Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: Anglo-Indian design duo Doshi Levien has created a lounge chair for B&B Italia based on memories of a trip to the Himalaya mountains in India (+ interview).

The Almora chair aims to recreate the experience of visiting a town of the same name in the Himalayan foothills.

“The idea of the chair really comes from this memory of seeing the snow-capped Himalayan peaks wrapped in a soft, warm blanket,” said Jonathan Levien.

“You are wrapped in the soft warm blanket so you enjoy the mountains but you are warm where you are,” added Nipa Doshi. “It was the idea of really capturing this in a piece.”

She added: “Of course at the end of the day it is a chair, but how do you replicate this feeling of being in the cold air but being warm? So I think that although the chair is open, it is also warm.”

The chair features a two-part conical plastic frame that forms the seat and back, plus a curved oak headrest that appears to balance on top of the frame.

The seat is upholstered in leather while the headrest is finished in shearling. The chair is mounted on a five-spoke aluminium swivel base and the accompanying ottoman has a round steel base and a curved wooden seat upholstered in leather.

The chair is the first product designed by Doshi Levien for Italian brand B&B Italia. It launched this week in Milan during the Salone del Mobile.

Here’s a short interview with the designers conducted in Milan:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the new lounge chair you’re showing today.

Nipa Doshi: The chair is called Almora. It is our new lounge chair for B&B Italia: two years in the making and designing. The idea of the chair really comes from this memory of seeing the snow-capped Himalayan peaks wrapped in a soft warm blanket.

Jonathan Levien: What, the peaks are wrapped in soft warm blankets?

Nipa Doshi: No, you are wrapped in the soft warm blanket so you enjoy the mountains but you are warm where you are. And we imagined this chair almost to have the same feeling of warmth and comfort and to use the chair to enjoy the view outside and to sleep in; or equally to be with your children and read stories. It’s a chair very much to be alone in, but also to be with the family.

Marcus Fairs: What does Almora mean?

Nipa Doshi: Almora is the name of this place in India, in the Himalayan mountains.

Jonathan Levien: And where we were staying in the mountains was in this lodge, which had a really nice outdoor space. Indoor and outdoor were connected. We want to feel warm and secure in the place in which we are staying but very much engaged with our surroundings so the chair, in its gesture and form, is very open and it is almost like it is embracing not only the person sitting in it but also the view.

Marcus Fairs: Is the chair really inspired by this village in the Himalayas? Or is it just a nice story?

Nipa Doshi: No, it is really. The materiality of the piece, you can see it is… the shearling, the leather. They are all materials that are very tactile, very human, living materials. It was the idea of really capturing this in a piece. Of course at the end of the day it is a chair, but how do you replicate this feeling of being in the cold air but being warm? So I think that although the chair is open, it is also warm.

Jonathan Levien: There has to be a starting point to every piece and for us it is a feeling. It is what do we want to evoke in the piece. We don’t come from a functional perspective. It is more from a sculptural point of view and that means thinking about the space in which it is going to be used and dreaming about that. But then of course that is only part of the project and the other part is what is the materiality of the chair? What is the technology, the structure? How are the parts composed? We are hiding the technology, we are trying to create a sense of overlapping forms and floating components and hide the technology. There are many strands to it and for us it helps to start with a dream, with a place, before it takes shape.

Marcus Fairs: You are an Anglo-Indian couple and a lot of your work up to now has featured identifiable Indian motifs or forms. But this, if the story hadn’t been explained to me, I wouldn’t of thought of India and the mountains.

Nipa Doshi: But in a way I think it is not about India but about the mountains and I think it is more about nature. Almora was more a fictitious place; it could be Switzerland and the Alps. It can also be just looking at your garden. Many of us, even if we live in a city, have a very narrow view where we can have nature so it works in a home so the idea was very much about the experience you want to have in a home rather than a place as such.

Jonathan Levien: But, it is true also that the cultural aspect in our work is not as ostensible in this design in that you cannot see so clearly a partnership of Nipa and Jonathan in this design. It is not expressed in terms of a design-meets-a-decorative-graphic approach but I think it is very much a coming together of Nipa’s sense of visual identity and my ability to translate that into three-dimensions.

The post Doshi Levien’s Almora lounge chair for B&B Italia
feels like being “wrapped in a soft, warm blanket” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: young architects are becoming disillusioned with commercial work and instead turning to humanitarian projects, according to 2014 Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban (+ interview).

Natural disasters such as the Japanese tsunami are “really changing” the way young architects think, Ban believes, encouraging them to use their skills for humanitarian causes.

