Ola Giertz - Månadens Formgivare - designer of the month - at Form Design Center

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Thread Bench and Monte Carlo

 

Ola Giertz graduated from Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies in 2010 … the design school is a department of Linköping University but is based in Stockholm as part of the Department of Management and Engineering at the Institute of Technology.

In 2011 he established his design studio in Helsingborg. 

The exhibition includes a question and answer session which is published on the web site for Form and gives some interesting clues to motivation and inspiration for the designs shown here. A ‘favourite designer’ is Verner Panton and a declared mission is to “always keep the child in me and be playful” which would explain the strong shapes and use of strong colours in some of the pieces. 

Also in the exhibition are his candle holders Haus and Industrial Shine, the award winning Frame seating units and the House hanging rail system.

 

Bordus, Rocking Chair and  O-table

 

Armadillo

 

The exhibition continues at Form Design Center in Malmö until 30th September

Ola Giertz

Realtime at superobjekt gallery

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A new exhibition has just opened at superobjekt gallery in Borgergade in Copenhagen. 

Seven well known and well-established Danish designers were asked to produce objects or installations that reflected a theme of time… “to create a physical comment to what time means to them and by that revealing inspiration, thoughts, doubts and references normally hidden in their final work.”

This is a fascinating concept. These designers, in their designs for a font or for dinnerware or for street furniture, invest a huge amount of their time on the commission - on the initial concept, the process of refining their design, the production period and so on - but the final work is clearly fixed in time … it is finished or as Tina Midtgaard, the owner of the gallery who commissioned the show,  points out, “no part will be changed, removed or added.”. Ironically, or do I mean very naturally, many designers hope that their works will continue in production and possibly even, become that iconic and rare accolade to be described by critics as “timeless”.  

One issue raised recently in posts here is that rarely does the public, the consumer, appreciate the role of the designer and the effort and time they have invested in a project. Some designers are complicit in that, modestly stepping back from their works. Somehow it seems better to imply that it was easy natural skill and talent rather than hard work that was required. Occasionally a retrospective or a new book will catalogue the range and extent of a designer's work and show all the intermediate stages and the development sequence that led to a well-known design but that is still relatively unusual.

There is an opportunity here for the designers to produce a single piece, a single statement, and one that moves their work into the area more usually associated with artists … producing a single statement to convey a thought or an impression or a viewpoint on life to stimulate discussion, stop the viewer, make them think. It also gives those outside the design world an insight into the thought processes involved in the completion of a design project.

Here, in these pieces, ideas about time are piled up, layered or dissected. And most involve word play. Large posters of food and recipes by Susse Fischer are entitled måITID or mealTIME.

 

 

Wooden clock cases by Peter Bysted - Din tid, Min tid, Tik tak - do not have workings, they are simply the cases, so ironically cannot record or mark time, but one was made by Peter Bysted himself, so he invested his time and it is the piece where the wood is split and heavily grained, so has the strongest sense of age, while the other two were commissioned from a cabinet maker, his time in a sense was bought, but the wood is pale and more perfect and less clearly fixed in a style or specific time and, of course, the very design of the long case clock is now an anachronism, in an age of digital time, that respects and looks back to an older and now rare type of furniture where time was wound up and released.

 

 

In a similar way the stools and sundials by Christian Bjørn reflect time sharply and explicitly ... the stools in metal rust over time and the sundials with the gnomon in a sawn-through log mark off the passing of time each day but of course the rings of the tree, seen in the cross section of the trunk, record a precise passing of time, growing season by growing season, that ended when the tree was felled.

 

 

For me, and for specific personal reasons, two of the works had the greatest impact. Ursula Munch Petersen has laid down two lines of bricks, one pale yellow stock brick and one line of brick-red bricks, that are in progressive stages of being worn down by the sea and are laid in opposite directions perhaps to reflect the ebb and flow of the sea. As an architectural historian, all my work is about our buildings in time … fixed by the time and attitudes of the period in which they were built but also looking at how they are effected over time as people adapt and change their buildings. Here in Tidens Tand was human construction in a much longer time frame … the implication of the geological time taken to lay down the clay from which the bricks were made and the time, long after there is any link with an identifiable building, for the bricks to return to pebbles, grit, sand.

Curiously, it was the work by Ole Søndergaard that had most impact. Surprising only because this is a series of small pieces with icebergs shown in section with a polar bear on one and whales and dolphins on others but the style of the works is bold and graphically strong and in the Danish tradition of beautifully-made toys for children. 

 

 

It was actually after I left the exhibition and was thinking about the meaning of the various works that the impact of the Isbjergs motiver/tiden hit me. Many years ago I went to the Upsala Glacier in Argentina. There in a boat at the snout I have never felt so small and insignificant and curiously it was that that made me feel positive about the future. The ice rises over 100 metres above the water and runs down 900 metres below the surface to the bottom of the valley that the glacier has cut out so it is a wall of ice around a kilometre high and here the front of the glacier, stretching across the valley, is 4 kilometres wide and runs back over 110 kilometres to the source. My feeling then was that, for all our arrogance and bravado, man is pretty insignificant and the planet moves on regardless of what we do. There and then the most impressive and dramatic part of that visit was to see the glacier shedding huge blocks of ice. After a sharp explosive sound a block of ice, an iceberg, would drop and float away down the lake. This is called in English calving … giving birth. It was only some 25 years later that this exhibition in Borgergade made me realise, with a start, that the ‘birth’ of an iceberg from a glacier or ice sheet is perhaps one of the most potent signs of time that we have. It is the beginning of its ultimate end. Art is so often about symbols and meaning and representation and here in a simple line of child-like icebergs is an incredibly powerful statement about global warming. An iceberg records time passing but at a very different scale to a clock or a sundial. If the lifespan of an iceberg, from calving to melting away, gets shorter and shorter, the alarm, that wake-up call, is very loud and should not be ignored.

