SCIENCE OF DESIGN

You may argue how reliable this scientific method is, but the results of it do look good.

Orlagh O’Brien, a British graphic designer with ambitions of an empirical positivist – very much in the philosophical tradition of his land – got together some 500 people to answer a few simple questions concerning their emotional experiences, such as anger, fear, sadness, joy, love (assuming for the sake of this democratic science that our emotions are not sporadic bundles of sensations, but are clearly delimited states – we do not experience, say, anger and love at the same time). The subjects were not supposed to be responding to a multiple-choice questionnaire; rather, they were expected to draw their answers with a pen on some sort of transparencies. Overlayed and placed on the light-box, these transparencies revealed, as one should always expect, some cumulative visual patterns. Where in the body do we – well, most of those 500 respondents – experience each of these emotions? Anger hits us in the head; fear punches us in the stomach; joy, sadness, and love scratch us around the chest. Do our emotions have direction? I shall not venture to interpret the results of this one. But looking at the aggregate representations, it appears that joy and love create a much greater mess on paper than the rest – they seem to be directionally more confused conditions with implication of schizophrenia, rather than paranoia.

Perhaps the most pertinent to design question involves the task of associating each of the emotions with colors. I’ll use the CMYK color system to pass the findings: Anger: 1,99,97,0; Joy: 4,0,93,0; Fear: 70,68,64,74; Sadness: 45,36,35,1; Love: 1,99,97,0…

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POLITICS OF DESIGN

The idea of sustainability in creative endeavors is nothing new, but it is just recently that this concept seems to have caught the wind globally and evolved to the status of an universal imperative. In it’s significance, this idea now eclipses all other concepts that have been grounding and driving theoretical speculations that usually fuel with meaning various artistic practices. In a sense, it has become the most pronounced and uncompromising political agenda for the arts broadly defined. In this light, it should simply be presupposed that sustainability is the major theme of the ongoing London Design Festival, an umbrella brand for a wide network of organizations and individuals ranging from museums and retailers, to educational institutions, creative businesses, magazines and individual designers. And this is precisely the case: sustainability. The list of participants who directly address the issue of sustainability in their works is impressive. Before it’s too late, here is a sample of them:

Liquid Projects is an exploration of creative enterprise in terms of its impact on the environment. The initiative seeks to provide innovative and inspiring solutions to the problems of recycling. With the help of invited glass artists and designers, Liquid Projects performs live glass blowing and casting, turning the waste bottles (around 5,000 empty glass bottles left from some social event) into a variety of valuable forms.

Trash Luxe brings together young designers endowed with acute imagination and thus able to see beauty in worthless objects and materials; and with practical skills to actually salvage unwanted goods turning them into luxurious pieces – furniture, lighting, tableware and other household items. This project has a distinct educational function: it induces reflection on what “valuable” is and critical thinking on the meaning of “luxury”.

EcoLabs: The Greening of Illustration and Design investigates the communicative potentiality of images. Image is a powerful medium and can serve as a vehicle to deliver complex messages to the non-expert minds. The central question is how illustration and graphic design can help in communicating the most pressing issues to the public – specifically those related to our ecological situation.

London Igloos concerns itself with the notion of locality that often figures in the account of sustainability. This notion implies design that utilizes materials found in the immediate proximity to the site. In other words, London design means creative utilization of elements found or produced in London. Thus, one meaning of sustainability is that the final product is quintessentially local in origin. What’s originally local to London? Newspapers. Tons of them. Therefore, it is the piles of old newspapers that are preferred as material source for designing sustainable things. As an aside to the story, I am wondering if a small fraction of that surplus newspaper pile can be converted by some genius into indigestible porridge. And then by means of local legislature and executive powers to force this sustainable diet on to all those polluting newspaper men and as a result to have them write less – to use less paper.

Picture: “Bridge” by Michael Cross. From londondesignfestival.com.

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JERONIMOS, 8: THE POINT OF ENTRY

How much of culture one can absorb in some three days or so? Very much! – provided, of course, one has a proper basis for it, a good start, a vantage point for a perspective.

After a brief exchange with a tourist information receptionist at the airport, I know I have it already in a sufficient measure – not by virtue of my natural intelligence, but due to an adequate hotel reservation. I have arrived in Lisbon – the place as inviting as utterly unknown to me – with no too humble a mission: to surrender myself to it’s spirit completely in order to capture it in full and, within my time-constrains, on the spot. And before I learn what it takes to get to my hotel, I am deducing from the receptionist’s triple-confident response that Belém is the right place to go. To actually get to the right place it takes me about ten minutes from the airport.