“When I was a student everyone was working for big developers to make big buildings,” Ban said. “And now there are many students and younger architects who are asking to join my team, to open programs in disaster areas.”

He added: “It’s really changing. I’m really encouraged.”

Ban made the comments to journalists at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, where he was taking part in the Where Architects Live installation.

Architectural culture is “moving in two directions”, he told Dezeen, as a new breed of younger architects turn away from urban work, where architects had ceded control to developers.

“Now cities are being made by developers, not architects, or not urban planners. They’re made by developers. So one way is this but many people are interested in working for society also.”

Ban is well known for his humanitarian work, creating temporary shelters from cardboard-based structures in disaster zones around the world.

His first paper-tube buildings were used to provide temporary homes for Vietnamese refugees after the Kobe earthquake in 1995. He has since created emergency shelters in India, Taiwan, Haiti and Japan as well as a cardboard cathedral for earthquake-hit Christchurch in New Zealand.

This work helped him secure the 2014 Pritzker Prize, which is widely regarded as the highest honour in world architecture.

Announcing the award last month, Pritzker Prize jury chairman Peter Palumbo said: “Shigeru Ban is a force of nature, which is entirely appropriate in the light of his voluntary work for the homeless and dispossessed in areas that have been devastated by natural disasters.”

Ban has also realised a number of arts projects including the Centre Pompidou Metz in France and his Aspen Art Museum is due to complete this summer.

The Where Architects Live exhibition in Milan focuses features a series of installations based on the domestic environments of nine eminent designers, based in eight different cities, including Ban, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and David Chipperfield.

Here’s a transcript of the conversation between Ban, Dezeen and other journalists at the Salone del Mobile:

Journalist: Do you work a lot on projects for refugees?

Shigeru Ban: Yes with natural disasters. Yes almost every year some disaster. Now I’m working in the Philippines after the big typhoon there last year.

Journalist: What are you doing there?

Shigeru Ban: Building temporary housing there.

Journalist: What can you advise to young architects?

Shigeru Ban: You know, I really recognise when I give lectures to many different places in the countries, when I was a student everyone was working for big developers to make big buildings. And now there are many students and younger architects who are asking to join my team, to open programs in disaster areas, it’s really changing. I’m really encouraged by all the young architects and students.

Marcus Fairs: Is that just in Japan that it’s changing?

Shigeru Ban: No, no, no everywhere. Everywhere I got to give lectures many students are interested in what I’m doing and they want to join me and my team, it’s really encouraging.

Marcus Fairs: So you think there’s a shift in the world of architecture maybe?

Shigeru Ban: I think so, I really think so.

Marcus Fairs: Towards helping people more?

Shigeru Ban: Maybe not shifting but [moving in] two directions. Because now cities are being made by developers, not architects, or not urban planners. They’re made by developers. So one way is this but many people are interested in working for society also.

Marcus Fairs: So there’s new opportunities for architects to be more human, to be more helpful?

Shigeru Ban: Yes because unfortunately there are so many natural disasters destroying the housing, destroying the buildings so there are many opportunities for us.

Marcus Fairs: And in Japan did the tsunami change the attitudes?

Shigeru Ban: Yes, over 500km of coastline was totally damaged. Now the recovery is quite slow because they have to reclaim the land higher to prevent the next tsunami. So also changing of zoning to put residential areas on top of the mountains, so it’s a very slow process. But it’s the first time, even in Japan, that they’re facing such a big problem.

Marcus Fairs: So are a lot of humanitarian architects working to solve the problem?

Shigeru Ban: Yes many architects are now working in that field, yes.

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says Shigeru Ban appeared first on Dezeen.

News: architect Daniel Libeskind has hit back at his critics, comparing his own work to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and saying that he doesn’t try to be liked, at the launch of an exhibition in Milan this week.

Speaking to Dezeen at the launch of Where Architects Live, a major installation of pavilions, photographs and films about the homes of starchitects, Libeskind said that it takes time for the public to appreciate greatness.

“When things are first shown they are difficult,” Libeskind told Dezeen. “If you read the reviews of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it was a failure, a horrible piece of music.”

“You have to give it time. Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine. It’s for the twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred years if it’s good; that’s sustainability.”

Asked if he was bothered by the high levels of criticism his recent work has received, Libeskind replied that he never reads his critics and said that he doesn’t try to be liked.

“It’s a democratic world, they can say whatever they want,” he said. “How can I read them? I have more important things to read.”

He also made reference to a passage from the Bible, adding “look at 6:26. “Woe be to the man who is liked by everyone”. So if you read the New Testament, don’t try to be liked by everyone and do what you believe in.”