 

The designers taking part in the exhibition are Boris Berlin, Christian Bjørn, Peter Bysted, Susse Fischer, Knud Holscher, Ursula Munch Petersen and Ole Søndergaard.

Reatime continues until 26 September 

superobjekt gallery, Borgegade 15E, 1300 Copenhagen.

Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling - the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition 2015

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There are 83 furniture makers and designers in the association (sammenslutning) of cabinetmakers and for their annual Autumn exhibitions they work together in pairs to produce pieces of furniture within a pre-determined theme. The theme for this year was Petite - as in elegant and refined - and the pieces were restricted to a footprint of 60 x 60 cms or less.

In part, this reflected and respected the venue for the exhibition this year which is the house at Øregaard in Hellerup - now a museum - that was built in the early 19th century as a summer residence by the architect Joseph-Jacques Ramée for the merchant Johannes Søbøtker.

But also, crucially, the French theme is important because the exhibition will transfer to the Maison du Danemark on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris where it will open on the 27th January 2016 and run through until the 3rd April.

For the exhibition the display has been designed by the architectural practice Norm and their work is crucial to the character and style of the event. Their work is noted for being restrained and subtle and here that is important.  In Hellerup the main rooms in the house have been painted in a range of classic Danish colours in soft greens and greys and, with the clean white lines of the architectural features and the large sash windows, overlooking the park and gardens of the house, this gives the space a specifically Danish and specifically 18th-century Danish feel.

This review is in danger of sounding like text from an advertising copywriter or travel brochure but it is a very serious point that has to be made. The rooms are reminiscent of a painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi and this must be deliberate. In his interiors there is no clutter. Furniture is expensive and good but arranged sparingly. The interiors are calm and restrained. In the paintings and here at Øregaard there are no spotlights, no bling - or their equivalent - and nothing loud or demonstrative. In a very Danish way you have to look carefully and think about what you are looking at to appreciate the skill and the craftsmanship.

Modern Danish taste has it’s roots much further back than the 1950s or 1960s. Colours and styles of furniture and furnishings, in a specifically Danish form, go back to the interiors of the late 19th century; back to the period of the Golden age of Danish painting in the early 19th century and, in some aspects, on back to the way furniture was arranged and interiors were decorated in Denmark in the 17th century and back further to the interiors of the late medieval and early modern period. 

The simple blocks and plinths of the display here in this exhibition also use some mirrored surfaces which reflect the natural light coming in through the large windows but also plays with the idea of reflections - some 18th-century interiors used mirrors between windows for similar effects - so in some parts of the exhibition it is possible to see the underside of pieces of furniture. Any good piece of furniture and certainly furniture from a cabinet maker should be properly finished and that includes the underside and parts that you cannot see. And that is not just about quality and pride in workmanship but is also about something tactile. The most difficult part of visiting this exhibition is that you should not touch but wood in particular, as a material, is to be touched and actually joints and corners can be best judged by feel with the eyes closed … a dovetail or a mitre joint should look perfect and in the very best work it should be impossible to feel or trace with a finger.

What the exhibition also celebrates is the important and enduring connections in Danish furniture design between architects, specialist furniture designers and furniture making or cabinet making by craftsmen. Here, in these exhibition pieces, that collaboration is an essential part of the creation and production process.

However, these pieces of furniture are not shackled or restricted by the past … simply aware of the past even if materials and forms are new … so pieces here are made in acrylic or MDF as well as in exotic timbers: one table is covered with salmon skin - others pieces are perfectly coloured using powder coating. 

There is also humour here - so Pause is a cabinetmakers’ cupboard for an iPhone guarded by an all seeing eye - and there is clever playing with ideas and forms - so Doublé uses a mirror to make two half tables look like two separate complete tables and neither table could stand up without the mirror they are fixed to because they each have only two legs.

Some designers played with 18th-century themes so Tricorn looks to the shape of an 18th-century tricornered hat and Dress Chairs plays with 18th-century costumes - one with the form of the sleeve of a woman’s summer dress and the other a bonnet and exotic timbers are used in some pieces in a very appropriate way because the house and gardens were built with money from sugar plantations and trade in the West Indies.

Nor are the pieces simply expensive games for the showing off of skills but can be experiments or trials that will, further on, lead to commercial products although they are also reminiscent of the work or master piece that an apprentice produced to be judged as he finished his apprenticeship and became a master

Back to sounding like a travel advert, I would urge anyone and everyone interested in design and furniture design to visit the exhibition. Look carefully and enjoy because these pieces truly deserve admiration and respect.

 

Note, I have posted a separate catalogue of photographs of all the furniture in the exhibition 

The photographs are in the same sequence as in the museum's exhibition catalogue where there are short descriptions of the furniture and those notes can also be found on the exhibition web site. 

Over the coming months I hope I will be able to use these pieces of furniture as a starting point for interviewing and writing about some of these designers and makers to see how these one-off pieces fit within the broader pattern of their design or production works.

Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition 2015 - Petite

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The Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition has just opened at Øregaard Museum in Hellerup. This year the theme for the exhibition is 'Petite' - as in refined and elegant - and works had to be free standing and were restricted in size to less than 60 x 60 cm.

The exhibition will also been shown at Maison du Danemark, Avenue Champs-Élysées in Paris from 27 January to 3 April 2016.

The exhibition continues until 18 October 2015

Hjemlighed .... homeliness

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Ten designers, architects and craftsmen have come together to exhibit their work in a private apartment in Lavendelstræde - a street in a tightly built up area of historic buildings just to the east of the city hall in the centre of Copenhagen.

