SHOW RCA 2012

With the move to Battersea more or less complete, SHOW RCA has become a vast, sprawling event. 4 buildings in Battersea and 2 in Kensington Gore means you need your walking shoes on. The new Dyson Building is an impressive space, yet strangely empty, while the Design Products area felt a little hidden and cramped. There seemed to be several strange curatorial decisions with this years show, but perhaps that is simply a case of not being used to all this new space. Here are our Top 5 (in no particular order) from across the 2 venues:

1 Sam Weller Holdfast

Part of the team that made their own money in Milan, Sam Weller presented his own project Holdfast as part of Design Products. Inspired by the humble (but handy) workbench clamp, the metal elements for Holdfast are produced on a computer controlled machine and this single component can be used to form bookshelves, tables or stools.

2 Anton Alvarez The Art of Thread Wrapping 

Using his slightly odd but pleasingly home-made Thread Wrapping Machine, Anton Alvarez presented a whole series of objects, from stools, to benches to lights, all held together purely by glue coated thread. Each piece is unique as a result, a craft aesthetic with an industrial method. 

3 Évelie Moulia Untitled

A new jewellery collection shown in Kensington, this struck us for its utter simplicity yet innovation. Neat, sharp and precise, with the finest chains you are ever likely to have seen this held our attention for some time.

4 Jon Fraser WaterBuoy

Innovation Design Engineering projects had a decidedly social feel - simple ways to improve our communities and society. WaterBuoy is incredibly easy to install and communicates in a very simple, colourful way through "Droplets" how much water a household is consuming (and wasting!). Even though it may feel like it never stops raining, water is a scarce commodity and needs to be used with caution. WaterBuoy acts as a reminder each time we fill the kettle or run the washing machine and was a worthy winner of the Dyson Award. 

5 Stuart White and David Gibson Sharing Bin

Apart from their own projects, Stuart White and David Gibson collaborated on Sharing Bin, a closed network, ideal for creative places like art schools, where people can share the files in their computer's recycle bin. the idea is to encourage recycling and intellectual sharing. The item you have binned may not be the thing you needed, or may be obsolete in your work, but could be just the thing for someone else to spark their creativity. One mans rubbish is another mans gold. 

There was quite a strong social and even political focus in this years show, with an impromptu cafe set up in Kensington where people could sit, chat and share ideas or listen to talks and also a BUY/TRADE shop, where graduates accepted offers in the form of money or services for their work. A piece of art or design in exchange for some advice on setting up your own practise perhaps?

The political dimension came from Minjae Huh and the Future Without PSW project, protesting the governments decision to scrap Post-Study Work visas, which in effect means all students, who will have paid substantial fees to study in the UK, have to leave within 2 months of graduating. To support the protest, Minjae kindly pre-printed postcards addressed to  Damian Green MP. Are we seeing the start of a new overt political activism in our colleges?

  

Heatherwick Studio at the V&A

As part of our cultural detours yesterday, we stopped by the recently opened Heatherwick Studio retrospective at the V&A Museum. Designed, presumably, to provide a sense of the working studio environment, it was full to the brim of models, details, prototypes, videos of everything from Doha desert hotel complexes to Christmas cards. A little too much on display, to be honest (something we heard from several other visitors) but once you get lost in the detail, it was fascinating to see the enormous range of projects the studio undertakes.

Image via It's Nice That

Image via It's Nice That

From early projects like Plank, and B of the Bang to more recent (and noticeably larger scale) projects like the multi-faceted skyscraper hotel in China and the celebrated Seed Cathedral, the show is arranged thematically - materiality, technology, collaboration etc.

The new bus for London, an homage to the 1950's Routemaster, and rolls of upholstery fabric designed by Heatherwick for the project sits alongside crumpled steel sheets used in the construction of the Aberystwyth Artist Studios project. 

Autumn Intrusion for Harvey Nichols, 1997

Smaller items such as the Spun chair and the Extrusions bench (which we mentioned way back here) sit on plinths in the centre of the room, along with an enormous chandelier for the Wellcome Trust. The Wellcome commission came after construction of the building on the Euston Road was complete, so the challenge was to design something that would fit through a standard door. Heatherwick went one further, creating a 30 metre high chandelier that could fit through a letter box. 142,000 glass spheres were threaded onto 27,000 steel cables by 3 teams, working 24 hours a day for 4 months. The result is Bleigiessen and can be viewed at the Wellcome trust on the last Friday of every month at 2pm.