Jeronimos 8 stands for it’s own address – for the name of the street in the most attractive and residentially convenient part of the city. The name only sounds redundant; in fact, it’s hard to come up with a better and more suggestive logo for a hotel in the city of exuberant hospitality. Location speaks volumes here and I have to confess right away: I have never dwelled so close to the domain of the Almighty – that would have simply required of one taking monastic vows. Jeronimos 8 is one step away from the magnificent Jeronimos Monastery – if there is any distance at all, if the drive is not a part of the ensemble. Let’s face it in the topologically precise sense of the word: with its main façade extending more than three hundred meters, this gem of Gothic and Renaissance architecture encapsulates five centuries of history. The monastery was conceived on petition by King Manuel I in 1496 as the entrance to Lisbon. There are other entrances for sure, but none of them is so symbolic and ceremonial as this one. And this is my entrance to the city – intuitively or, perhaps, on some divine revelation facilitated by designhotelsTM, never mindlessly responsible for booking.

By certain stretch of imagination, Jeronimos 8 is a modern summation of the quondam functional calculus of Jeronimos 1. If Mosteiro dos Jerónimos was established as an institution on the account and with the aim of giving the travelers (then: seamen and navigators on their risky ways to discover new territories) spiritual consolation, Jeronimos 8 adds to the formula a concern with corporal comfort – the factor we can no longer simply bracket out these days… And why on earth would we? As a holistic construction and a design concept, Jeronimos 8 draws together elements of traditional architecture and the most progressive tendencies with an emphasis on pure materiality and technology. The building speaks native tongue with its architectural environment, while in its infrastructure boldly communicating with the future. It is both respectful of it’s aesthetic origins and self-assertive of its practical potentials. The dialogue with the surroundings is particularly manifest in the choice of materials and color scheme for the exterior, as well as in decoration of a lounge that is thematically focused on a light-box display that illuminates the stupendous beauty of the neighboring building; and that claims the entire width of the wall. This emphatic reference to a broader cultural context is by no way muted by the features addressing the needs and tastes of ultra-modern visitors – the internet, digital television, electronic security, conference facilities, minimalism of the room interior. Jeronimos 8 is a very new hotel in the very old city and it’s vigorous character is generative of a similar attitude on the part of the visitors with ambition to capture the spirit of the city in no roundabout way – and not exhaust themselves in the process.

Jeronimos 8 is a member of designhotels. To some, this affiliation says it all.

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JURGEN BEY, NETHERLANDS

Our consciousness is probably one of the most beautiful things we know. From the start of human kind, men are trying to understand the world around. Searching for reasons of our being and norms to guide our actions, we are trying to theorize things. Our very well developed brains make, that just taking care for the essentials like eating and breeding isn’t fulfilling anymore. The question was born and with the questions the answers had to come. The answers became stories, many stories that told us how to act and how to look and what to see. At the time that Plato lived the swing movement of a pendulum was explained as the struggle of a fish. The stone oscillating above the ground, wanted to get back to the ground. If it stopped swinging it was because it was tired. You could almost get angry why we kept on searching for other explanations. The images of the men-made world were found by the photographer Kjell Sandved in nature. He found them on the wings of butterflies. He made them visible by filters and photography. In this case it was the alphabet, but now you know that you can find everybody and every event in past and future as an image with a rough resolution. The world at random for the good spectator. The world around us can make us enthusiastic; the art is to see that.

Town-planning, architecture and landscape architecture are indissolubly connected to products and can be in symbiosis. The lamp has influenced architecture and the built home the products for the interior. The skyscraper could never exist without an elevator.

Studio Makkink & Bey designs for public spaces, interiors and applied art. Analyzing the contents, searching for the relation of the things and its users, design supporting a story and the things having an interaction with its users are starting points for the projects.

As a designer Jurgen Bey feels like an explorer travelling the world out of curiosity, or being sent on a mission, investigating, asking questions and making connections. To come back with stories. Stories told with design because that is his language.

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ART IN THE AGE OF PROFOUND MISCONCEPTION: ON AND OFF

If you were told that this sheet of paper crumpled into a ball is a piece of art and asked to come up with a title for it, what would that title be? Ok, it takes you a bit too long. Besides, your impact is no longer necessary – this paper ball has got its name already and it is in laconically precise correspondence with what it is: Sheet of Paper Crumpled into a Ball. Doesn’t this direct correspondence between a name and a thing strike us as peculiar? - as not an immediate nominative option, not a terminological strategy for art. Aren’t we a bit surprised when things are given their proper names? We live in the age of comfortable misconceptions and, what’s most remarkable about this age – we thrive on misconceptions. Take them away and we are feeling woozy, loosing balance, we are about to fall: the picture of the world is shattered by it’s own positive reality. What causes this whirling sensation is called Art. And Art is no longer derives from fantasy or idea; it is predicated on the banal matter of fact. Because that’s what’s missing in our metaphorized lives.

And so it goes: Martin Creed wins the prestigious Turner Prize (L20,000) from London’s Tate Britain and a spot in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection for “Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off”. Now you can safely deduce what is it about: the walls are bare, the gallery is empty, the lights switch on and off with 5-second intervals… triggering an energetic response from the audience and provoking even more intense reaction in the world of art criticism. It has lots of layers of conversation around it. As for Creed, he isn’t looking to disturb anyone with his work. He doest not think his work is provocative: “It’s just the lights going on and off. What’s provocative about that?” Seems like there is at least one person left on this planet who is still on good phenomenological terms with things themselves.