Libeskind cemented his reputation as a major name with the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which opened in 2001, but in recent years has come under attack from critics of his angular style.

Speaking about Libeskind’s plans for the World Trade Centre rebuilding project in 2008, LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne said: “anyone looking for signs that Daniel Libeskind’s work might deepen profoundly over time, or shift in some surprising direction, has mostly been doing so in vain.”

British philosopher Roger Scruton accused Libeskind of being one of a group of architects who “have equipped themselves with a store of pretentious gobbledegook with which to explain their genius to those who are otherwise unable to perceive it,” in an article in the UK’s Times newspaper in 2011.

In 2012, novelist Will Self accused Libeskind of putting money before art in an outspoken attack on high profile architects reported in British architecture magazine BD.

And last year architecture critic Owen Hatherley said that Libeskind’s students’ union for London Metropolitan University “was one of the first instances where it became crystal clear that Libeskind’s formal repertoire of Caspar David Friedrich crashing and banging was not, actually, about war or the Holocaust.”

“All of its vaulting, aggressive gestures were designed to “put London Met on the map”, and to give an image of fearless modernity with, however, little of consequence to actually do,” wrote Hatherley in BD.

Libeskind added that critics will become less relevant as we enter a new era of change where “everyone can compose Beethoven’s Fifth”.

“We don’t live in the era of the old fashioned idea of masterpieces done by the masters,” he said. “Everybody isn’t powered to be creative and in a democratic society – it is freedom that creates the beauty, it’s not authorities. I think that is the era of change.”

Photograph is by Davide Pizzigoni.

Below is an edited transcript from our conversation with Libeskind at the opening of Where Architects Live:

Journalist: Why did you decide to show your house in this exhibition?

Daniel Libeskind: It’s very simple, I decided to show my house because a house is not really private. I have no secrets, so all the secrets are shown and of course my house is not just about just furniture and light.

You know the house is the most important space because that’s where people live. That’s where they go to sleep, that’s where they meet, that’s where they have their intimate moments. So there can be nothing more important than the domestic environment. The domestic environment is no longer seen as some mechanical functionalistic machine to live in, in my view, and it is something that has to do with the global memory with where we are, where we are coming from and where we are going.

Journalist: How is this changing?

Daniel Libeskind: First of all, the house changes with every look of a person, with every glance, with every shift of the eye, with every face, with every piece of light that comes through the house. The house doesn’t just change, the house is actually heavy. It’s difficult to change the physical but today with objects, with furniture, with interiors, with internet, with the world-wide-web, we can live actually elsewhere to where we are. We can be in New York and be living in Tokyo, we can be in Africa and live in Milano. So we are interconnected and this is the connection which created completely a new social idea of the what the world is, what the genius loci is and where we are located.

Marcus Fairs: Daniel, your work sometimes gets a lot of criticism. Do you pay any attention to the critics?

Daniel Libeskind: You know, if you read the New Testament, look at 6:26. “Woe be to the man who is liked by everyone”. So if you read the New Testament, there is a warning, don’t try to be liked by everyone and do what you believe in. And of course, when things are first shown they are difficult. You know, if you read the review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it was a failure, they thought it a horrible piece of music. You have to give it time. Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine. It’s for the next twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred years if it’s good; that’s sustainability. Sustainability is not just clever technologies. Having a house becomes part of something important.

Marcus Fairs: So do you compare your work to Beethoven’s Fifth then if people don’t understand how your buildings might be perceived in the future?

Daniel Libeskind: Hey, you know something? Today everyone can compose Beethoven’s Fifth. We don’t live in the era of the old fashioned idea of masterpieces done by the masters, everybody isn’t powered to be creative and in a democratic society, it is freedom that creates the beauty, it’s not authorities. I think that is the era of change. Everybody has the impetus to be an artist, to create their own house environment. To do something which is beautiful that is desirable by them and not just put to them through the market, through the power of systems, through ideology. I think we’re in a great Renaissance era of rediscovery and that human beings are at the centre, not technology.

Marcus Fairs: So you’re not bothered by your critics then?

Daniel Libeskind: Look I never read them. It’s a democratic world, people can say whatever they want.

Marcus Fairs: You never read them, did you say?

Daniel Libeskind: How can I read them? I have more important things to read.

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in their eyes too, says Daniel Libeskind appeared first on Dezeen.

News: the proliferation of computer renderings and prototypes on sites like Dezeen is making real products “look extremely boring,” according to Dutch designer Marcel Wanders.

Furniture brands are struggling to make their products appear interesting in comparison to online fantasies, said Wanders in an exclusive interview with Dezeen.

