“A living room with a laboratory” is how Pavé defines itself. Located in Milan in the trendy area of Porta Venezia, this bakery and pastry shop represents a singular case of young entrepreneurship and quest for…
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Movie: in our second video interview with Konstantin Grcic in Milan, the industrial designer discusses the upsides and downsides of designing collections for multiple brands, rather than building relationships with a select few.
“I think the business model of design studios working for several companies, and companies working with many different designers, is quite unique [compared to other industries],” says Grcic, who unveiled new products for brands including Emeco, Flos, Magis and Mattiazzi in Milan this year.
“It has its advantages; it creates dynamism,which I think is positive. I’ve seen the negative side of it as well; because of the dynamics things change and a company that was great to work with for five years suddenly becomes less interesting.”
Grcic concedes that he would prefer to work with fewer companies and build long-term relationships with them.
“To be honest, I prefer working for only a very few companies and having a very steady relationship,” he says. “That’s how it was in the old days, especially in Italy. The great masters each had a few companies that they worked for, almost for a lifetime, and that’s what produced the really great work.”
However, Grcic says that is still possible to work with a company on a short-term basis and produce good work.
“I think some companies, for sure, hire designers for marketing reasons, for having their names in the catalogue,” he says. “But there are other companies – and those are the interesting companies – that are looking for designers as partners for realising certain projects.”
He continues: “It’s interesting that a company like Magis, for example, somehow succeeds in bringing together very different designers on very different projects. If it works, it’s actually quite fascinating. It creates an interesting tension and energy.”
Similarly, Grcic says that a long-standing relationship with a company doesn’t guarantee good design.
“There are companies that only work with very few designers and it can show that the continuity creates better work,” he says. “But it can also end in repetition and a kind of dead-end street.”
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marketing reasons” – Konstantin Grcic appeared first on Dezeen.
Movie: Designer Konstantin Grcic tells Dezeen that American furniture company Emeco had to industrialise its production methods to produce his new Parrish chair in this video interview filmed in Milan.
Grcic originally designed the Parrish chair as part of a range of furniture for Herzog & de Meuron’s barn-like Parrish Art Museum on Long Island, completed in 2012.
The chair was launched by American furniture company Emeco as a commercial product at Milan earlier this year.
In the movie, Grcic explains that he approached Emeco to produce the chair because of its experience of working in aluminium, most famously with the iconic Navy Chair, which Emeco has produced since 1944.
“I felt we needed a company to support the development of the project,” says Grcic.
“Emeco stands for chairs in aluminium and aluminium was the perfect material for the chair that we had in mind because the [Parrish Art Museum] is very open [to the elements].”
Unlike the Navy Chair, in which each piece is welded together by hand, the legs, armrests and backrest of the Parrish chair are all locked together by a single joint under the seat.
“Everything is mechanically joined to a central core, a piece of die-cast aluminium, which is really the heart of the chair,” Grcic explains.
“So we have one moulded piece that solves all of the structure of the chair and the seat is exchangeable. You can have an upholstered seat, a plastic seat or a wooden seat.”
Grcic says that he deliberately wanted to move Emeco away from the time-intensive production methods involved in producing the Navy Chair.
“I felt we should actually change the way [Emeco] makes chairs,” he says. “Industrialise it, simplify it, eliminate all the dirty work, all the hand labour. That’s what really informed the concept of the chair.”
He concludes: “Emeco will always produce the Navy Chair in the way they produce it, but I think now we’ve established another form of production inside their company.”
See all our stories about Konstantin Grcic »
See all our stories about Emeco »
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makes chairs” – Konstantin Grcic appeared first on Dezeen.
Movie: in our second video interview with Job Smeets of Studio Job, the artist discusses the recent economic crisis but claims that, unlike many in the “design art” world, his studio’s work has not been negatively affected by it.
“I sometimes talk with young designers who are starting their careers; I would not like to be in their shoes,”says Smeets, who was speaking at Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome exhibition in Milan.
“Having said that, when I started Studio Job, I didn’t care a thing about the economy. I was involved in trying to make a statement in design or art.”
He continues: “But being in a crisis when you’re already ten years old is quite exciting. We had the big advantage of not having to slow down our business. There is still a lot of interest in our pieces.”