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DETERRITORIALIZE! (or simply click the links)

EL CROQUIS analyses and presents the work of the most outstanding architects on the international scene. Its new “136/137″ issue is dedicated to contemporary Spanish architecture. The keyword here is deterritorialization with an explicit reference to the (schizo)conceptology of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most important personalities in post-war French philosophy and a key figure in what is known as ‘postmodern’ thought. His influence as a thinker is particularly noticeable in present-day considerations of creativity – in theoretical adventures to find the conditions under which something new is produced. Deleuze’s writings are anything but transparent – for reasons that the philosopher would find more virtue in instability of formulations than in definitiveness of objectifications – and his concept of deterritorialization can hardly serve to clarify what “contemporary Spanish architecture” may in fact imply. Actually, many things: contemporary Spanish architecture is no longer contemporary? No longer Spanish? No longer architecture? Or whatever combination of the above? From what plane of spacial, temporal or logical permanency it gets “deterritorialized” and to where? So why not just look at it and see for yourself?

CASA LEVENE: LEVENE HOUSE Madrid, Spain, 2002/2006

Another link worth checking: Architecture Guide. Europe’s Modern Architecture organized, mapped and waiting to be discovered by you!

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CEDRIC DECROUX & YVES FIDALGO, SWITZERLAND

Showing an ecumenical approach to the inspirations and uses for design, Lausanne’s Fulguro consists of a duo, Cédric Decroux and Yves Fidalgo. In the six years since their graduation from art school, the two have participated in multiple museum expositions, as well as creating unique product lines and commercial graphic productions. Their work, including the award-winning “The Most Beautiful Swiss Books” exposition, has been featured in Frame, Wallpaper, and El Pais, among others, and a monograph of their work will appear this year from Pyramid Editions in Paris.

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SPRINGS OF SUSTAINABLE PLEASURE

If sustainable design means among other things re-thinking, re-using and using only friendly materials, designing to last, staying local, buying/selling ethical, and above all having fun, these three recent graduates, now incorporated and going by the name sixixis, would be the ones who actually do it for living. I am particularly impressed with the designs of their two products. One is Chaise Longue No. 4. It demonstrates the creative freedom, obtained through application of new steam bending technique to a piece of plywood – the method the guys must have acquired in the course of their studies at London School of Design. The result of their practical intelligence is this beautiful seat, which is not only pleasing to look at, but supposedly comfortable to sit in.

The other authentic gem is their bed, made from recycled materials including car suspension springs. The designers are kind enough to warn their potential customers against the consequential risks (almost deadly in effect) of purchasing the item for some £845.00: “This bed is such a pleasure to sleep on, there is a chance you will never be able to get off.”

I bet (who wouldn’t?) it’s those spings that are the key to the promised pleasure…

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MAKE ART, NOT ART: ART AS INDEFINITE COMMUNICATION

Art is often understood as a form of communication – it sends messages across, it tells something, it motivates some action. The problem with art in this definition is that it is always hard to say what this communication specifically communicates in each case. Without a specifying discourse often rendered along by art curators, it’s pragmatics is always unclear – even that of the most narrative type of art. In discursive isolation, art is extremely ambiguous, almost impenetrable communication – to a degree that we, the viewers, are in no position to adjudicate the most basic dilemma of whether art affirms or denies the object it takes upon itself to represent. In this sense, art is always a closed book. And maybe this is precisely how art earns itself a special name and assumes a special cultural value – through a secret contained in it’s infinite and mind-boggling equivocality.

Here is an example. A series of photographs published in the recent issue of Vogue Italia. The tag externally supplied by editors runs “Make Love, Not War”, but what is there in these photographs that secures this particular anti-war reading? Is this reading precludes a possibility for almost the opposite meaning: “Make War AND Love” or “Make War and THEREFORE Love”? Couldn’t be that the pragmatics of this particular art form is working the other way round effectively sexualizing the war? Now in the languid mood of dropping your weapons? For some it’s quite an arousing invitation to grab them…

more of the series found here. May not be suitable for minors.

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HIGH-EXPRESSIONISM’S COMEBACK

I’ve run across this photo on Flickr. This would be a perfect piece for a “what-is-this” quiz. I would fail on it.

Aside from the stylistic proximity to the top graphic theme of this blog, the space depicted below is deeply evocative of those early 20th century German films in the expressionist spirit of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, complete with wild, distorted set design. Not to torment you by riddles for too long, what you see is a new theatre/conference hall in the city of Lelystad, the Netherlands. Here, too, the architects have fully capitalized on subjective emotions of the viewers. This vivid, jarring, and dynamic application of formal elements warps all objective reality of the space. It is the kind of interior that – bracketing whatever is taking place on stage – is a live performance in its own right, a parallel drama. “The aim of our architecture is to intensify the gaze,” says Ben van Berkel, the chief architect. I think it’s also to multiply it…

Photo from Flickr: by Kwikzilver

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