“You are so able to present every crazy idea as if it is reality, the whole universe of communication is so strong,” said Wanders. “But now it’s difficult for a company to be anywhere interesting in a world that is so dominated by prototypes and great and bright ideas.”

“The Dezeens of this world are extremely inspirational, but have no realistic dimension any more,” he added.

Wanders was speaking to Dezeen in Milan at the launch of the latest collection by Moooi, the furniture and lighting brand he co-founded in 2001 with Casper Vissers.

Moooi has grown rapidly by recruiting a roster of international designers to create unusual products that sit alongside new work by Wanders, who was one of a generation of Dutch creatives nurtured by conceptual design company Droog.

“It’s funny that in the 1990s Droog was doing all this wonderful work,” Wanders said. “It was interesting that we kind of invented something which I call today ‘virtual design’. We started making prototypes as if they were real, we communicated them in Milano as if you could buy them. That was at the same time a kind of communication being invented as a mass medium.”

Today, designers are able to get international attention for products that are not ready for market and in many cases don’t even exist as prototypes, Wanders said.

“Now I think it is so big, this virtual design, the prototypes are so important in the world of design and the alternative ideas are so important,” he said.

“Now you go on Dezeen and you go through the pages and you find a company like Cassina and oh my God, I mean it’s not even their fault, how could they be interesting between all these bright and virtual ideas which nobody is ever going to do? How could a chair or a lamp be interesting?”

“All that is realistic starts to look extremely boring in the world of all this inspirational stuff. It’s a really interesting problem that we’re going to face. It’s a bit difficult to be in such an exciting world because they to start to feel really boring.”

Moooi’s exhibition is open until 13 April at Via Savona 56 in Milan.

Marcel Wanders image is courtesy of DesignPress.

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companies says Marcel Wanders appeared first on Dezeen.

News: the fashion world “laughs at” industrial designers while Google Glass makes the wearer look like “a bit of an idiot”, according to designer Marc Newson (+ interview).

“Frankly speaking, the design industry is really pathetic in terms of how it approaches manufacturing and how it brings things to market,” Newson told Dezeen in an exclusive interview yesterday.

“I’m not talking about Apple, I’m talking about furniture designers and what happens during the Milan fair,” he said. “If they took note of the way that the fashion world brings things to market, with such extraordinary efficiency, they could learn an enormous amount.”

The Australian designer was speaking to Dezeen at the launch of his new eyewear range for glasses manufacturer Safilo, which debuts in Milan next month.

The range is his first foray into optical eyewear, which he says is the perfect demonstration of how fashion and design can work together.

“It is, in essence a perfect piece of industrial design, but at the same time it can’t help but be a piece of fashion,” said Newson.

“I’m not embarrassed or reluctant that it be perceived as a fashionable item because at the end of the day I’m a consumer. I’ve got to go out and feel happy about putting my hand in my pocket and spending money on this stuff. I don’t want to look like an idiot.”

The two worlds will come together with the development of wearable technologies, which Newson feels are “certainly the future”. But he is not a fan of the design of Google Glass, which he says makes the wearer look like “a bit of an idiot”.

“What Google have done thus far, I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing. It really looks pretty stupid,” he said. “It’s a little bit like that wonderful invention called the Segway. It’s such a fantastic piece of technology but you just look like a complete dick when you drive around on it.

“That’s precisely the moment when I think the fashion world laughs at the world of industrial design, justifiably.”

Despite this, the fashion industry could also learn a lot from industrial designers in terms of material technology and the application of techniques and processes according to Newson. He has previously turned his hand to fashion and accessory design with companies including G-Star RAW, Nike and various luxury watch brands.

“There’s an enormous territory that they both share, that they should both embrace, but there is this real trepidation on both sides to broach that ground,” he said.

Here is the edited transcript of the interview with Marc Newson and Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the project you’ve done with Safilo.

Marc Newson: I’ve just launched a range. Basically the collection revolves around one central design, one central look and I’ve chosen to take that design and really extrapolate that through a variety of techniques.

So for example, one set of frames is machined out of solid aluminium, another set of frames is made of a material called Optyl which is a proprietary type of synthetic plastic that Safilo use. Another frame is made of stainless steel sheets, very thin, pressed into the shape with a live hinge in the steel.

There’s another pair which are manufactured using a technique called UFO, which is a proprietary Safilo invention that dates back to the late 1960s. Safilo were the first company to make this kind of invisible frame and everyone does that now but this was done in the 1960s. It was basically a piece of spring steel wire which is wrapped around the lens, so we’ve reintroduced this old technique which Safilo invented.