Studio Job has been at the forefront of the “design art” world, where limited edition and one-off design pieces are sold to collectors as pieces of art, for over ten years. Smeets says that the marketplace has become much less crowded since the crisis.
“A lot of our colleagues in the art or design business have disappeared,” he explains. “They came up very quickly because they saw there was a market and they went away very quickly because they saw there wasn’t a market anymore. But Studio Job already had a body of work by then.”
Being a small company with a worldwide reputation helped Studio Job steer through the crisis and take advantage of emerging markets in the east, Smeets claims.
“The market changed because, all of a sudden, the USA wasn’t the biggest market anymore. But we are a very small ship; we are lean and mean. A completely new market appeared in the Middle East, in Asian countries and in Russia.”
He concludes: “I don’t think our work changed [because of the economy], so that’s good.”
All the designs featured in the movie are by Studio Job. Photography by R. Kot, D. Stier, L. Blonk, A. Blommers / N. Schumm, A. Meewis, Moooi, Lensvelt.
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is quite exciting” – Job Smeets appeared first on Dezeen.
Studio Job founder Job Smeets looks back over his career to date and explains why sculpture is so important to his studio’s work in this movie Dezeen filmed at Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome exhibition in Milan.
“When we started [Studio Job], it was very simple: we wanted creative freedom,” Smeets says.
“The only way to reach creative freedom was to design sculptures, because when you do a sculpture, each sculpture can be a unique piece. That’s perfect. Not for economical reasons, but it’s perfect for creation because every time you can start to design a new piece.”
Smeets continues: “We started to sculpt pieces and cast them in bronze. As with plastic, with bronze you can make any shape you like. Plastic is for the industry and bronze is for the art world, but I thought: ‘let’s turn that issue into something beautiful and introduce sculpture into design’.”
Studio Job’s work straddles both the art and design worlds, but Smeets says he does not distinguish between the two.
“I really don’t care,” he says. “When you are trying to separate art from design, you are creating a ghetto, which is always a bad thing. Let’s not have borders in creation.”
Studio Job has designed collections for Moooi since its range of paper furniture launched in 2007.
“The first thing you learn in Kindergarten is to work with paper,” Smeets says of the collection. “So it’s a very authentic approach.”
Subsequent collections include a gothic chair made from plastic and a series of hand-painted furniture inspired by antique German designs, while Studio Job’s latest pieces for Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome collection include lamps shaped like upturned buckets.
“Now we’re sitting here in a total design environment, we have 35 or 40 products we did for Moooi on show here,” Smeets says. “I’m a happy artist and a happy designer.”
However, Smeets believes that the influence of sculpture is still apparent in these industrial pieces.
“In a way, the Moooi pieces are becoming a little bit more sculptural,” he says. “If you look at the bucket lamp series, for instance, it’s a mixture of wood, of paper, of brass. It’s quite interesting.”
He continues. “[Today], we are allowed to do s*** like that. Five years ago, if I came up with a bucket upside down on a wooden pedestal they would say, ‘do it on your own, don’t do it here’.”
“I think that has to do with trust. We are getting old and people tend to trust you when you’re over forty, no?”
All the designs featured in the movie are by Studio Job. Photography by J.B. Mondino, R. Kot, K. Vrancken, A. Meewis, Groninger Museum, Moooi, Z33.
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you create a ghetto” – Job Smeets appeared first on Dezeen.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: San Francisco designer Yves Behar, who recently launched a keyless lock controlled by a smartphone, discusses his vision for how technology can be successfully integrated into the home in this movie filmed in Milan.
Speaking at our Dezeen and MINI World Tour Studio at the MINI Paceman Garage during Milan design week, Behar says that design for the home has been slow to embrace technology.
“What we see here [in Milan] from the Italian manufacturers is very safe,” he explains. “On the other hand, you have a world of technology that’s very dynamic. What I’m missing is for those two worlds to come together more.”
“It’s not about putting a speaker in a chair, or putting a TV in a bed. That’s not how technology and the home intersect. For me, it’s about sensors, about the home knowing where you are.”
In May this year, shortly after we filmed this interview, Behar launched a new company and product called August Smart Lock, which replaces physical keys with a smartphone app and opens automatically as you approach the door.