It is an amazing apartment spread over two upper floors and the attic space of the tall, narrow 18th-century house with a striking mixture of original parts, including the roof structure, but with modern features such as an open metal staircase, a long wall of modern kitchen units and an area of glass floor between the attic bedroom and the kitchen and dining room on the level below.

The kitchen area opens onto a large roof terrace with views over the Copenhagen skyline looking towards the tower of Vor Frue Kirke. 

 

 

This is not just a chance to see a very striking apartment but, of course, to see the works displayed in a home, in the rooms of the apartment, along with books and furniture and kitchenware of a very real domestic setting.

Perhaps we have created false divisions between craftwork, such as tableware, that we can use in our homes, and the works of artists working in the crafts that we see as gallery pieces. These works, in this exhibition, were not, specifically, designed and made to be contained in an art gallery or museum - although many of these artists have their works in museum collections - but they can and should be seen and appreciated in a home. These pieces stimulate comment, attract admiration, stimulate discussion, stir people to decide if they love, like or even dislike the pieces. Owning and enjoying original art and craft pieces is not exclusively the prerogative of the public gallery or the private wealthy collector but original works of art or of craftsmanship really do have a place enhancing our lives in our homes.

Works shown here range from ceramic multiples through printed cotton squares displayed on a clothes drier on the roof terrace, to a bench in smoked oak supported on upturned stoneware vessels and there are monumental architectural urns in stoneware. Porcelain lights over the main table are a homage to the iconic Danish PH lights and striking jewellery in braided or plaited white plastic beads, forming deep ruffs for the wrist or ankle but set in a framework of a house, reflect the title of the exhibition. The one odd work, and only odd because it was large and set diagonally it fills and dominates the space of the bathroom it is displayed in, is a long narrow glass case with an arrangement of single socks with no pair.

This piece, Finds by Morten Sørensen, illustrates really well one very important role of art which is to point out or isolate something that either we have not thought about or points out an absurdity or a universal experience that we rarely even think about. Other works show how artists experiment with materials and forms pushing boundaries that really should not be there and multiple works are a really good way of emphasising subtle differences or step changes or variations.

toPHøj in porcelain by Anne Tophøj

Indretning in stoneware by Marianne Nielsen and Kristine Tillge Lund

I tid og utid by Anne Tophøj and Theis Lorentzen

Base in oak, aluminium and stoneware by Anne Dorthe Vester and Maria Bruun

 

Architects, designers and artists taking part include:

Anne Fabricius Møller, Anne Tophøj, Anne Dorthe Vester, Maria Bruun, Johan Carlsson, 

Katrine Borup, Kristine Tillge Lund, Marianne Nielsen, Martin Sørensen, Theis Lorentzen

 

Hjemlighed ... an exhibition at Lavendelstræde 8, 1462 København K continues until 15th September.

Practice Makes Perfect - Kaare Klint's School of Furniture

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This week is the last chance to see the exhibition Practice makes Perfect at the Design Museum in Copenhagen. This well-curated and beautifully arranged exhibition shows the work of Kaare Klint - including his designs for the furniture and fittings for the design museum itself when it moved to this building in the 1920s.

The exhibition explores his influence and importance as a teacher in that crucial period in the development of design in Denmark as furniture production moved from the methods, forms and styles of the cabinet makers' workshops of the late 19th century and the early 20th century to the work of the designers of the modern period of Danish furniture design in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and new methods of furniture production in factories and large workshops.

 

Practice makes perfect at Designmuseum Danemark in Bredgade in Copenhagen closes on 6th September.

people process projects - Snøhetta at DAC

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This summer DAC - the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen - continued their well-established series of exhibitions that focus on single architectural firms with people process and projects about Snøhetta, the architectural studio based in Oslo and New York.

Snøhetta is the name of a mountain outside Oslo and was chosen by Craig Dykers and Kjetil Trædal Thorsen when they established their architecture, landscape design and branding company in 1989. Snøhetta are now a major international practice with projects ongoing in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.

At DAC there were four sections to the exhibition with the first and largest space dedicated to the people, the organisation and the philosophy or approach of the studio. In part here was a reconstruction of key elements of the Oslo office or elements that at least evoked the Oslo studio with sofas around a table and a set of steps - both important places where staff and clients can sit informally to discuss projects - and the ceiling treatment in Oslo was reproduced with plastic bags full of water hung from wires. 

The Snøhetta studio in Oslo

Photographs in this section showed the large communal lunch table that can also be used as a space for spreading out work for discussion. Snøhetta “believe taking time to share meals with our colleagues is critical to our process. Human interaction shapes the spaces we design and the way we operate.”

Text panels emphasised how professional staff in the studio are encouraged to move through the various disciplines to bring a new perspective to different aspects of the work. They call this transpositioning. “It defies narrow-minded thinking and encourages holistic approaches.”

 

The second section of the exhibition showed the central role of the modelling shop, another part of the design process, and formed the link through to the section about the main buildings from the company.

Here, in the third area, there was a wall of photographs showing and identifying eighty or so of the main projects by Snøhetta and, nearby, a large touch screen where it was possible to find further information and there were a number of models, including the opera house in Oslo, and a section of the facing of a facade formed one display wall containing smaller models and artefacts. A number of screens along another wall showed interviews and so on including a video of the Oslo opera house in winter with a figure snowboarding down the slope of the roof.

There was also a clever idea with photographs of a large number of the projects reproduced with information on the back and with punched holes at the top of each so they could be hung from steel pins across one wall and visitors were invited to take copies of the pages they wanted to form their own guide book.

A huge range of building styles are presented here but I suppose that is inevitable given the time-span covered and the size of the practice now although you can see some themes or ideas reappearing … so, for instance, the shift and slide of building planes as if on tectonic plates at the National Opera House in Oslo, the Memorial Pavilion in New York and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, although those three buildings have very different facing materials and very different underlying geometric forms. 

