Practice Futures

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A major exhibition, Practice Futures, has opened at KADK - the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

The full title of the exhibition is Technology in Architecture, Practice Future, Building Design for a New Material Age, and this is an import examination of that area, if you see it in terms of a Venn Diagram, where the disciplines or professional expertise of architecture, engineering, techniques of construction and the development and the technology of materials meet and overlap.

Fifteen research projects are presented here from international PhD students working in six major European research departments and working with fourteen established partners including major architectural practices, engineering companies and construction companies.

These ongoing studies are reassessing well-established materials such as timber and concrete and rediscovering or reassessing or developing techniques to shape, bend, finish and join materials to achieve new forms of construction such as large scale, computer-controlled extrusion or printing and the development of new materials for large-scale building projects. 

This is about new tools and new approaches for reassessing traditional materials and established craft techniques but also about using computers to assess complex information; to solve unconventional design problems and to control systems for constructing new forms and new types of building. 

Projects presented here are prototypes to demonstrate customised solutions to realise challenging new construction projects that not only have to take into account the need for high energy conservation but also have to tackle rapidly-developing problems or social pressures from population growth, and, as a direct consequence, find new solutions to the demands of cities that are growing at an unprecedented speed. This is construction design trying to deal with political and economic constraints and with the added and pressing demands of global climate change.

KADK Udstillingen og Festsalen
Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51-53
1435 København K

the exhibition continues until 7 December 2018

 

CHART Architecture - the Pavilions

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FRAME
designed by Malte Harrig, Karsten Bjerre and Katrine Hoff

 

In the two large courtyards of Kunsthal Charlottenborg are five pavilions … the setting for what is called CHART SOCIAL.

These pavilions or CHART ARCHITECTURE are the winning designs from an open competition held earlier in the year for young architects and architecture and design students.

 

 

OPEN RESOURCE
by Dennis Andersson, Mikkel Roesdahl and Xan Browne

THE MANY CHAIRS PAVILION
by Sofia Luna Steenholdt, Joachim Makholm Michelsen, Emil Bruun Meyer and Casper Philip Ebbesen

TIGHT KNIT
designed by Jan Sienkiewicz

SUM OF US: A CLOUD OF HUMAN EMOTION
designed by Sean Lyon in collaboration with Space 10

 

Løsninger - exhibition of work by graduates from the School of Architecture, Design and Conservation

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There are just a few more days to see the work of the 232 architects and designers who graduated this summer from the schools of architecture and design at Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering - KADK or the Danish Royal Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

 

the exhibition is open every day to the 19 August 2018
KADK
Udstillingen og Festsalen
Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51-53

Den Nya Kartan - Form Design Center Malmö

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An initial report by Jenny Nordberg, begun in 2013 and completed through 2014, looked at how small-scale production of furniture, ‘gadgets’ and other design objects could be part of a sustainable community within Skåne, a clearly defined and relatively small region. The report considered ethical values in consumption and looked generally at production and at manufacturing skills surviving in southern Sweden. In part it seems to have followed a growing desire that more food should be produced locally. 

One aim of the consequent project is to reduce transport costs for both materials and for finished goods but also it was hoped that focusing design and production locally would also mean that there would be fewer intermediaries in the commercial chain. 

Early in 2015 twenty-four designers were selected along with twenty-four manufacturers to collaborate in the project. They were chosen in part for their curiosity about the project but also for their openness to trying new business partnerships.

Many of the designers had worked both locally and internationally and the manufacturers ranged in scale from craftsmen, who are generally geared up to small production runs, to companies organised for larger-scale production. Each partnership was given freedom to determine what they would produce and how and much came down to developing personal as well as working relationships.

This project has also been about testing the form of collaboration, between designer and manufacturer, and aimed to establish a more equitable financial arrangement that moved away from the normal pattern of royalties for rights to reproduce a design to agreements where the designers and manufacturers share the expenses incurred in development and initial production but then also share the revenue.

Items or objects produced through the project cover a wide range of materials and manufacturing techniques including blown glass, ceramics, metal work, leather work and textiles and a wide range of items from stacking boxes to storage jars to lighting to jewellery and a champagne table.

That last item emphasises one curious aspect of the works presented. It would appear from the introduction to the exhibition that the designers and manufacturers were given freedom to choose what they would produce. Jenny Nordberg, who also curated the exhibition, commented on this:

“As a curator, I imagined that most people would design and produce saleable inexpensive items to show that it actually does not need to be particularly expensive by local production. There, I thought wrong. It has instead been mostly projects where both designers and manufacturers wanted to challenge themselves and show the breadth of their skills. Many of the projects … are unique, conceptual, luxurious, on the verge of unfeasible and overall, just amazing.”

