Hasta La Ideas

German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic has created a series of futuristic scenarios as part of the largest solo exhibition of his work at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany (+ movie).

Grcic worked closely with curators at the Vitra Design Museum to create a series of installations that depict environments for future living based on his personal vision of design’s role in modern society.

“We consider Konstantin Grcic to be one of the most influential designers of our time – his approach and his aesthetic is probably the most advanced and radical,” Vitra Design Museum director Mateo Kries told Dezeen.

“He is at the peak of his career, but still he has never staged an exhibition that conveys the visual world, the themes and the narratives that inspire him. These were some of the reasons why we decided to work with him on a large solo exhibition,” Kries added.

The installations include a fictional home interior, design studio and urban environment featuring several of Grcis’s iconic designs, such as the Mayday lamp for Flos and Chair One for Magis.

The first of the installations, called Life Space, resembles a typical home featuring everyday objects including some of Grcic’s own designs, which are arranged on a raised platform.

The Work Space section presents some of Grcic’s products and prototypes on a long table in front of a wall clad in artificial rock that create the feel of a futuristic subterranean workshop.

A projection on the opposite wall displays scenes from a typical work day at Grcic’s Munich studio, including CAD models being manipulated, a 3D printer in action, and everyday objects or prototypes being inspected.

The third area, called Public Space, features a huge panoramic collage depicting aspects of contemporary urban and rural society alongside imagined futuristic architecture.

A chain-link fence separating the image from the rest of the space is intended to create the feeling of a safe environment in which visitors are encouraged to interact with examples of Grcic’s furniture.

The final section, Object Space, features a museum-style vitrine displaying a range of Grcic’s products alongside inspirational objects he has collected over the years.

In a video interview with the exhibition’s curators, Grcic spoke about the changes he has witnessed in the design industry throughout his career, including evolving attitudes towards mass production.

“Industry, meaning standardisation churning out many of the same products for everyone, is an old concept,” the designer suggested. “The beauty is that industry now produces diversity, variety and is able to customise a project but still on an industrial scale.”

He added that his own products are not always immediately accessible but that he believes design’s role is to produce challenging and divisive objects.

“I sometimes hear that it takes time for my products to be understood or liked,” he claimed. “I think it’s quite good or necessary for products to challenge an opinion because we don’t want to live in a bubble where everything is beautiful or comfortable. The power of an object that makes you think is something that I want to explore.”

Konstantin Grcic – Panorama is on show at the Vitra Design Museum until 14 September 2014. It was co-produced by the Z33 House for contemporary art in Hasselt, Belgium, where it will be presented early next year.

Photography is by Mark Niedermann, courtesy of the Vitra Design Museum.

Here’s some more information from the Vitra Design Museum:

Konstantin Grcic – Panorama
22.03.2014 – 14.09.2014
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

Konstantin Grcic is one of the most influential designers of our time. Serious and functional, unwieldy and occasionally disconcerting, his works combine an indus- trial aesthetic with experimental, artistic elements. Many of Grcic’s creations, such as Chair One (2004) or the Mayday lamp (1999), are widely acclaimed as design classics. With »Konstantin Grcic – Panorama«, the Vitra Design Museum is now presenting the largest solo exhibition on Grcic and his work to date.

Specifically for this exhibition, Grcic has developed several large-scale installations rendering his personal visions for life in the future: a home interior, a design studio and an urban environment. These spaces stage fictional scenarios confronting the viewer with the designer’s inspirations, chal- lenges and questions, as well as placing Grcic’s works in a greater social context. The highlight of these presentations is a 30-metre long panorama that depicts an architectural landscape of the future.

A fourth area of the exhibition takes a focused look at Grcic’s daily work. This section presents many of his finished objects, but also prototypes, drawings and background information along with artefacts that have inspired Grcic – from an old teapot and an early Apple computer to works by Marcel Duchamp, Gerrit Rietveld and Enzo Mari. In the shift of perspectives between larger and smaller scales, the exhibition demonstrates how design is more than mere problem solving for Grcic, but a highly complex process that integrates coincidences, ruptures, chance discoveries and a profound engagement with the visual culture of our time.

Konstantin Grcic (b. 1965) was initially influenced by the minimalist designs of Jasper Morrison under whom he began his career in the late 1980s. Soon he developed his own distinctive stylistic idiom and has become a driving force of formal and technical innovation within the international design scene. Today, Grcic works for many leading design companies, including Authentics, Flos, Magis, Vitra, ClassiCon, Plank, Krups and Muji. With his widely published designs, he often develops surprising solutions that avoid cliché and derive their radical aesthetic from Grcic’s intensive investigations of materials, technologies and production processes.