The text of the exhibition does not state it outright but presumably Snøhetta are more concerned with architectural solutions rather than a consistent architectural style and diversity would, in any case, be a consequence of their debate-lead project system. Curiously the text and interviews imply a certain amount of introspection in contrast to the huge self-confidence of the buildings they produce so the Norwegian Wild Reindeer Centre Pavilion, for instance, is hardly overawed by the grandeur of it’s natural setting and the combination of stark iron box on the mountain slope with its huge glass front but organic sculptural wood interior is anything but circumspect.

Gallery space on the first floor, outside the cafe, was filled with a series of wooden pods with sloping ends and pitched roofs. Called On Top of the Mountain, this is a self-contained section of the exhibition aimed at families and children with photographs and information about smaller buildings from Snøhetta that are set in the natural landscape rather than in the urban setting of most of the larger building projects shown on the ground floor.

Here the emphasis was even more clearly on social sustainability and environmental sustainability - a strong part of the studio's ethos … “We actively seek technical solutions that provide the most economical and natural systems for minimising the environmental impact of the buildings we design.”

Buildings here included Tverrfjellhytta, the pavilion for the Wild Reindeer Centre, and images for a new hotel that will snake down a slope to follow the side of the mountain at Lofoten.

 

Perhaps I am becoming too cynical in my old age but as I worked my way around the exhibition I began to hear more and more the input of a brand manager in the extensive text and I became frustrated by what appeared to me to be two significant omissions in the material presented. 

Many of the buildings shown here are extremely sophisticated structures and require extensive and very technical engineering solutions ... particularly for projects such as the proposed floating bridge that could be constructed to cross Rovde fjord near Ålesund ... but there was no discussion anywhere in the exhibition about engineers, engineering, or the ways that collaboration between architect and engineer was required nor how, sometimes, there must have been a conflict between a concept and the reality of the actual construction process. 

And, with some of the projects being not just large but incredibly complicated, in terms of their functions and therefore planning, I was curious that there were no plans shown for any of the buildings … the closest we got to a plan was in some of the photographs of the studio that showed staff apparently discussing a building over its plan. I know that some visitors to an exhibition, who are not involved in architecture professionally, find plans either difficult to understand or less interesting than models but one of the important aspects of the Snøhetta practice is that their projects cover such a huge range of type, size and function of building. It would be interesting to see at least some discussion of how a team works on a hugely complicated building such as the Bibliotheca Alexandria, which must have had an amazingly complex brief setting out standards for book storage, the requirements for conservation and problems to control light and heat in public reading spaces, or for the opera house in Oslo with its integration of public spaces, highly technical requirements for the performance space, back-stage areas for workshops, complex circulation for public and service areas and complicated massing determined by existing road systems, surrounding urban landscape and the natural topography with such a prominent site on the harbour running down to the edge of the water. Much of that could have been done with simplified plans or good diagrams. Understanding how ideas evolve, how plan and space interrelate and how problems are resolved is more interesting and more important than a beautiful photograph of a facade.

A more thorough if brief analysis of the how the design of the opera house in Oslo evolved would, of course, be interesting in this city where just down the harbour from DAC is Copenhagen's own opera house. Compare and contrast exercises tend to be an academic's approach but could be a way to get a wider audience to think critically about their major public buildings in terms, not just of how they look, but in terms of how they work day to day - how they work as public spaces and how they contribute to or interrupt the existing social structure of a neighbourhood and how they fit into the existing urban setting or ignore it.

* Some books and on-line sites give the year the company was founded as 1987.

A recently published book People Process Projects is available and the exhibition at DAC continues until 27 September 2015.

Snøhetta

Danish Architecture Centre

Kunstforeningen af 14 August at Paustian

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Works by twenty artists selected by Kunstforeningen af 14 August are currently on display at Paustian at Kalkbrænderiløbskaj in Copenhagen. 

As well as furniture, sculptures in glass, ceramics and jewellery, the pieces shown here include a table textile by Margrethe Odgaard, a woven Alpaca textile by Karina Nielsen Rios, a framed textile, Flag Domestic, by Vibeke Rohland, a bench seat by Rud Thygesen and baskets by Bent Vinkler.

The exhibition continues through until 5th September.

 

the Tomorrow Collective

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ECCO CARRYING - Jingyi Zhang / TERRA urban root cellar - Ida Gudrunsdotter / YOYO BASKET - Nan Jiang

 

This is an exhibition by students from the Master’s Programme at the School of Industrial Design in Lund and is a collection of items, all well made, that question and challenge the assumption that any domestic chore must now be done by something plastic with a chip and a plug. And what is also clear here is that there is a sense of pride in the process of making ... so what is common to all the pieces is that they are made from natural materials using traditional craft skills.

It is a  brilliant and inspiring exhibition and even more important because it comes from industrial designers … or better still the next generation of industrial designers.

In part the designs take us back to the household items that you can see in the old town houses in the open-air museum in Lund or domestic items from the past that are displayed in the Danish open-air museums in Aarhus and at Frilandsmuseet north of Copenhagen but those items tend to be from old rural crafts and there is, in part, a sense there of people making do and making themselves what was not available to buy but all these items here in the exhibition could be produced commercially.

This is not nostalgia ... not a sort of romantic revivalist view of a cosy kitchen from our grandparents' past.

These designers have taken a very serious and realistic look at what we do and how and what we make and what we throw away. Sometimes it is useful and sometimes actually necessary to look at where we are, wonder if it is the right place and maybe go back down the road to a cross roads and explore if another road might be more interesting.

 

 

Basically they are saying take a step back and look at what you do and why and how and possibly, with ingenuity, sustainability can be very stylish and actually fun.