 

Biophillia - Stoft & Zol Art

Unisex-kimono-kofta - Liv Andersson & Biommiga Gredelina

Vaporware Fluid

Andréson & Leibel och Humi-Glas (samt JFKemi)

SpegelrörPetra Lilja & Wallåkra Stenkårlsfabrik

Spegelrör

Petra Lilja & Wallåkra Stenkårlsfabrik

Transformer

Milan Kosovic & Thomas Alexandrsson

Stilleben

Sophia Lithell & Herman Andersson Plåt

1L=

Patrik Bengtsson & Genarps Lådfabrik

 

It is not clear if this shows that designers or manufacturers were concerned primarily to showcase their skills but that seems unlikely given the well-established careers and reputations of most. Possibly they wanted to use the opportunity to produce things they would not normally be able to work on. It could be more of a problem, in terms of ongoing viability and the possibility of extending the project, if they all felt that reasonable financial returns would only be possible through producing more expensive items or if they thought that their potential market would not be interested in buying just basic items. Perhaps it is simply that, at this initial stage in this project, more basic designs - so everyday household items such as tableware - actually need a much larger production run to return a profit.

 

All the designs are available through the web site.

the exhibition continues at Form Design Center in Malmö
until the 15th November and then transfers first
to the National Museum in Stockholm and then in 2016 to Vandalorum in Värnamo.

Den Nya Kartan - The New Map

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.

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

RE-FRAMING DANISH DESIGN

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This exhibition was a collaboration between DANISH™, the web site of the Danish Design & Architecture Initiative that was launched last November, along with FRAME, the design magazine and ten Danish manufacturers.

Two young designers, Sebastian Herkner who studied in Offenbach am Main in Germany, and now has a studio there, and Niek Pulles who trained at the Design Academy in Eindhoven but is now based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, were asked to take ten Danish design works as a starting point and, in any way they saw as appropriate, to make their own assessment or their own interpretation or their own translation of Danish design.

The design works for each of the designers were:

Tray Table, designed by Hans Bølling in 1963 and produced by Brdr. Krüger

Plateau, a new low side table by Søren Rose Studio for DK3

Caravaggio pendant light, by Cecilie Manz with the first version in 2005 for Lightyears

The Montana storage system from the company founded in 1982

Nordic Antique, a range of hand-painted and printed wallpapers by Heidi Zilmer

And there were 5 Chairs:

Series 7™ Chair, by Arne Jacobsen from 1955 and produced by Fritz Hansen

The Tongue Chair, by Arne Jacobsen from 1955 and produced by Howe

Chair J39, designed by Børge Mogensen in 1947 and produced by Fredericia Furniture

Safari Chair, designed by Kaare Klint from 1933 and produced by Carl Hansen & Søn

The Fiber Chair, designed by Iskos-Berlin and launched last year for Muuto

 

 

Both designers are building rapidly their own International careers - so both have a clear view of how the design industry is moving or should move forward but also have the perspective of someone within the profession but from neighbouring countries that have their own strong design traditions so they could be more detached in their assessment of Danish design than Danish designers.

Sebastian Herkner focused on the details and the quality of finish found in all the pieces by suspending large magnifying glasses from simple and elegant white-painted metal frameworks in front of the pieces. Each identified a different character or quality that had been observed as the works stood in the studio. Danish buyers demand extremely high production qualities but this is now taken as a given but the magnifying glass forces the viewer to focus in on pieces that, on the whole are so well established and so familiar, they rarely excite comment. In part this view also shows that simplicity is achieved by refining the elements until nothing can be added or taken away without compromising the integrity and beauty of the whole. With such a perfect starting point, or base, it is then the way that the owner uses the pieces that add individuality and personal history.

Niek Pulles took the opposite view, adding to the pieces himself, particularly adding texture but also pattern and colour. This hastened the time process by which families might add to and adapt the pieces to make them their own. One very marked and interesting difference was in the way the two designers approached the wallpaper by Heidi Zilmer. Although the tile version looks like a simple grid of dark lines over a uniform grey representing small square glazed tiles the magnifying glass showed the huge skill of the trompe l’oeil painting of crizzled glaze and irregular grout, here a deeper complexity than the apparent simplicity, whereas Niek Pulles used laser cutting to create new fine geometric patterns through the papers which were then overlaid to emphasise the way the papers themselves are built up through complex layers of paint and gilding.