DESIGN SNIPPETS
Design Indaba 2008: Create a better world
Design Indaba Conference
Leading creative thinkers will converge at the Design Indaba Conference from Wednesday 27 February to Friday 29 February, 2008. Expect the likes of Paul D Miller – aka DJ Spooky the Subliminal Kid – who revives the world’s musical heritage through modern reinventions, and Ilse Crawford, founding editor of Elle Decoration, who is an active proponent of emotional design for modern living.
Also seeking to imbue meaning through design, Maxim Velcovsky is leading the Czech design revolution with ironic takes on the country’s historic socialism in the face of commercial modernism. Toshiyuki Kita also derives inspiration from his native Japanese culture for his Western designs, while Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien in turn celebrate global diversity by marrying together Indian and European design.
Two leaders in design for technology are also expected. Although widely recognised for his industrial design feats, Tucker Viemeister has brought new meaning to the term “multi-media” through his inclusive approach that aims to extend internet and interface across all platforms. Bill Moggridge is also a trained industrial designer but, as the founder of IDEO, pioneered the integration of user interface design into product development. He also designed the world’s first laptop computer in 1979.
While user interface design was forged in the technology sphere, it is the same awareness of psychology and human interaction that informs Dutch designer Marije Vogelzang, who addresses social interaction and unhealthy eating habits by recontextualising the rituals surrounding food.
From the graphic design hall of fame, Ivan Chermayeff has created some of the world’s most recognised corporate identities (Mobil, NBC and Chase Manhattan Bank, among others), while Gert Dunbar is renowned for his disaster pictograms and creating accessible identities for civic institutions.
Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker from New York design firm karlssonwilker inc will present a bespoke presentation on South Africa, based on a real-time design project that entails the pair travelling across the country for two weeks. Topical in light of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, the project will attempt to gauge the world’s view of South Africa.
Look out for the full speaker programme announcement closer to the time.
Design Indaba Expo
For the fifth time, the Design Indaba Expo will offer a curated commercial platform for South African designers to showcase local goods and services. Based on the success of the 2007 event, which played host to more than 20 000 visitors, the 2008 event has been extended for an extra day, running from Saturday 23 February to Tuesday 26 February, 2008. The Expo will also be even bigger than before, with more floor space, a host of new exhibitors and a brand-new dedicated fashion arena with day-long shows and movie festivals.
Specialist Indabas
Due to demand from delegates and the public to attend the Specialist Indabas, these will run parallel to the Expo on Monday 25 February and Tuesday 26 February. These two-hour architecture, fashion and jewellery events feature local and international designers debating the contribution of these creative sectors to the creative economy.
More info: www.designindaba.com
Shoe-wow!
Spanish shoe designer Laura Villasenin has incorporated Peet Pienaar’s graphic finesse and quirky slogans in her new range of shoes and bags.
Having long wanted to make a range of eco-friendly, fair-trade shoes that did not conform to the ethnic or hippy cliché, Villasenin was inspired by Pienaar’s work, which she came across while on holiday in South Africa. After communicating over e-mail, they agreed that Pienaar would do the graphic details and packaging for Villasenin’s shoes, in return for which, Villasenin would assist Pienaar in designing sneakers.
Based on her ecological ideals, Villasenin decided to explore the South African manufacturing alternatives too. “The idea was to source materials from within southern African countries and use vegetable tan leathers to make it as eco-friendly as possible,” she explained. For the handbags, however, she used the much-lauded Ugandan bark cloth. The multifunctional aspects of her designs – knee-high boots zipping down into anklets and large handbags folding into purses – also adhere to green design principles.
“This is a high-end product rather than being mass-produced because you can’t compete with China on that anyway. In Spain and Italy, they’ve already positioned themselves in terms of high quality,” said Villasenin who previously worked at ethical footwear label Terra Plana in London. After completing the project with Pienaar, she returned to Spain to take up a position with Camper.
Pienaar was thrilled to try a hand at footwear design. His limited-edition leather sneakers sport a unique lace-up structure with gold alphabet beads. He also has an experimental distribution plan, which entails an inflatable shop that will travel around the country.
“It’s so exciting to think that one can actually design sneakers because one tends to think that they only do it in China. But unless you’ve studied shoe design, there’s a big gap because you can’t communicate with the factory. Even if you know what you want, unless you have the terminology it’s impossible to get there with the factory,” said Pienaar.
Product developer Amanda Youngleson uses design to “overcome the whole development context of bad tools, poor skills, limited markets and deep poverty”. Her recent project in Ilha da Mozambique saw her applying 10 years of experience under genuinely trying circumstances.