Safilo is the largest manufacturer of optical eyewear in the world I believe, and they have a really rich history of manufacturing optical frames. And a very old company. And it’s also the 80th anniversary this year.

Marcus Fairs: I don’t really know Safilo as well as certain other eyewear brands, so is that part of the reason why they approached you?

Marc Newson: You’d know all of the brands that Safilo manufacture. Just about every major fashion brand’s eyewear is licensed.

Safilo started as its own manufacturer of eyewear. Primarily optical frames rather than sunglasses, but I think they now manufacture sunglasses for all the major fashion brands as well. Optical frames are really the core of the brand, it’s the heart of the business and it’s what the business started doing.

Everyone knows who Safilo is if you’re in the industry. It’s one of those names that’s synonymous with it.

Marcus Fairs: You’ve really pioneered in lots of territories that other designers have followed you into, like watches and clothing. So why have you held back on eyewear?

Marc Newson: Well, I’d never been approached and frankly it really wasn’t until I had to start wearing eyewear that I understood what an extraordinary necessity it is.

I hit fifty and a couple of years ago I started having to wear reading glasses. These are rapidly becoming an expensive part of my life, far more so than a watch. But in many ways it’s a really interesting object, a pair of glasses, because it straddles the borderline between fashion and industrial design. It treads a very fine line between the two.

Optical frames of course have a slightly more functional angle because you absolutely have to wear them, but more interestingly for me as a designer, they’re like a tool. I think it’s safe to say that men like tools in general but, as a designer, I’m particularly obsessed with tools and I’m obsessed with really good quality tools. It’s not until you’re really faced with the black and white necessity of having to use these things. These are not the black pair of sunglasses, these are not just fashion accessories that you just have to wear when the sun’s out. I really need these things to read.

Marcus Fairs: I know it’s boring to talk about the difference between the fashion world and the design world, but the crossover very rarely works. You’ve designed for G-Star RAW and some of those pieces have become really collectible but, in general, designers doing fashion doesn’t work. Do you think the idea of the tool is really key to that? That designers like designing useful things?

Marc Newson: I think there’s an enormous amount of prejudice on both sides really. I don’t think that fashion designers think industrial designers are very good at designing fashion and I don’t think that on the other hand a lot of industrial designers – or architects for that matter – think that fashion’s a particularly serious industry. I feel really sincerely that in order to be a good designer, we need to embrace all of these sorts of industries.

The world of industrial design has an enormous amount to learn from the fashion industry, in terms of how they do things. Frankly speaking, the design industry is really pathetic in terms of how it approaches manufacturing and how it brings things to market. I’m not talking about Apple, I’m talking about furniture design and what happens during the Milan fair. If they took note of the way that the fashion world works, the way fashion world brings things to market, with such extraordinary efficiency, they could learn an enormous amount.

On the other hand, I think that the fashion world could learn a lot from the world of industrial design in terms of material technology, in terms of certain techniques, in terms of certain processes. I do feel there’s an enormous territory that they both share, that they should both embrace, but I agree that there is this real trepidation on both sides to broach that ground.

Marcus Fairs: Is this something that you’re actively pursuing or have an answer to?

Marc Newson: I don’t know if I have an answer necessarily apart from the fact that this is a perfect example. This eyewear is a perfect example of something that crosses, that is necessarily between those two places. It is, in essence, a perfect piece of industrial design, but at the same time it can’t help but be a piece of fashion. Eyewear is fashion, whether you like it or not. And I want it to be fashion, I’m not embarrassed or reluctant that it be perceived as a fashionable item because at the end of the day I’m a consumer. I’ve got to go out and feel happy about putting my hand in my pocket and spending money on this stuff. I don’t want to look like an idiot.

Marcus Fairs: Finally, Google announced earlier this week that they’re doing a deal with eyewear companies to put Glass into fashion accessories. They’ve already done their own in-house stuff. Is that something that you’re interested in?

Marc Newson: Wearable technology is certainly the future, there’s no question about that. Whether or not it’s appropriate to put it in a pair of glasses, I’m not sure. There’s a real risk that you look like a bit of an idiot. What Google have done thus far, I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing. I think it really looks pretty stupid.

It’s a little bit like that wonderful invention called the Segway. It’s such a fantastic piece of technology but you just look like a complete dick when you drive around on it.

So that’s where the bridge to the world of fashion really doesn’t, or didn’t, work. That’s precisely the moment when I think the fashion world laughs at the world of industrial design, justifiably.

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says Marc Newson appeared first on Dezeen.