But they also make a very serious point …. “In a time when the single person is becoming more and more distanced from where things come from, how they are made, what they are made of and where they inevitably end up, it becomes increasingly harder to see the consequences of our lifestyles and choices. We depend on fossil fuel driven transportation systems, monocultural large-scale farming and non renewable, toxic energy sources. Our economies thrive on productivity and consumption and we live like there’s no tomorrow. The Tomorrow Collective is about exploring ways of enabling us to live a sustainable life in the future. Inspired by past knowledge of how to grow, make and be, the project presents concepts for modern tools and systems that can be used in a cyclic sense, within private homes or to share in smaller communities.”

 

M FOR MILK within one's reach - Judith Glaser

 

THE BURKS - Oskar Olsson

 

LITTLE THUMB save the crumbs - Elena Biondi

 

WOODEN IRON simple clothing care tool - Ausrine Augustinaite

 

FLAVOUR OF TIME preserve the unique feeling of daily food and seasonal flavour - Reo Letian Zhang

 

MICU smart choice for a healthy conscience - Andrea Müller

 

THE TOOTHPASTER nice and simple - Olof Janson

 

SHAVING KIT long lasting shaving tools inspired by the past & the present - Philip Andersson

Even now, electric gadgets with smart technology do not rule our homes completely … many people still have wooden spoons in the kitchen or one of those wooden lemon juicers and lots of cooks use a pestle and mortar to grind their own herbs but one of the points made here is that often a specific contraption for a specific task might be used once or twice and then confined to the back of a cupboard. Could there be a simpler way of doing some things? Is the purchase of a clever-clever time-saving devise our real priority? Whatever the cost in terms of the energy and the materials consumed? In that profit and loss account is a little time gained worth the loss from the satisfaction of doing something ourselves?

After looking at the exhibition I remembered that when I cleared my mother’s house, after she died a couple of years ago, I came across a butter knife that I had used at my grandparent’s house when I was a small child and some brushes my grandfather kept in his own drawer in the kitchen for when he came in from the garden and wanted to wash and they still smelt of the specific soap and and the tooth powder he always used … he was a late and reluctant convert to toothpaste. Memories suddenly came flooding back. If we chuck out and replace everything because it all has a short shelf life and the replacement is cheap, is it not just sustainability we should worry about but also the loss of our own sense of time and place?

There is a full catalogue of all the pieces on line with photographs and links to all the designers

THE TOMORROW COLLECTIVE

The exhibition continues at Form Design Center, Malmö until 30 August 2015

Utvalt i Skåne - Form Design Center, Malmö

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Gustaf Sörnmo - gustaf@centralasien.org + Petter Thörne - info@petterthorne.se

 

Utvalt translates as selected and this event is held every three years. About 400 works were submitted and the twenty-four pieces shown in the exhibition were chosen by the jury - Mårten Medbo, a potter, Anna Åhlin, from the association of crafts, and Katja Pettersson, an industrial designer and lecturer. 

All the artists come from Skåne - the southern part of Sweden - but what is striking is the diversity of styles and the different materials used showing clearly the strength and broad base of craft in the region.

The exhibition continues at the Form Design Center in Malmö until 23 August and then goes on tour to several venues including Simrishamn, Helsingborg and, at the beginning of next year, to Hamburg and then to Ronneby.

The works shown below were selected because they seemed most relevant to themes covered on this site but much more information about Utvalt and all the works can be found on their site … utvalt i skane.

 

Shelter

Gunilla Maria Åkesson - www.gunillamariaakesson.se

 

Pinta

Ola Andersson - Instagram: And_Nils / Luka Jelusic - cudodelubo.wordpress.com

 

Kanndans

Thomas Anagrius - www.tomasanagrius.com

 

Ljuskrona

Jonas Rooth - www.rooth.se

 

Beeeench

Petter Thörne - www.petterthorne.se

 

Waves

Per Brandstedt - www.brandstedt.se

 

Cabinet Luftig

Charlie Styrbjörn, Ludwug Berg + Olle K Engberg - www.cabinetluftig.se

 

biennalen for kunsthåndværk og design 2015

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This is a dramatic exhibition and not just for the pieces in the show - the venue in a warehouse out at the Carlsberg site in Copenhagen is quite something.

Dating from the late 1960s, this building was a warehouse, Lagerkælder 3, a bottle store for Carlsberg brewery, and has a massive concrete structure, to support all the weight of beer that was kept here before it was transported out. Climbing up to the top floor by the concrete staircase it feels, in its abandoned state, like a multi-storey car park or an abandoned factory that might have had a role in The Killing. There is a huge steel lift but the stairs gave me a chance to explore a bit. The warehouse is about to undergo a massive refurbishment as offices and cultural spaces by the architects Gottlieb Paluden as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the whole Carlsberg site.

 

 

Emerging at the top floor the contrast is dramatic with white-painted concrete, extensive lighting and a new wooden floor for the exhibition space.

For Kunsthåndværk og Design - the Danish Craftwork and Design Association - the contrast between dereliction and swish display and between the architecture of industrial mass production and the highly individual skill and quality of the craft works on display must have been almost too good to believe as the venue for their biennial exhibition.

The theme for this year is Making is Connecting and the expressed aim is to explore new technologies, new materials and new techniques and to promote new connections or new collaborations between different disciplines within the professional works of craft, art, design and architecture.

There are new works from 28 craft artists or in some cases the works are a collaboration by two designers or makers.

At the opening of the exhibition these works, that I've reviewed briefly below, caught my attention and seemed to reflect best the interests and themes explored on this site but the exhibition as a whole is incredible.

Carlsberg Byen, Bryggernes Plads 11, 1799 Copenhagen V

The exhibition is open daily until the 29th of August. For more information see the Biennale web site.