Here's a handy hint - the studio have vowed that every Friday at 2pm, someone from the studio will be on hand to demonstrate the working models, including the 7 metre retractable bridge. It's well worth timing your visit to include that.

For added value, spend some time in the V&A central reception area watching kids, young and old, playing with the Spun chairs. You'll never tire of watching their expressions change from trepidation to pure glee.

Serpentine Pavilion by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei

We decided to take early advantage of the extra long Jubilee bank holiday weekend and took a cultural detour to the new Serpentine Pavilion, designed by starchitects Herzog & de Meuron in association with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the team behind the Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing. 

This years commission used the blueprints for the 11 preceding pavilions as its foundations. Digging down to ground water level, as opposed to building a standard structure above ground, and then lining everything in cork, it has the appearance of an archaeological excavation. The mushroom shaped cork stools feel monumental, as if they were hewn out of the rock. Cool and calm, the experience is in stark contrast to the bright red Jean Nouvel pavilion of 2010.

Unfortunately, Ai Weiwei was unable to attend the opening of his own pavilion due to his being under "city arrest" in Beijing. Dezeen have a video interview with Jacques Herzog at the Pavilion HERE.

Clerkenwell Design Week 2012

1.3 Chair wins Designs of the Year, Furniture Award 2012

We were honoured to join Kihyun Kim at the Design Museum last night for the 5th annual Designs of the Year Awards, especially as he walked off with the award in the Furniture category. 

Inspired by the British WWII wooden bomber, the De Havilland Mosquito, Kihyun developed an innovative chair design in balsa wood and lime veneer. Weighing an incredible 1.28Kg, Kihyun presented it as his graduation project from the RCA in 2011.

A strong category in the awards, 1.3 Chair was nominated alongside Barber Osgerby's Tip Ton chair for Vitra, Stefan Diez Chassis chair for Wilkhahn, Jasper Morrison's Lightwood chair for Maruni and the Bouroullec brothers two nominations in this category (the Osso chair for Mattiazzi and Textile Field) amongst others.

The overall award for Design of the Year was presented to Barber Osgerby for their 2012 Olympic Torch. The full list of winners can be found on the Design Museum website here.

 

Zeitraum have produced a solid wood version of 1.3 Chair in ash, oak or walnut and presented it at Salone del Mobile in Milan last week with a companion bar stool and low stool. 

The Designs of the Year show continues until 4th July at the Design Museum but you will also be able to see the 1.3 Collection at Clerkenwell Design Week in May.

#Milan12

Our trip to Milan was shorter than usual this year, in no small part thanks to the lack of hotel space (seriously, Milan Chamber of Commerce, you need to sort that out) so we lived vicariously through our Twitter timeline. Below is a selection of our favourite #Milan12 tweets from some of our favourite Tweeters. If you're not already following them you should be!

 

http://bit.ly/HUUaEv

 

http://bit.ly/HZoj7V

http://bit.ly/HXkxie

And we end with some good advice for visitors and exhibitors alike.....

You might call it lazy blogging on our part, we call it Milan 2012 in a #nutshell.

Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter @RelayDesign and we have created a Facebook album of our own highlights. See you next year 9th -14th April for #Milan13

Zeitraum News 2012 - Part 2 The Milan Issue

Zeitraum unleashed their 2012 Collection at IMM Cologne in January, but kept a few pieces under wraps. Until now that is.

The 1.3 COLLECTION by RCA graduate Kihyun Kim is a progression on the superlight chair he first presented as part of his graduation work at RCA SHOW 2011. The project involved extensive research into lightweight technology and ecology. First presented in fast-growing balsa wood and lime veneer, this unpretentious little chair weighed in at less than 1.3Kg (hence the name!). Reaction was immediate, and several parties expressed an interest in developing the product. 

Zeitraum have worked closely with Kihyun Kim to develop 1.3 Chair into a family of products suitable for contract use and the result is 1.3 COLLECTION - chair, bar stool and low stool. For commercial production it was decided to produce the frame in solid oak or walnut, as balsa can be unpredictable.

The contours of the back and pillow-like seat appear wafer-thin yet inviting. The modest proportions make it eminently suitable for spaces where space is at a premium - city centre restaurants and cafes, for instance. 

1.3 Chair has been nominated for the Designs of the Year 2012 Award at the Design Museum, where it can be seen until 4th July. Winners will be announced on 24th April. Fingers crossed!

