Hasta La Ideas

This third movie in our series of Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents features Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs talking to the second-prize winner of this year’s [D3] Contest young designers competition, Frankfurt designer Hanna Emelie Ernsting.

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Above: Moody Couch by Hanna Emelie Ernsting (see our earlier story).

In the video Ernsting describes how her couch design can be manipulated and formed as the user wishes and the creative environment she now seeks since graduating.

We’ll be publishing all 13 movies from Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents over the coming days. More details about the talks here.

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Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents: AKKA
Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents: Harry Thaler

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More on Hanna Emelie Ernsting’s design	Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents: Harry Thaler	Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents: AKKA

In this first movie in our series of Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs talks to Italian designer Harry Thaler, one of two joint winners of the [D3] Contest young designers competition at imm cologne earlier this year. 

Click on the symbol in the bottom right of the video player above to view the movie in full-screen HD.
Can’t see the movie? Click here.

In the movie Thaler talks about his upbringing in Italy, prototyping his chairs bent from a single piece of metal while studying at the Royal College of Art in London and trying to find a manufacturer for the resulting design.

Above: Pressed Chair by Harry Thaler (see our earlier story).

We’ll be publishing all 13 movies from Dezeentalks at [D3] Design Talents over the coming days. More details about the talks here.

See all our stories from Cologne 2011 »

Watch all our movies from Dezeentalks at Cologne 2010 »
Watch all our movies »

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More about Thaler’s design	OLA Table by AKKA	Moody Couch by Hanna Emelie Ernsting

Life among swine in our interview with the artist Miru Kim on the eve of her solo show

Photographer Miru Kim‘s newest exhibition “The Pig That Therefore I Am” opens next week at NYC’s Doosan Gallery. For her latest series, the Korean-born, New York-based artist juxtaposes her own nude body with those of about 300 pigs, exploring the spaces and similarities between humans and animals. Other themes take on the importance of touch in our development and understanding of the world—both the literal and metaphorical connective capabilities of skin—the evolution of pigs’ roles, and our relationship to them culturally, particularly since the Industrial Revolution.

By placing herself in their grunting midst, she also examines her existence as an artist—one who wishes to offer up her own skin for others to “see, hear and feel through art, music and poetry. I put my flayed skin on display in the form of a photo.”

Kim first came into the spotlight a few years ago with her Naked City Spleen series, which stunningly contrasted her nude figure with the grandness of urban ruins and industrial icons around the globe, such as atop New York’s Washington Bridge, inside the crumbling Detroit theater, in the catacombs in France and more.

Her latest series is, according to Kim, a return to her artistic roots. We had the chance to speak with Kim on the eve of her much-anticipated show.

How exactly was the new series born?

I’ve been interested in pigs since college when I was a premedical student—we had to dissect a fetal pig to learn about human anatomy. It came to me as a shock that pigs were so physically similar to humans. When I decided to go to art school instead of medical school, I started making paintings of animals, and I found photos of industrial hog farms. Until then I had no idea where most pork comes from. It came as a shock that these huge industrial farms are so hidden and forgotten from people’s daily lives while they are regularly ingesting these animal products.

Then I had an assignment in graduate school to make Photoshop montages, so I experimented with cutting out images of factory farm pigs and pasting them onto urban environments, especially subway tunnels. Then I thought, why not put a live figure instead of making fake images? That’s when I started photographing myself in tunnels and abandoned factories, which grew into Naked City Spleen. After this series was established, I decided to go back to pigs, and since I was originally a “stand-in” for an image of a pig, I decided to photograph myself and pigs.

Where exactly was the pig farm, and when did you shoot?

They were upstate New York and Iowa and Missouri. I cannot talk about exact locations because of political and legal reasons. I can say that it was close to impossible to get access to these places. This project really taught me first hand, ‘If you are really determined, everything is possible.’ It was that difficult. Even just getting the addresses of farms was difficult. I received letters from the department of agriculture in some states saying that I could be a threat to national security, and they could not disclose any information. The pork producer associations were very defensive as well. They did not respond well to my emails and letters and calls. After two months of constant requests, I finally got in touch with some farms and managed to shoot last year in the spring.