 

Barndom

Connecting Childhood by Annemette Beck and Mette Maya Gregersen

A collaboration between a ceramic artist and a textile designer using PVC rings and porcelain knots ... presumably the title suggests that returning to a more open or child-like way of playing with materials, exploring ideas without the restrictions of preconceptions, has produced something new and less conventional.

Coh&Co bicycle

Mette Walsted and Poul Harder Cohen

Here wood and carbon fibre replace a traditional metal frame to create a bicycle that has a level of craftsmanship normally associated with the work of Danish cabinet makers.

"Hand-built in Copenhagen using local materials, this is a sustainable injection into the throwaway culture that is prevalent in much of the cycle production industry. The aesthetic beauty of the bike compels us to take care of it."

Coh&Co

Nominated for the Biennial Award

Connections

Lone Bedsted

Elements in wool with two colours for each, knitted on a jacquard machine, and connected in different ways.

Colours and patterns within each piece were inspired by trawling nets of local fishermen and Nordic knitting patterns.

Cross Roads

Vibeke Rohland

Vibeke again contrasts the heavy manufactured material of the backing - one of her 'commercial' designs for Kvadrat and the other a cotton denim - with the application of a thick apparently free-form impasto of silk-screen prints and paint. The Cross Roads of the title here refers to the "unpredictable factor that arises during the production of new work, where strict craftsmanship meets art in a free unfolding of expression".

The layers of pigment create complex levels of depth and changes dramatically the way the textile hangs and moves to show a complex relationship between freely applied areas of colour that over a large area take on the distinct qualities of a repeat pattern.

for other posts here about the work of Vibeke Rohland

De fire Temperamenter

The four temperaments by Helene Vonsild

Here weaving becomes an incredible combination of virtuoso skill and intellectual games. The same weave pattern is repeated in all four pieces but with very different materials - one is a heavy linen - one with fine wool and a silver thread - one with paper cord and a synthetic fibre so it curls and changes in unpredictable ways with any movement and one in silk with a waxed fibre that produces an incredible textile that has shape memory so it can be set into a position that it retains rather like working with paper for traditional Japanese paper sculptures.

For all four fabrics, the weave was adjusted and deconstructed on the loom and all four were conceived from the start as costumes whose form and cut was an integral part of the weaving process .... so concept, craftsmanship, mastery of technique and the execution of the design are absolutely and indivisibly united.

The designs represent the four temperaments of Melancholy, Sanguinity, Irascibility and the Phlegmatic.

See profile on Helene Vonsild for more about this piece and her work

Det er ikke svinets skyld

It is not the pig's fault by Inger Heebøll

Here multiples are used to give the modern breed of pig some sense of an individual personality although the text for the work points out that 20 million pigs are produced in Denmark each year so it becomes impossible to see them as individual.

These heads are contrasted with the freedom and naturalness of wild boars also modelled as part of the work.

Hjertet er Rødt

Red is the heart byJørgen Hansen and Bent Vinkler

Large concentric rings of interworked willow branches tied with braided bark encircle a gigantic vessel balanced on a rock. It is the striking contrast of textures and surfaces and the strong colours that make this piece mesmerising but it is the sweeping lines that seem to define and break and expand and constrict the space. The scale and the drama of the work challenges any attempt to define the work specifically as either sculpture or as a craft work. 

Ingen tite

No title by Søren Thygesen

Bricks that are sheared and then stacked to form an almost organic and sculptured shape.

Again this work challenges preconceptions that bricks, particularly modern bricks, should be rectangular and uniform: surely if bricks combine, they combine to form a flat vertical wall or a floor? ... but here bricks become the soft fluid surface of a structure as if seen through the distortion of water in a pool.

"The smooth bricks are sheared in profile where they conjoin. This method translates organic form into the aesthetics of the bricks." Søren Thygesen

Lamper

Lamps by Lisbet Frills, Uffe Black Nielsen 

"Friis&Black's Nordic lamps exist at the crossroads where handcraftsmanship and architectural elements meet."

There are five rings with LED lights mounted on the second and fourth ring of this large lamps 840mm across and 360mm high.

Lighting has always played a strong part in Danish interiors and there is a long and well-established tradition of complex designs playing with directed and carefully controlled light and playing with the contrast between parts that are opaque and parts that are brightly illuminated.  

Tekstilt finér

Textile veneer by Else-Rikke Bruun

This work takes as a starting point the technique of weaving but translates it from textiles to timber with a solid wood warp and bands of veneer for the weft. The screen has a beautiful sinuous line and has a very strong texture that creates an amazing and dramatic contrast between the natural tone of the wood and deep shadow.

Things Change

Maria Bang Espersen

Five glass vessels appear to be conventional vases but the form is deliberately crude and each uses different materials for decoration with shards of glass, brick and stone. These alien materials cause the thin hand-blown glass to stress and crack and possibly, over a period of time, break into fragments.

Trellis

Åsa Alm - carpenter Andrea Stokholm

Made in ash, the design of the chair plays clever games with conventional forms by using less common details of construction so here the overall shape is reminiscent of a good, well-made, country chair with a spindle back but the arms are robust, sweeping round and down with horizontal bars below the arm rest that echo the rails between the legs to give the piece much more character ... it is more like a sculpture and here that is emphasised by the dramatic light and shadow.

August for design in Copenhagen

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It looks as if August will be a busy month for art, crafts and design in Copenhagen. 

