applied onto the existing structure of the silo walls looking as if they were growing on them. They are made of light self-supporting steel structure located on both sides and connected by a staircase. They comprise system cubes operating on the basis of single containers which are relatively cheap to manufacture and easy to rearrange in case of the need of changing the functional arrangement of the entire project. Polycarbonate plates will be the covering material through which the structure will be visible.

Completion of this project will set a direction for the development of this district and may become an alternative cultural centre in this part of Warsaw.

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by Moko Architects appeared first on Dezeen.