Describe your state of mind while shooting the series. Was it all as you expected?

Pig eyes are remarkable. I find them more human-like than domestic pets like cats and dogs. Eye contact with them was shocking and mysterious, because their looks … were so strange and yet so familiar. The absence of human language between the pig’s gaze and mine became almost insignificant when I spent hours in the pens naked. I started to distinguish some different grunts of theirs and feel their emotions on a very physical level because I had temporarily let my guard down as a civilized and rational human being.

There would always be two or three (or more) curious pigs in the group surrounding me, and they would sometimes bite very hard. No pig had the intention of hurting me however. I could tell because I’ve seen pigs fight and I know they could have killed me in seconds if they wanted to. When they were nibbling on me too much or biting too hard, I would turn to them and express my annoyance just like another pig would, and they shrink back. It was very surprising that a 300-pound animal with so much more strength then I would shrink back at my grunt and hand gestures. With some pigs I had face-to-face interactions that were very gentle. It was apparent that they could somehow read my emotions as well, because the calmer I was the gentler the pigs were.

Have you shown the pig farm owners the images?

They saw them in my camera. One farmer said that he doesn’t understand art these days and that someone he knew in art school started shooting photos of his own excrement in the toilet, which he thought was ridiculous. But on the other hand, he said, what I was doing had beauty in it and that he could understand some artistic value although he couldn’t tell exactly what it was.

The new series seems incredibly intimate, especially compared to the grandness of Naked City Spleen. How do you see yourself evolving as an artist?

This series is more about body and the philosophical idea of what it is to be human in relation to animals. In my previous series, the human figure represents a fictional character of a poetic narrative, so the figure is more prominent and singular. In the pig series, the human figure becomes immersed amongst other beings, and the performance aspect becomes even more important. “I” in the title “The Pig That Therefore I Am” not only represents “the artist,” but also the philosophical idea of the human being in a larger sense. For me, it’s very important to question the dualistic thinking that comes from Descartes’ infamous cogito ergo sum. I say that it’s not the thinking and reasoning that makes “I” exist. My body is full of life force, or qi, and I could feel the existence of myself more then ever when I lay next to these pigs and mingled with them with my skin.

With the new series, I’m tending more towards philosophical ideas and I feel that this is only the beginning in my artistic career. I want to do more performance work and experiment with other media like video, painting, and installation.

“The Pig That Therefore I Am” opens 24 March and runs through 23 April 2010 at the Doosan Gallery NYC.

See Mini’s LED-lit concept car’s dual-hinged doors and drawer trunk in our video

Making a good thing better is hard enough, but making a small thing smaller may be even trickier.
Mini invited us to see how they did both when yesterday in Milan they unveiled their new concept car Rocketman, a forward-thinking ride with features that suggest not just a future of more compact cars, but one that boldly uses materials, lighting and other features.

Lit entirely with LEDs, the all-glass roof (also embedded with LEDs) makes for a glittering look, accented by the carbon-fiber body, which also lends fuel-efficiency. Its diminutive size, measuring just over three meters and seating three, is geared for urban markets and, perhaps most impressively saves space with a sliding drawer-style trunk, that can be left open for toting snowboards or other bulky items. Hinged doors make squeezing into tight parking spaces easy and allow passengers to get in the reat seat without too much trouble.

We caught up with BMW design head Adrian van Hooydonk at dinner and learned all about the Rocketman’s spirit animal, his predictions for car design’s future and more.

Is there a danger of being too cute with Mini?

The lines are more crisp and taut on this concept, because we feel that a Mini should always be like a friend, let’s say. But if it becomes too cute, than maybe people will see it like a toy, a teddy bear. Of course we like to appeal to young customers, but Mini traditionally is a car that appealed to people of all ages, cross-gender and all around the world.

The elements in this car, we believe are elements that could do that: keep Mini exciting, interesting fun, endearing, but also something to be reckoned with, also serious. Almost like a British bulldog—a small dog, but people take it seriously.