Biennalen for Kunsthåndværk og Design

Carlsberg Byen, Bryggernes Plads 11, floor 6, 1799 Copenhagen V

1 - 30 August, daily 11 to 6pm

A major exhibition of works by leading Danish makers and designers from the national association of craft - Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere

www.biennalen.dk

Copenhagen Fashion Week

5 - 9 August

Key shows are at the Bella Center and at the Forum but there will be a press launch in the town hall square and events held in showrooms all over the city. Revolver, an independent trade fair, will be at Øksnehallen, Tietgensgade 65, Copenhagen V - on the edge of the Meatpacking area. 

www.copenhagenfashionweek.com

Jægersborggade Street Festival

Saturday 8 August 12 to 10pm

northmodern

13 - 15 August

The major Design Trade Show for design from the Nordic region at the Bella Center - held in January and in August

www.northmodern.com

Kunsthåndværker Markedet - the open-air craft market

13 - 15 August, Frue Plads, Copenhagen

A major open-air market on the square on the north side of Vor Frue Kirke - the cathedral

There will be over 120 stalls around the square with craftspeople from all over Denmark including potters, glassmakers, textile designers and basket makers. The fair is an annual event organised by the Danish association of craftspeople and designers - Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere

craftsfair.dk

Copenhagen Art Week

21 - 30 August

Events at galleries and museums throughout the city and the Copenhagen region

copenhagenartweek.dk

Chart Art Fair

21 - 23 August for Contemporary Art at the Charlottenborg Palace on Kongens Nytorv with an extensive programme of concerts, talks, performances and an architecture competition to design and build a pavilion or an installation. There will also be pop-up restaurants in the courtyard

www.chartartfair.com

Copenhagen Cooking Festival

21 - 30 August 

Including the Risotto World Championship

www.copenhagencooking.com

SMK Friday

21 August

At the Royal Cast Collection 4pm - 10pm

At the warehouse on the harbour. Organised by Statens Museum for Kunst -  the National Gallery - with street food, artists and a sound stage

www.smk.dk

KADK graduation diploma show

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This exhibition of student work covers architecture, conservation, furniture design, product design, graphic and computer design and is the diploma show of the graduates this year from Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering (the Royal Danish Academy or KADK for short).

It is worth spending time looking at the works to assess the current state of architecture and design in Denmark and to see the phenomenal talent of the students now coming through the education system here.

It is possible to identify a number of key themes - not so much in terms of the assigned project headings but more in the sense of the concerns that are now becoming a focus of attention for young architects and designers - so in architecture one strong theme that stands out was building on marginal land … particularly open or exposed or difficult rock landscape with little vegetation. Clearly, this is, in part, a response to changes in global climate where constructing settlements further and further north may become necessary as rising temperatures and lack of rain make living at latitudes closer to the Equator much more difficult but also of course young architects from Greenland and Iceland do come to Denmark for their training and the landscape that is familiar to them is very different from the green landscape and woodlands around the Baltic.

Other clear themes on the architecture side were the use of hefty timbers for framing, rather than steel, in the roofing tradition of the warehouses of Copenhagen, and an imaginative approach to using a diverse range of facing materials. 

The work of nearly 150 architecture students are on display through two large halls and the projects are grouped in sections including Spatial Design, Urbanism and Societal Change, Ecology and Tectonics and Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability.

Throughout all the work graphics are diverse in terms of style of presentation but of an incredible high standard, as I suppose you would expect at this level and with CAD and high-quality printing available to everyone, but it was also good to see the continued use of models, some of amazing detail and complexity, rather than students just relying on computer 3D graphic modelling and rendering.

To the other side of the entrance to the building is a third large hall with the design exhibition of the work of more than 80 design students and here the disciplines include furniture design, textile design, industrial and ceramic design, production design, fashion design, typography, a section defined as game art, design and development and the largest group of students whose projects came under the heading Visual Culture and Identity.

I had to smile at a number of projects around cycling … only in Copenhagen eh? … but there were some incredibly sophisticated furniture designs with some work on modular furniture but it was also interesting to see the number of pieces that build on and take forward Danish cabinet-making traditions.

The exhibition is in the old smithy building on Holmen at the heart of the design schools on the south side of the harbour in Copenhagen. For visitors who do not know this part of the city, it is well worth spending time walking around the area looking at the industrial and naval buildings that have been taken into new use as this area has been revitalised over the last decade or so with the transfer of the area from naval dockyards to academic and residential use.

For details of opening times and so on go to the current exhibition link in the right-hand column of this site or see the KADK site. The exhibition is closed until 26th July for the Danish holiday but then opens until the 16th August.

I will return to the show once the exhibition re opens and will review some of the individual projects in more detail here on this site next month.

Increasing details: an analysis of good design

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My posts through June were mostly about 3daysofdesign - a series of events that were held in Copenhagen at the end of May. Just to conclude those posts, I want to write a bit more here about one of the events … an exhibition at The Silo, called Re-Framing Danish Design, that was  staged as a collaboration between Frame magazine and the new online design site DANISH™. 

 

Two young designers, Niek Pulles from the Netherlands and Sebastian Herkner from Germany, were invited to assess or reinterpret 10 specific design pieces from Denmark that cover a wide range of styles and dates from the Safari Chair designed by Kaare Klint in 1933 to the Fiber Chair from Muuto that first went into production last year. What linked all the pieces - apart from being Danish - is that they are all still in production.

Both designers are already well established in their own studios and have a rapidly growing international reputaion - so they have clear, professional opinions about design - they have, presumably, views on how new design can and should move forward but also, as they come from neighbouring countries, they have an appropriate detachment from the Danish design tradition and from Danish design training.

The ten pieces were selected by the organisers of the exhibition and sent to their design studios. 

Pulles decided to adapt the pieces by recovering them in challenging colours or interesting textures and his part of the exhibition attracted a lot of attention because these transformations seemed irreverent and possibly, for some, shocking and compounded a view that Danish design, compared to work from other countries, can appear to be too safe, too boring and lacking in humour. Pulles rectified that. The works he produced were lots of things but not boring.