With Panorama, Grcic enters new territory. Never before has he so fundamentally reflected on his own work and so thoroughly disclosed his own understanding of design in general. The exhibition is based on an extensive analysis of current technological shifts, innovations and upheavals in contemporary design. It was developed over three years of close collaboration between Grcic, the Vitra Design Museum and Z33 –House for contemporary art in Hasselt, Belgium. The result is a striking presentation of narrative and visual intensity, situated on the cusp between present and future, reality and fiction.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 320-page catalogue that comprises a catalogue raisonné of Grcic’s work as well as essays by such authors as s Richard Sennett, Peter Sloterdijk, Paola Antonelli, Mario Carpo and others. In conjunction with the exhibition, Vitra Design Museum will organize a
wide-ranging event programme.

Konstantin Grcic – Panorama is an exhibition of the Vitra Design Museum and Z33 – House for contemporary art, Hasselt (Belgium). W.I.R.E. – Web for Interdisciplinary Research & Expertise at ETH Zurich was a major scientific collaborator. The exhibition will be shown at Z33 from 01.02. to 24.05.2015. Further exhibition venues will be announced in due course.

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This movie by Mexican film agency Nation tours the school of art, design and architecture that Japanese architect Tadao Ando completed last year at the University of Monterrey in Mexico.

The Centro Roberto Garza Sada, also known as the Gate of Creation, is a chunky concrete block designed by Tadao Ando with triangular slices across its two sides to create the appearance of a twisted structure.

Rectangular voids at each end expose stairwells and an open-air amphitheatre, while entrances are located beneath the shelter of the building’s raised underside.

The six-storey interior is organised so that each floor accommodates different departments, encompassing digital facilities, visual arts, textiles, photography, model-making and fashion. Overall, the building accommodates studios and teaching rooms for 300 students.

See more photographs of the Centro Roberto Garza Sada in an earlier story on Dezeen.

Photography is by Roberto Ortiz. Movie is by Nation.

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High street fashion chain American Apparel has launched a 43-piece collection of clothing featuring graphic prints by Memphis Group designer Nathalie Du Pasquier (+ movie).

The Nathalie Du Pasquier for American Apparel collection includes womenswear, menswear and accessories in minimalistic shapes covered in colourful, graphic prints.

Du Pasquier was a core member of the Milan-based Memphis Group that pioneered post-modern furniture and fabric design in the 1980s, but has since nurtured a career as an artist.

She was approached by American Apparel creative director Iris Alonzo who asked her to create prints similar to those she designed during the Memphis era.

“It was the first collaboration with a fashion company in many, many years actually because I am a painter,” Du Pasquier told the New York Times. “I have not done that kind of work in a long time.”

The collection marks a departure from American Apparel’s signature style of single-colour staples, with its womenswear often produced in skin tight stretch jersey.

Prints by Du Pasquier also feature in the Wrong for Hay collection launched last year, which is expanding due to popularity.

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Memphis Group’s Nathalie Du Pasquier appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is exploring ways of using the bio-luminescent qualities of jellyfish and mushrooms to create glow-in-the-dark trees that could replace street lights.

In this movie filmed at SXSW in Austin, Roosegaarde explains how: “In the last year I really became fond of biomimicry.”

“What can we learn from nature and apply to the built environment, to roads, to public spaces, to our urban landscape?” asks Roosegaarde.

Biomimicry is the method of imitating models and systems found in nature to solve complex design issues. One of the biological phenomena that fascinated Roosegaarde was how animals like jellyfish and fireflies generate their own light.

“When a jellyfish is deep, deep underwater it creates its own light,” he says. “It does not have a battery or a solar panel or an energy bill. It does it completely autonomously. What can we learn from that?”

Roosegaarde’s interest in biomimicry led him to collaborate with the State University of New York  and Alexander Krichevsky, whose technology firm Bioglow unveiled genetically modified glow-in-the-dark plants earlier this year.

Krichevsky creates the glowing plants by splicing DNA from luminescent marine bacteria to the chloroplast genome of a common houseplant, so the stem and leaves emit a faint light similar to that produced by fireflies and jellyfish.

Roosegaarde is now working on a proposal to use a collection of these plants for a large-scale installation designed to look like a light-emitting tree.

He had just taken delivery of one of the small Bioglow houseplants when he met up with Dezeen in Austin.

“This one was shipped to my hotel room and I’m really excited to have it in my hand,” he says, holding the small plastic box that contains the plant. “This is a very small version that we have produced. Right now we are teaming up with [the University of New York and Krichevsky] to create a really big one of them like a tree instead of street lighting.”

“I mean, come on, it will be incredibly fascinating to have these energy-neutral but at the same time incredibly poetic landscapes.”

Strict regulations around the use of genetically modified plants within the EU mean that Roosegaarde cannot use this material in his Netherlands studio. He had to travel to the US to receive the plant.