What are the challenges of designing small?

On a big car, it’s easy to make things move, do a door opening or a trunk. On a small car, it’s much, much harder. But exactly what Mini stands for, right from the very beginning, is being clever in a small space. And this car is full of ideas for a small space. The way the trunk opens, the original Mini had that too. In a tight parking spot, if a car is parked behind your Mini, you can still open this trunk and put your stuff in. Or the side doors, they have a double hinge that allows you to open the door, even when there’s another car parked right next to you.

How much less room does the door need?

I would say one-third, if you have to put a number to it. The Mini has quite a long door, because it’s a four-seater but a two-door car. If you open it with one hinge, you hit the other door and then you have to sort of squeeze in. With the Rocketman, we solved both issues. You can crawl in the back because the door’s quite long, but you don’t have to squeeze in through a narrow opening because of the double hinge.

That’s actually why we called the car Rocketman. On the one hand, Rocketman sounds like a brave little guy—and Mini is that, a brave little guy. But this car to us is so full of ideas, that we thought it’s rocket science by Mini. That’s why we call it Rocketman.

How did you treat the interiors for this car?

Of course we are dealing with a small car, but as a designer you can do a lot to give the feeling or the sensation of more space. We did this in the Rocketman in the sense that there is no dashboard like we know it today.

The dashboard takes up a lot of space. In the old Mini there was only a steering wheel and one big dial, and that’s what we’ve done in this Rocketman as well. But the steering wheel and the big round center dial have grown together into a structure. And then the rest of the dashboard is gone, you don’t need it.

Continue reading…

The lighting is another feature which I believe can do a lot to create a very nice atmosphere, even in a small space. We’ve played with that a lot in the car, and we believe that the light or the light color in the future is going to play a bigger role in the whole color and material set up of the car. Right now the light is treated very separately from the materials that we use in the car, and in this concept we made it an integral part. We thought about it from the beginning, it could light up in red or blue or some other colors.

You could customize to your mood, which is something that Mini offers today. There’s just one or two LEDs in the Mini interiors today so you can change the color seamlessly from orange to blue. But in this car now, there’s big surfaces of light. And the roof of course is transparent which is another element that increases your sensation of spaciousness.

What other examples of industrial design inspired the car?

We’re constantly not just looking at other fields of design, like industrial design, furniture design or fashion design, we also have a part of our team—actually a large part of our team located in California—called Design Works. And this design consultancy, we do industrial design for other companies as well. We are actually in touch with other industries, like aircraft industry, or boating. We design airplane interiors or boats exteriors and interiors.

And you always learn, so as a designer you become more creative the more you work on different types of products, or design problems. LED light is something that is coming anyway, also in furniture, also in housing. It is simply very small, it uses less energy.

It led to a whole creative outburst, because now we can position these lights in places where in the past a lightbulb would have to go in and there wouldn’t be the space. Without LED we couldn’t have done this roof or the illumination of the door panels, or the tail lamps where the air can pass through. It wouldn’t be possible.

What about the headlights?

In the headlamps, the way we use LED is we would like to make the light in a way that is soft and homogenous. We don’t like to see the dots actually, because we think it’s a little bit too bright, a little bit too cold. And we want to have the light be somewhat soft and warm.

What are the features you think are most likely to go to market?

When you’ve just presented a concept car that’s meant to go very far in the future, then that’s probably the toughest question to ask. But, the lighting ideas for sure. I would say things like the hinges, or the way the trunk works. This would be possible to put in production.

Also a lot of the surface features, the design the ideas, the form ideas we’ve put in the car, both in the interior and the exterior. I can see a lot of potential in using those because that is not necessarily technically difficult. That’s just a matter of seeing how it was received—judging by tonight that was good but let’s see if the broader audience in Geneva sees the car.

And this was also deliberate. If people see this car as part of what could be Mini, then we have just broadened our palette. We’ve just given ourselves more room to play. Because Mini has such a strong history, such a strong heritage in one car. Of course everything gravitates towards this one original car. Does it look like that car or does it not? I think this concept car will help us widen the palette a little bit, which I think is necessary to develop the brand into the future.