Also new for Milan is FRIDAY from regular collaborators Formstelle. Designed with that TGIF feeling very much in mind, FRIDAY is a decadent mix of soft, supple leather, down filled cushions and tactile wood.

Sturdy butt leather acts as a sling for the seat and back cushions within the wooden frame. Practicalities have been considered and the seat and back cushions are fastened to each other with a discrete zip so the form is not disturbed. Sit back, relax and enjoy!

These new products along with KONTUR, TURNTABLE, PLAISIR, NOON 3 and NOON 3 SMALL, TWIST STONE, STRIP and MORPH POUF, launched at IMM Cologne, all adhere to the Zeitraum ethos of honesty, character and substance and make the collection stronger than ever.

Cory Arcangel for Studio Voltaire

New York artist Cory Arcangel (who had an installation at The Curve gallery in the Barbican in 2011) has created a limited edition screen print for Studio Voltaire in south London.

Taking a page torn from an art history book featuring one of Mondrian's Lozenge painting, which were intended to be hung in a diamond format, Arcangel has turned the page back 45°, thus reinstating the traditional square format.

Part of a series of works by artists such as Phyllida Barlow and Ryan Gander to make art affordable, the price will rise as the edition sells out. The first 50 prints are priced at £50, but the price will then start to rise (there are 150 prints in the edition). We suggest you get in early and place your orders here and support a wonderful arts charity at the same time. 

Zeitraum at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan

Stockholm 2012: Exploring the City

As always there was so much to see and do outside of the Fair, as part of the umbrella Stockholm Design Week, there was little time to worry about the cold. You just had to get on with it.

Squeezing through hoarding, stepping over cables and skirting around cement mixers is not the usual way into an exhibition, but that as exactly how you gained entry to Work In Progress, a group show organised by Axel Bjurstrӧm and Jonas Wagell in the building site that will soon become MOOD Stockholm. Designers, some high profile and others on the way up, presented prototypes and finished products with sketches and stories explaining the thought process behind them. Folkform presented some details behind their exquisite Suburban Skyline series of lighting in brass. Matti Klenell exhibited his Lempi everyday glasses for iittala and Note Design Studio showed their barstool Boet, which they designed and produced for the Johan & Nyström coffee shop in Helsinki, for which they designed the interiors. 

Note Design Studio are arguably the designers to have raised their profile most this Design Week. Interior and product designers, the 5 designers behind Note mounted a show entitled Marginal Notes #2. Sketches and ideas scribbled in the margins of their notebooks over the past year were re-examined and brought to life as a way to communicate what makes them tick. Simple shapes, bright colours and punched metal sheets were the order of the day. The wire benches reminiscent of logs on sawbucks were particularly memorable.

Marginal Notes #2 has received a lot of interest in the blogosphere and the word is spreading. If you would like to know a bit more, then check out this interview with Susanna Wåhlin, one fifth of Note, on Wallpaper Style File. (If you listen very carefully you will also hear the correct pronunciation of Ӧrsjӧ!)

In the same area there was a blink and you miss it open studio/exhibition called DOWN. In an underground garage Fredrik Färg and Simon Klenell presented work alongside their studio-mates for one afternoon only. Precision timing was called for, but we just made it!

Form us With Love presented their Form Us With Friends show for the third time, this time on the island of Skeppsholmen, in association with the Architecture museum. New collaborations with 5 companies saw innovative ways to use reconstituted quartz with the Silo vases for Consetino and flat pack furniture for new company One Nordic. 

  

As mentioned in a previous post, "posh flat pack" was a mini trend throughout the week, and the Bento chair can snap together in 4 easy steps, without the need for tools or head-scratching. Obviously inspired by the work of Aalto, Bento chair and table are the first products for One Nordic, which will only be available online. 

Finally, one of the last things we saw before heading for the airport was also one of our favourites. New works by Mats Theselius were shown at the Sebastian Schild gallery, including a series of wood and copper lighting and a new chair produced by Kӓllemo. The chair comes with an interesting history. After visiting the church of Sankt Petri i Klippan designed by Sigurd Lewerentz, Mats noticed the copper roof had been replaced, so called Kӓllemo with an idea. Using the copper sheets from the roof, Mats created "Hommage á Sigurd Lewerentz", a signed and limited edition. 123 pieces are available, because that's how many copper sheets were used on the original roof.