Ilha da Mozambique is a Northern island joined to the mainland by a 3km bridge. Originally the Portuguese capital of Mozambique, in the 1960s after independence, it was ruled that no Portuguese could have second houses and the old town was nationalised. Since then, the island has fallen into decay with many of the houses literally taken over by wild fig trees.
“Anyone who goes there will fall in love with it because it’s this romantic time capsule of history, but at the same time a melancholic experience because it’s falling down,” explains Youngleson.
According to Youngleson, the 16 000 inhabitants subsist off the sea and there is little to no economy of any sort. In response to the environmental threat that this unsustainable community poses to the coastal resources, Mozambique development agency Cedarte commissioned Youngleson to initiate a community project that could generate an alternative source of income.
“For a lot of impoverished people craft is a way of getting into the economy. You don’t need to have too much and you can buy and sell in quite an unsophisticated way. In fact, a Cape Craft and Development Institute survey shows that it is a billion-rand industry but it is not very visible. Nonetheless, it makes a massive difference to household income, even if it just brings in R700 a month,” says Youngleson, who used to run the product development clinic at the CCDI.
Despite the limitations presented by pitiable sewing skills, an unreliable charcoal iron, foot-pedalled sewing machines, rusty pins and scissors so blunt that a brick had to be used to cut the material, Youngleson developed a fashion range made from the local kapulana fabric. Catering for the limitations, the garments were designed to be unisex, one-size-fits-all, wrap-around garments without zips or buttons. A patchwork bag was also designed to ensure that no material was wasted.
The collection was presented at a fashion fair in Maputo where it was enthusiastically received. Trained to maintain the project without Youngleson’s supervision, the crafters are expected to establish a unique tourist attraction and market.
More info: toamanda@iafrica.com
Monument to the now
The OpenThinkBox: TimePod 2007 design competition captured the imagination of architects around the world, with professionals and students creating timepods about the essence of life in South Africa in 2007. Entrants had to design a structure; fill it with memorabilia, artefacts and other media that would give future generations a glimpse of modern-day South African life; identify sites for their projects; and use their timepods to communicate a cultural or social message.
Many entrants grappled with the weightier issues of contemporary South African life. “While we wanted to elicit very personal entries, we had also hoped to receive some fun concepts,” says Johannesburg architect and competition judge, Henning Rasmuss. “On the whole, though, they were quite serious, which must be a sign of the times in which we live.”
Cecilia Steinberg walked off with top honours in the professional category for her cube-shaped, mobile climbing wall, which doubles as an art installation. A small crack running from a life-size mugging scene etched into an exterior wall splits the cube open to create a cave. Contemporary iconic images, brand names and messages are etched into its cave walls to create a tactile storyboard as well as serve as handholds for the climbing wall. Hidden video equipment and lights embedded into the walls replay songs, news, recordings and interviews from 2007.
1 000 lights make green work
Tom Dixon launched the London Design Festival at Trafalgar Square with an installation of 500 energy-saving lights powered by a renewable energy source. Inspired by the shape of a light bulb, Dixon specifically designed Blow as an opaque white lamp for low-energy compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
“Low-energy bulbs suffer from an image problem, where it is commonly thought that they make an unattractive light. What better way to change this perception than to make an event that allows Londoners to witness a massive installation of 500 lamps allowing everybody to take a part of it home to illuminate their lives, while using 80 percent less energy than they would previously have used,” said Dixon.
At the end of the three-day installation, 1 000 Blow lamps were given away to Londoners on a first-come, first-served basis in collaboration with the Energy Saving Trust and Glowb low energy light bulbs. Glowb also gave away 1 000 CFLs on each day of the installation. According to the Energy Saving Trust, the 3 500 Glowb bulbs that were used as part of this installation and giveaway will save 754 tonnes of CO2 in their collective lives. This is the equivalent of filling 150 hot air balloons or 4 300 double decker.
The bobo movement
Following the success of their first design event in February, whatiftheworld staged Number Two in their new Woodstock gallery space in October. The Woodstock gallery is whatiftheworld’s third gallery and what with the popular Saturday Neighbourhood Goods Market on their books too, they might soon be considered a brand. Judging by the hordes of bobos (bourgeoisie bohemians) in attendance, they can certainly no longer be called “emerging”.
Number Two featured a product showcase and a fashion show from independent designers. Conceptual and readymade wit acted as aesthetic glue among the four designers included in the product showcase. Liam Mooney showed a Mechano-inspired collection built up of off-the-shelf components, while Xandre Kriel also tapped into a DIY-approach with his modular collection. Adriaan Hugo showed off his typically angular pieces, but diversified from his black palette to incorporate blue and yellow. Lyall Sprong continued his exploration into specular reflections and also brought a tone of old-school Dada to his work.
