Hasta La Ideas

Working with skilled local craftspeople is both a duty and an opportunity for Indian designers, says Prateek Jain of lighting design company Klove, in the third and final movie from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.

“It’s the biggest job of a designer to make sure that they work with handicrafts people,” says Prateek Jain, co-founder of Klove. “Whether it’s a fashion designer who works with an embroiderer or whether it’s us working with wood carvers or stone cutters.”

Both sides benefit when designers work with traditional craft producers, says Jain, and can help bring craftsmen’s work to new markets. “It’s very important to apply a more contemporary design aesthetic to these handicraft [skills]” he says.

Jain’s chosen medium is glass, thanks to an encounter he had with craftsmen in Ambala, a town in northern India. When he saw local glass-blowers creating intricate glassware for laboratories, he knew he had spotted an opportunity.

“We saw that they were doing these beautiful, flawless bowls of silica glass,” he says. “The blowers had been making beakers, flasks and test tubes for generations. We realised that [we could use] this skill set to explore home decor.”

Together with his partner Gautam Seth he took these techniques used for creating lab-ware into unexpected contexts: creating luxury lighting installations for an international client base.

Klove now creates large, ornate custom-made lighting installations working in a palette of blown glass, brass, steel and copper.

Klove was participating in the Made In… India Samskara exhibition. Curated by Fashion Design Council of India president Sunil Sethi and creative think tank BE OPEN, the show celebrates collaborations between contemporary Indian designers and skilled Indian craftsmen.

For the show Klove used blown glass and beaten metal to create a large lighting installation in the shape of a peacock, India’s national bird.

“We knew that [the curators] wanted to represent India in a modern way. Instantly the idea of a peacock came into our head because it’s the national bird,” says Jain. “We wanted to represent the peacock in a contemporary manner but at the same time have a strong Indian aesthetic to it”.

The feathers that make up the peacock’s fanned tail are represented by 48 slender glass stems, similar in form to elongated laboratory flasks.

“The great part about being in this country is that you have great access to a great resource of talent. You have craftsmen who have been doing this work for many centuries” says Jain.

Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.

The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.

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skills alive, says designer Prateek Jain appeared first on Dezeen.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve nearly had a heart attack because of some loose grate on the sidewalk—you know, the only thing standing between me and the smelly, rushing subway tunnel below. I’d imagine that if you unexpectedly walked upon Jeroen Bisscheroux‘s “POOL, Loss of Color,” you’d have a similar feeling.

The floor painting is a 3D depiction of an empty pool. And as you can see from the photos below, visitors have been having a ball using the design to its full photo-op potential. While the actual art itself is memorable in its own bemusing way, like any other important work, the real enduring sentiment comes in the inspiration behind the project. The exhibit brings two disasters to viewers’ attention in one image: the Sendai tsunami and the Fukishima disaster.

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Architect Anupama Kundoo discusses the power of craft and working with traditional stone masons, in the second of our series of movies from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.

In keeping with the brief of the Made In… India Samskara exhibition, Indian architect Anupama Kundoo worked with Indian stone masons to produce the exhibition.

Curated by Fashion Design Council of India president Sunil Sethi and creative think tank BE OPEN, the show celebrates collaborations between contemporary Indian designers and skilled Indian craftsmen.

For architect Anupama Kundoo, being surrounded by work made using hand-crafted techniques is a reminder that there is an alternative to the “standardised industrial products”, people have become used to.

“We are all different, we are all unique, and it’s very strange that we have to be adjusting ourselves continually to standard products.” she says. “We have just accepted and surrendered ourselves to this future: it doesn’t have to be like that.”

She describes her installation as an undulating landscape, made from three principle elements: ferrocement slabs, pools of water and modular slabs of hand-levelled granite. This landscape hosts the homeware, lighting, clothes and furniture on display.

Kundoo teamed up with stone-cutters from Tamil Nadu in the south of India to produce the slabs that dip and rise throughout the space. These long granite strips make up both the floor of the space and the surfaces for displaying the exhibits.

“These heavy slabs flow through the space like ribbons,” says Kundoo. “They frame the space and the undulations come out [of] the function: to raise the slab to the level required to display a particular object.”

“The actual elements are modular. The pieces rest on a sand bed and they can be reassembled in a wide range of ways and it can all be directly reused,” she says.

It took the masons six week to level the granite used in the exhibition, through a painstaking process of hand-levelling, a technique normally used to make stones for grinding masala paste, says Kundoo.

Seeing the exhibition design, with these familiar techniques used in unexpected ways, had a dramatic effect on the craftsmen, said Kundoo.

“They’ve been making stone slabs for generations. But when they see [them], in this kind of composition, they realise that that they can make anything.” she says.

Kundoo works between Spain and India. In 2012 she exhibited her Wall House project at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This project also used the skills of Indian craftsmen — she brought a team to Italy to construct a full-size replica of a house inside the Arsenale.

Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.

The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.

The post Don’t surrender to “standardised products”
says Indian architect Anupama Kundoo appeared first on Dezeen.

Xu Zhen is a pioneer within Chinese underground contemporary art and an influential figure in Shanghai’s scene. In 1998, along with Davide Quadrio, he founded Bizart in Shanghai, a platform to support local and international artists, which has been at the forefront of…

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Milan 2014: Dutch design studio Droog has adapted pieces from the 8000 objects in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to create a studio space for Milan design week (+ slideshow).

Spaces set up at Droog‘s Rijksstudio m2 exhibition will include an entrance, bedroom, kitchen, living room and dining room.

The walls and ceiling will be decorated with Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom’s wallpaper, referencing works in the museum’s collection by the likes of Vermeer and using the colour palette she developed as part of the 2013 Rijksmuseum renovation and rebrand.

An eighteenth-century tapestry will be transformed into wallpaper, while a painting with birds and clouds will become part of a reflective gradient wall in the bedroom.

The furniture and homeware range created as part of the installation takes its lead from historical artifacts and pieces within paintings in the museum’s collection.

A bathtub, a daybed, a writing desk, a mirror, a nightstand and a candleholder are executed in wood and leather.

Droog is also launching products previewed at Milan last year that are now in production. The collection takes colours, shapes and details from traditional artworks and uses contemporary materials such as rubber and titanium to create contemporary products.

The AA Glasses mimic the form of five historic glasses in the Rijksmuseum whose makers are unknown. They are available in transparent, or matte black for blind tastings.

Table Skin is a silicone cast of traditional Dutch ribbons and piping embroidery, used to form a durable, waterproof and easy-to-clean table cloth.

The collection also include a 3D-printed napkin ring by Studio Droog that resembles a pleated Tudor ruff.

As well as these, Droog will present new products from its New Original series referencing iconic Chinese products such as the Tea for One and Tea for Two teapots by Richard Hutten.

The exhibition will be open at Via San Gregorio 29 in Milan from 8 to 13 April.

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for Milan exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.