“Cars have been like this for years,” Behar says in the movie. “Keyless entry in a car is something that we’re used to. Somehow, the home has been very resistant to this. Some of it has to do with security, but today we know that technology, when things are invisible, is actually safer than physical artefacts.”
Looking to the future, Behar believes that wearable technologies, such as the Up wristband he designed for San Fransisco company Jawbone, provide an exciting opportunity for integrating technology into the home.
“The next step for me with the Up is how it talks with the rest of the home,” he says. “It’s an object that can tell the home where I am and what I’m doing. Am I tired from a long day so the lighting should be really mellow and calm, or do I need to be energised so the ambience is going to be rocking? Am I about to get home, so maybe the temperature should go up?”
He concludes: “There are all kinds of new intuitive ways that these technologies that we’re wearing can interface with the technologies in our home. For reasons of efficiency, but also for having a home that responds to you in ways that are going to be magical.”
See all our stories about Milan 2013.
The music featured is a track called Divisive by We Have Band, a UK-based electronic act who played at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan on Friday. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.
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where you are” – Yves Behar appeared first on Dezeen.
In our second movie with Tom Dixon filmed earlier this year in Milan, the British designer discusses his foray into fashion design and says that his capsule collection for sports brand Adidas is based on the idea of creating a personal survival kit for Milan design week.
“I’m doing a collaboration with Adidas,” says Dixon in the movie. “So I am now no longer a lighting designer, I am a fashion designer, okay?”
“That’s been a fascinating experience of diving into a much bigger infrastructure and going in there with a very naive view but also a very different view on sportswear.”
He adds: “It’s been a riot working in this completely new playground of a different typology of goods, in which I can use some of the same ideas but in a completely new world.”
Dixon’s collection, which was on display amongst the steam trains at Milan’s Museum of Science and Technology as part of MOST, includes underwear, trousers, shirts, shoes and waterproof jackets that fold easily and can be packed efficiently. Dixon also designed a coat that doubles up as a sleeping bag.
“Adidas started off with a bag and then I thought, I’m not just going to do a bag, I’m going to fill that bag with everything that I need for Milan,” Dixon explains.
“So I started thinking about my personal problems. I always forget to pack the right number of pants or socks, or I forget that there’s going to be a volcano and I’ll get trapped in Milan and so I’ll need a sleeping bag [a reference to the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland, which suspended air travel for weeks].”
He concludes: “All of those adventures I had in Milan went into that collection. It’s as much as I can fit into a carry-on bag on a low-cost airline, with everything that I need for a week away.”
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I am a fashion designer” – Tom Dixon appeared first on Dezeen.
British designer Tom Dixon discusses how the digitalisation of manufacturing processes is enabling young designers to take production into their own hands in this movie Dezeen filmed at MOST in Milan.
Set against a backdrop of planes, trains and submarines, Dixon has hosted his MOST show at the Museum of Science and Technology during Milan design week for the last two years.
“What you’ll see around the museum is people just getting on and producing their own things,” Dixon says of this year’s exhibition.
“Last year we used a big punch press with a German company called Trumpf to make something here in the museum,” Dixon says. “The net result of that are some big lamps that we’re now going to be making in New York for a client and the one that we’re showing here was made in London.”
Called Punch Ball, the lamps can be customised and ordered via Tom Dixon Bespoke and are produced to order locally.
“We’re deconstructing the manufacturing process,” Dixon claims. “I think for a long time people thought all goods were going to be produced a long way away in low-cost labour countries and shipped in huge quantities to the rich west, but that whole equation has completely changed.”
Dixon says that now smaller companies are also able to produce their own products due to advances in digital fabrication technologies.
“The product world has been quite slow to be part of the digital revolution, but obviously people are getting more and more able to bypass the normal structures for producing and selling their work,” he says.
“I think a couple of years back, people would have been waiting for a big producer to spot their prototypes and put them into production. People have given up hope of that happening, but of course with the new technologies you’re able to produce the stuff yourself digitally, do the logistics through various structures and then get direct to the global consumer.”