Herkner, on the other hand, took a more subtle and analytical approach and for me that was actually more interesting. He worked with the pieces around in his studio and, as they became familiar, he identified specific qualities in each design and tried to appreciate what gave a sense of meaning to the designs. By sharing that process with us, through the exhibition, he also revealed something more general about how we analyse design and about how we decide which qualities and characteristics can make designs good or great or try to see which qualities explain why some designs retain their popularity.  

Several of these Danish pieces are very well-known - particularly the Series 7 Chair by Arne Jacobsen - and most are widely acknowledged as good design - they have had a place in many Danish homes for many years and they are still purchased in large enough quantities to ensure their place in a current catalogue.  

Clearly that in itself raises interesting questions. Do some pieces continue in production because they are acknowledged to be well designed? Is it simply because they have never been bettered? Is it because they acquire a sort of stamp of general approval or, possibly, is it just because they are familiar, they are a safe choice for the buyer? 

Although it was not discussed in the exhibition, there is also an interesting insight here into a commercial aspect of design and manufacture: designers and manufacturers have to be able to distinguish which qualities in a design might generally be described as good by a professional designer but might not be appreciated widely enough to make the piece viable in commercial terms.


By placing a magnifying glass in a frame or stand with a fixed relationship to the pieces, Herkner made the viewer look at a point or area that he wanted to emphasise so each white frame holding the magnifying glass was different and each was specific to its piece and the position and the angle of the magnifying glass was fixed. A large magnifying glass could have been left free beside the object with the implication that the viewer had to look closely at the details of the materials and the construction techniques of the design but this was much more controlled than that.  

In a wider context Herkner was, in effect, saying don’t take these designs for granted. Don’t just shrug and say I bought this because I like it or I bought this because my parents had one when I was little or I bought it because the design book said it was a classic. He was inviting visitors to the exhibition to really look and look carefully to see why both the design and the way each piece is manufactured is so good.

But this assessment was not just about looking at detail and appreciating quality. 

Herkner produced a set of A5 prompt cards. On one side is the framework and magnifying glass in white silhouette against a strong purple/blue and on the reverse there is a simple outline drawing of the piece and a brief summary of his reaction to the object and a single word that sums up this response and the cards were held together with a broad white rubber band. Simple but very very stylish.

There are eleven cards in the pack with the first one having a short introduction under the heading ‘Increasing details’. Then the ten specific cards are:

  •      simplicity        The Caravaggio Lamp by Cecilie Manz
  •     craftsmanship    J39 Chair by Børge Mogensen
  •     sustainability        Fiber Chair from Muuto by Iksos Berlin
  •     functionality       A Series 7 Chair from Fritz Hansen by Arne Jacobsen
  •     modularity        The Montana System by Peter J Lassen
  •     self-explanatory    Plateau Side Table by Søren Rose
  •     mobility        Tray Table by Hans Bølling
  •     poetry            Safari Chair from Carl Hansen by Kaare Klint
  •     transfer        Nordic Antique Wallpaper by Heidi Zilmer
  •     irony            Tongue Chair from Howe by Arne Jacobsen

 

 

Through the magnifying glass, the viewer was directed to a specific feature and in some cases that explained the characteristic or definition given to the piece but in some it focused on an aspect of the piece that was actually unrelated to the word or the text. To take the Safari Chair as one example, the chair was not assembled in the exhibition and the magnifying glass focused on the brass locking nut that holds the chair together when it is in use … so a crucial but normally overlooked technical feature of the design rather than something ‘poetic’ and for the chair by Borge Mogensen the magnifying glass was focused on the woven seat and that appears to comment on texture or the use of materials but, in fact, the card explains that several years ago Sebastian had visited a paper mill near Barcelona where paper cord for seating is made and this formed, for him, a personal connection with the work.

 

 

I confess that I was slightly confused when Herkner, in his introduction, emphasises that these ‘ten characteristics are interchangeable.’ Although I can appreciate that, for instance, the Safari Chair, if seen on a theatre or film set for Out of Africa is merely using a period piece in a poetic way but on an urban balcony in Copenhagen might be ironic but it could never be described as simple or six Muuto chairs around a dining table become modules and are functional but have nothing to do with mobility.

What is important is that Herkner is recommending careful observation and careful analysis of the object in reference to our normal criteria for assessing a design - its function, its aesthetics, its use of materials, the technical details and so on - but he also wants the viewer or user to analyse their own reaction and interact with the piece.

So what at first appears to be clinical … what could be more clinical than a magnifying glass? … rapidly becomes an analysis of our emotional reaction to the design and our connection with a piece. So this then becomes a very personal interpretation of the term reframing for both Herkner and for the visitor to the exhibition.

My only real criticism is that this might be seen as an academic exercise by a designer for designers. He excludes any form of judgement or opinion - which you might expect if design works are given art gallery status under a spotlight - and there is no context if these are to be seen as readily available product pieces that anyone can buy. I’m not complaining about that but it was interesting that no attempt was made to assess how these pieces are used either individually or together so where and how does the buyer fit in? 

Someone could move into the Silo - in the space above the exhibition - when the new apartments are finished and purchase all these design pieces. It’s possible. So, how would they work together? Would they show the buyer had a clear appreciation of good design? Would it be tasteful or slightly odd to have a Safari Chair alongside a Montana shelf system? Well it all depends on the colours chosen and if the Safari Chair was used as a focus/discussion piece or if, maybe, it had been inherited from the family and was clearly well used and well loved. Or would putting these objects together, even theoretically, be seen as a cautious approach to design, buying only what is recognised or generally accepted as good design?

Sebastian Herkner raises some incredibly important questions and ideas about design in general but specifically about how we respond to good design and how important it is that we analyse and try to understand that reaction.

 


Next month, there will be another opportunity to see the exhibition at Northmodern at the Bella Center in Copenhagen from the 13th through to the 15th August.