Distinct from Studio Roosegaarde’s work with Krichevsky is a second project exploring bio-luminescence, called Glowing Nature, which does not use genetically-modified material. The aim was to find a means of giving mature trees light-emitting properties without harming them, building on research into the properties of bio-luminescent mushrooms.

The proposal is to use a very fine coating of “biological paint” that when applied to trees allows them to glow at night. The coating charges during the day and at night can glow for up to eight hours. Trials using the material will start at the end of this year.

The music featured in the movie is a track by Zequals. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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street lighting” says Daan Roosegaarde appeared first on Dezeen.

Amongst the bustling 24-hour shopping district of South Korea‘s capital city, Zaha Hadid has completed a 38,000-square-metre cultural complex with a twinkling aluminium facade (+ movie).

Inaugurated on Friday, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) by Zaha Hadid Architects provides Seoul with a hub for art, design and technology, plus a landscaped park that serves as a much-needed green oasis, and a public plaza linking the two.

The building features a shapely facade made up of 45,000 aluminium panels of varying sizes and curvatures. This was achieved using advanced 3-dimensional digital construction services, making DDP the first public building in Korea to utilise the technology.

Described by the designers as “a field of pixilation and perforation patterns”, the backlit facade is speckled with minute perforations that allow the building to transform from a solid entity by day into an animated light show by night.

“The design integrates the park and plaza seamlessly as one, blurring the boundary between architecture and nature in a continuous, fluid landscape,” said Zaha Hadid Architects in a statement.

The complex is made up of eight storeys, of which four sit above ground level and four are set below the plaza. Facilities include exhibition galleries, convention and seminar rooms, a design museum, and a library and education centre.

Voids puncturing the surface of the park offer a look down into the spaces below, and also allow daylight to permeate the building.

The building opened on 21 March to mark the start of Korean Fashion Week, but is also hosting five art and design exhibitions, alongside a collection of Korean art from the Kansong Art Museum.

Photography is by Virgile Simon Bertrand. Movie is by Dan Chung.

Here’s the project description from Zaha Hadid Architects:

Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)

The DDP has been designed as a cultural hub at the centre of Dongdaemun, a historic district of Seoul that is now renowned for its 24-hour shopping and cafes. DDP is a place for people of all ages; a catalyst for the instigation and exchange of ideas and for new technologies and media to be explored. The variety of public spaces within DDP include Exhibition Halls, Convention Halls, Design Museum, Library, Lab and Archives, Children’s Education Centre, Media Centre, Seminar Rooms and Sky Lounge; enabling DDP to present the widest diversity of exhibitions and events that feed the cultural vitality of the city.

The DDP is an architectural landscape that revolves around the ancient city wall and cultural artefacts discovered during archaeological excavations preceding DDP’s construction. These historic features form the central element of DDP’s composition; linking the park, plaza and city together.

The design is the very specific result of how the context, local culture, programmatic requirements and innovative engineering come together – allowing the architecture, city and landscape to combine in both form and spatial experience – creating a whole new civic space for the city.

The DDP Park is a place for leisure, relaxation and refuge – a new green oasis within the busy urban surroundings of Dongdaemun. The design integrates the park and plaza seamlessly as one, blurring the boundary between architecture and nature in a continuous, fluid landscape. Voids in the park’s surface give visitors glimpses into the innovative world of design below, making the DDP an important link between the city’s contemporary culture, emerging nature and history.

The 30,000 square metre park reinterprets the spatial concepts of traditional Korean garden design: layering, horizontality, blurring the relationship between the interior and the exterior – with no single feature dominating the perspective. This approach is further informed by historic local painting traditions that depict grand visions of the ever-changing aspects of nature.

DDP encourages many contributions and innovations to feed into each other; engaging the community and allowing talents and ideas to flourish. In combination with the city’s exciting public cultural programs, DDP is an investment in the education and inspiration of future generations.

DDP’s design and construction sets many new standards of innovation. DDP is the first public project in Korea to implement advanced 3-dimensional digital construction services that ensure the highest quality and cost controls. These include 3-dimensional Building Information Modelling (BIM) for construction management and engineering coordination, enabling the design process to adapt with the evolving client brief and integrate all engineering requirements.

These innovations have enabled the team building DDP to control the construction with much greater precision than conventional processes and improve efficiencies. Implementing such construction technologies make DDP one of Korea’s most innovative and technological advanced constructions to date.

DDP opens to the public on 21 March 2014 by hosting Korean Fashion Week. DDP will also host five separate design and art exhibitions featuring works by modern designers as well as the prized collection of traditional Korean art of the Kansong Art Museum.

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opens in Seoul appeared first on Dezeen.