Dixon cites online retailer Fab.com, which had a stand at this year’s MOST, as an example of how designers today are able to sell their products all over the world, without having to rely on the infrastructure of a large manufacturer or distributer.
“People are being approached by [Fab.com] to sell their things online to an audience of something like 13 million internationally, which means that a young, untested designer can suddenly have access to this vast marketplace,” he says.
“Designers from all over the world are making all over the world and selling all over the world, which is a significant move from what Milan used to be.”
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spotted by a big producer” – Tom Dixon appeared first on Dezeen.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: with four cities down and four to go, we’re halfway through our Dezeen and MINI World Tour. Before our next stop at London Design Festival in September, here are some movie highlights from our trips to Cape Town, Milan, New York and Berlin.
We kicked off our Dezeen and MINI World Tour at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town, where we talked to leading figures in the design world who were speaking at the conference, as well as Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo.
Naidoo reflected on what Africa’s burgeoning economy means for design on the continent (above), before taking us on a tour of the upcoming district of Woodstock, a former industrial suburb where many of Cape Town’s designers have moved in recent years.
Architect David Adjaye told us why he believes there is a great opportunity for architects in Africa (above), Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde talked about the clothes he is designing that become transparent when you lie and Ben Terrett, head of design at the UK’s Government Digital Service, explained the ideas behind the design for the new gov.uk website, which later went on to be named Design of the Year 2013.
Read our round-up of this year’s Design Indaba conference »
Watch all our movies from Cape Town »
In April we headed to Milan for the design world’s biggest and most important design fair.
Italian architect Fabio Novembre welcomed us to the city (above) and then took us to some of his favourite areas, including a converted farm near the city centre and the San Siro football stadium.
Designers including Tom Dixon and Marcel Wanders discussed the continued importance of Milan to the design world, despite Italy’s political and economic difficulties, as well as the growing phenomenon of other companies using the event to copy their products (below).
We interviewed a host of top designers including Ron Arad and Naoto Fukasawa about their latest products and spoke to leading design journalists at our dedicated Dezeen and MINI World Tour Studio.
Joseph Grima, former editor of Domus magazine, reflected on the difficult period the city is currently going through, design journalist Kieran Long compared Italy’s current generation of designers to the great masters and Johanna Agerman Ross, editor-in-chief of Disegno magazine, discussed the renewed focus on commerce at this year’s fair.
Watch all our movies from Milan »
Next up was New York for the USA’s leading design week, which this year relaunched itself as NYCxDesign.
Willy Wong, chief creative officer for the city’s marketing and tourism agency, told us how the city is hoping the new festival will help boost its design sector (above).
New York designer Stephen Burks gave us a tour of the west side of town, where he lives and works, before taking us to see the High Line and the new buildings by major international architects including Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano that are springing up next to it (above).
In addition, design journalist Monica Khemsurov took us to all the key exhibitions around the Noho Design District.
Watch all our movies from New York »
The German capital was our most recent destination. We checked out DMY International Design Festival Berlin, where graduates and young brands from over 30 countries presented work in the hangars of the former Tempelhof airport.
DMY Berlin founder Joerg Suermann gave us a tour of this year’s show (above) as well as taking us to some of his favourite spots in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood where he lives.
Watch all our movies from Berlin »
About Dezeen and MINI World Tour:
Dezeen and MINI are travelling the world together this year, visiting eight cities to discover the most exciting new talents, the hottest trends and the most important themes in architecture and design in 2013.
Our Dezeen and MINI World Tour will take in a selection of the best international fairs, conferences and festivals, where we’ll be conducting interviews, making videos and reporting on the most interesting developments.
For the second half of the tour we’ll be heading to London for the London Design Festival from 14-22 September, Singapore for the World Architecture Festival and the INSIDE festival from 2-4 October, Eindhoven for Dutch Design Week from 19-27 October and then Miami for Design Miami at the end of the year from 4-8 December.
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pit stop appeared first on Dezeen.
Le travail cartographique de l’artiste autodidacte torontois Jazzberry Blue est impressionnant. À la limite de l’abstraction, les grandes métropoles comme Paris, New York ou Londres, sont représentées autour des axes qui les composent et les structurent : rues ou fleuves. Une façon originale de redécouvrir ces villes.
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.