On the fashion front, Petro Steyn’s White Noise and Richard de Jager’s Pwhoa reasserted the case for avant garde fashion in South Africa. Steyn’s collection, Zonkey (something between a zebra and a donkey), used neoprene offcuts to create bodysuits with uncanny shapes and forms. De Jager veered from his brightly coloured past to show a monochrome knit collection inspired by sea anemones.
Two slightly more conventional collections included Dandy Savant, who used “conflict” as departure for their suits and bomber jackets made from space-age material. Suzaan Heyns’s collection for Abraham + Louisa was also hinged on contrasts with structure playing against soft and masculine shoes paired with tailored dresses.
Hillbrow, London
The Shared Talent Project saw crafters from Soweto and Hillbrow teamed with students from London College of Fashion and the Johannesburg-based London International School of Fashion. Working out of the Boitomelo project based in Hillbrow and using the crafters’ traditional skills, fashion students collaborated with the crafters to develop a range of accessories that were marketable to an international audience.
“The students really opened up the mind of the crafters and encouraged them to experiment with different techniques and materials as well as look at the design process in a truly different way,” said Clare Douglas, a facilitator from the London College of Fashion.
Douglas is adamant that this is just the beginning of the project. To ensure its longevity and sustainability, Douglas is currently lobbying for further financial support and buy-in from industry partners. “Ideally, we would like people from industry to see the potential in the products we made and work with us on the project,” said Douglas.
Art container
One hundred artworks have been chosen from the 2 147 entries submitted for the inaugural Spier Contemporary 2007 exhibition. In addition to the prestige of being part of South Africa’s largest national exhibition in 2007/2008, five to seven winners will be announced at the exhibition opening and share the prize money of R700 000.
“The work is extraordinary, made with such precision and care. And what is even more exciting is that there is a whole bunch of new-generation artists who are speaking the values of a new generation. They are using language in a new tone – with a kind of humour and wryness, even when looking at difficult issues,” said curator Clive van den Berg.
The exhibition opens at the Spier Estate on 12 December in an innovative temporary structure by architect Elliott Maltby from New York’s thread collective. Serving to mark the future site of the Africa Centre and the Southbank development, the structure reflects Spier’s commitment to sustainable design by using retired shipping containers donated by Safmarine.
Minimising extensive site manipulation, the structure takes advantage of the existing slope of the site to create an expansive entrance gallery as well as a sequence of three galleries punctuated by exterior courtyards. Stacked containers create thickened walls, with a commonly available agricultural fabric acting as a low-tech roof and the flat paved surfaces of existing tennis courts functioning as the floor. While most of the exhibition will be staged in these galleries, a few containers will house smaller sound and video installations.
The exhibition will travel to Johannesburg and Durban in 2008.
Administer design daily
In the shadow of the Sentech tower, Brixton in Johannesburg is not widely recognised as a design hotspot, but design duo Dokter and Misses are set on upsetting the cradle with their cardboard handbags and heavy metal bling. Comprising Adriaan Hugo and Katy Taplin, they have now joined forces with designer Joe Paine to open their flagship store at the 44 Stanley Avenue shopping precinct. The store stocks furniture, clothing, jewellery, accessories, packaging, ceramics and garden pots by local designers including Joe, me and joe, Margaret Hugo, Smitten and themselves.
Not out of the woods
If the stakes in play were not all important, “sustainable development”, “ecological design” and “respect for the environment” might easily pass for catchphrases. As is always the case when crises arise, some creators jump on the bandwagon without really knowing what is happening, and their lack of discernment often turns serious reality into caricature.
Seeking to bring levity to the subject, the Growing Materials exhibition opening in January 2008 at the VIA in Paris, demonstrates new possibilities for using renewable materials such as timber, multiplies and composite fibres from vegetable origins. The exhibition emphasises sublime applications for timber that have emerged, begging the conventionally perceived extremes of fine finish for period pieces or industrial milling and processing for mass production.
Pieces on display include biodegradable plates and bowls pressed from wasted vegetables, fruit, tea and coffee; the ecopod coffin made from 100 percent recycled paper; tables made from lasercut sustainable bamboo; floorlamps made entirely from paper, and a bentwood chaise longue made from locally sourced British oak.
‘You can’t bomb an idea’
The Design Museum in London hosted a Jonathan Barnbrook retrospective in conjunction with the publication of his first monograph, Barnbrook Bible. Considered one of the UK’s most consistently innovative graphic designers, both the book and exhibition reveal Barnbrook’s preoccupation with the social conscience of design, making strong statements regarding corporate culture, consumerism, war and politics.
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