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Novelist Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts on Harlem, gentrification and the power of unconscious style

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts’ debut novel “Harlem is Nowhere” finds the young author discovering herself in a foreign place that seems all too familiar. Pitts moved to Harlem after completing a Fulbright Scholarship in England, and lived in the upper Manhattan neighborhood for seven years. In that time she saw a neighborhood separated from the city within which it exists become bombarded by the outside and witnessed a community under siege. Taking her title from a Ralph Ellison essay, Pitts recounts her interactions with local historical and literary figures both real and imagined, creating a rich portrait of one of the most interesting and important cultural landmarks New York City has to offer. Cool Hunting sat down with the author to discuss her work and the neighborhood that inspired her novel.

As the first book in a trilogy, how does this lay a foundation for the series?

The book is imagined as the first part in a trilogy on African Americans in utopia, and the three parts are Harlem, Haiti and the Black Belt of the South. It’s interesting that you should ask whether it’s the foundation of that series, because you could argue that one of the other places that has a longer historical reach, which is the beginning of that idea is Haiti. Haiti was the first black republic, which is why it enters the list as the place it was first imagined where enslaved Africans could throw off their chains and create and imagine the republic. The whole history of Haiti flows from this original act, for which the people of Haiti were punished by the entire world.

Yet, in the book you talk about not going to Harlem to seek out history.

It’s hard to say yes or no. All of that history, all of those myths that I talk about were so much a part of my mind from having read all those books that I read about Harlem and the poets, the photographers—studying all of those pictures. Of course all of those stories and history were part of why I ended up there, but once I arrived there I was conscious not to be caught in some daze of nostalgia or uncritical celebration of, “Oh ,the Harlem Renaissance wasn’t it fabulous!” If I wasn’t in this rhapsody of celebration it was because I was conscious of balancing out the myth and the reality.

Is the culture of Harlem still rich in the way that you expected it?

I think it’s rich in ways I didn’t expect it. In simple everyday ways, just the way that people greet each other and look out for each other and a certain way of being a neighbor. I imagine in some neighborhood that’s the norm, but in Harlem it’s exemplified, that feeling of community in an urban setting. I think there’s a reason they call it the village of Harlem. For me there was an attempt to become a part of the place, not just to live there and sleep there, and in my attempt to become a part of the place I began to care about its future and what is going to happened to it.

What are your thoughts on the legacy of gentrification in the area?

It’s interesting, because what’s happening in Harlem is happening in a lot of other neighborhoods in New York. I remember reading—and it made me furious—a high-powered broker in the New York Times said, “they think they’re special up there why should they be different than any other neighborhood that will have retail shops and boxy condominiums?” To her obviously that’s a great thing. Why is it so different? Why is it so special? Not to discount what’s happening in other places, or to say it is not destructive in other places, because Harlem is alike other neighborhoods in New York in that way. Harlem is going through a rash of re-zonings under Mayor Bloomberg, more so than any other time period in its history, which is changing the landscape, and will change the face of the city for generations to come, period. Even if the current economic situation means you can’t see development in some places, the laws have been changed so that when the money comes back into Harlem and in other places, the band will play on.

What informs your part diary, part essay, part magical realism style?

Style is unconscious in many ways it is informed by everything I’ve ever read. I’ve certainly read a lot of Borges. One that comes to mind is W.G. Sebald, a German writer who died in 2001. He had that sense of is it fiction, is it non-fiction? Is it a diary, is it history? And of all of those things being able to co-exist on the page. When I first read his work when I was just out of college it was a huge relief and a door opening into all of those possibilities, to work across genres and to follow one’s own nose. I always say if it’s a first person narrative, it’s my eyes and my brain shifting through what I see and what I read and what I’ve heard about. What happened and what’s about to happen, and those things come through my eyes. But its not a first-person narrative in the way a memoir is. It’s more impressionistic where my personal experiences show up when they can throw light on a bigger question. In terms of storytelling, that’s the way my style is inspired.

“Harlem is Nowhere” sells online from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.