PLANETARY BOUNDARIES - rethinking Architecture and Design

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This week is your last opportunity to see this important exhibition because Planetary Boundaries at the Royal Danish Academy on Holmen will close on Friday 5 April 2024.

The concept of Planetary Boundaries is a method for assessing the environmental state of our planet within nine areas that regulate the Earth's stability and balance. Humans have been successful because, over thousands of years, we have adapted to survive in a remarkable range of habitats from frozen tundra to parched landscapes with barely any vegetation and we have done that through the ways we have learned to exploit a huge range of natural resources. However, there are limits to those resources and limits to how much we can pollute the land, and the water and the atmosphere of Earth with waste before that has a serious impact. Mining, the generation of power and the consequent production of waste from industrial processes are all pushing those boundaries close to and, in many environments, way beyond those limits.

Shown here, is work from 25 research protects, that have looked at new materials or at new approaches to design and manufacturing and at changes in our building methods and planning policies that could control our demands for energy and reduce global emissions of CO2 and pollutants from mining extraction and from large-scale agricultural and industrial processes ... processes that have had such a detrimental impact on our rivers and seas and our atmosphere.

Manufacturing is responsible for over 50% of global energy usage and is responsible for 20% of global CO2 emissions.

A UN report from 2022 showed that construction work is now responsible for 34% of global energy demands and 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

So now, as the impact of climate change is becoming a reality, if there are not major changes to what we build and how we build, current predictions for the release of CO2 indicate that emissions from the production of building materials alone are set to double by 2060.

We have to to be rational and look at the materials we use and change how we use materials in building construction and in manufacturing.

Some of the new materials shown in the exhibition - such as fungi - or suggestions about how to use raw materials more efficiently or ideas about how to reuse salvaged materials have been proposed before but here there is a clear move on from theory to practical applications that have been or are being tested at scale.

For policy makers - now focused on making changes before we reach irreversible tipping points in global warming - these ideas may well be obvious and, for them, it is about when and how these changes are implemented but they will only be successful if a large number of people - the customers who are buying and using the products and the citizens who are living in and working in what could be very different forms of building - understand the reasons and are on board with those changes.

One project in the exhibition has looked at experiments in communal living with reduced personal space but increased shared space for shared facilities in housing and another project looks at increasing the density of housing in the suburbs of Copenhagen by building new houses on back plots and between existing buildings but such major change can only proceed with wide-spread consent.

The exhibition presents what are still options so the next stage should be broader and informed debate about how we use materials; about what we manufacture and how and about how we build and what we build in our cities in the future.

PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler
for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering
Danneskiold-Samsøe Allé, 1435 København K
21 Sep 2023 - 5 Apr 2024 

Six of the projects will be shown at Form, the design center in Malmö. 

PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
Form Design Center
Lilla torg 9, Malmö, Sweden
13 April - 2 June 2024

AKUT #5 ... CARE & REPAIR

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AKUT is an umbrella title for a series of exhibitions at the design museum that address “topics where design and designers are at the center of major societal dilemmas and challenges.”

In the past, textiles and clothing were expensive and were carefully stored and, when necessary, were repaired.

In the homes of the middle classes and the wealthy, clothes and bed linens were kept carefully in presses (large cupboards) or in a chest or a chest of drawers and seamstresses and tailors could re-hem or alter clothes if they were handed down or had to be “let out” as a child grew.

Both my grandmothers and my mother knitted and sewed and I remember through my childhood, that expensive Christmas cakes and fancy chocolates often came in tins and these were repurposed so all three women had tins with phenomenal collections of threads and yarns, patches of fabric and every sort and size of button to repair and alter our clothes. All three made their own curtains and cushion covers and no one in the family considered these tasks exceptional but as necessary skills that were common in most households.

One of the information panels in the exhibition suggests that “historically, the task of maintaining household textiles has fallen mainly to women” but my grandfather - my mother’s father - reupholstered chairs, made rag rugs, had a hefty iron cobbler’s tree on his work bench so that he could put new heals on our shoes and he had a leather hole punch so he could adjust or alter belts and straps. He was also a passable knitter as he had grown up on the east coast where men in his family - North Sea fishermen - knitted.

In the 1950s and through the 1960s and 1970s, most department stores had large haberdasheries and most towns had wool shops (for knitters) and fabric shops for dress makers and for curtains and upholstery.

Today, does anyone replace a zip or darn a sock or sew a leather patch on the arm of a jacket or a jumper? Surely now we have to repair and recycle for environmental reasons and this exhibition is a timely reminder that looks at techniques used to repair and reuse textiles.

AKUT #5 CARE & REPAIR / AKUT #5 CARE & REPAIR
Designmuseum Danmark / Design Museum Danmark
Bredgade 68, 1260 København K

from 3 November 2023 through to 8 September 2024

 
 

detail of a Danish “sampler” where a young girl practiced her skills in darning and needlework

Sustainability and reuse at Trends & Traditions 2023

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Sustainability is not just about which materials we use and how we use them but also about salvaging and reusing materials and about restoring or repurposing what we already have or, simply, making sure that what we buy has been made well so that it lasts.

Nearly ten years ago, for an early post, I wrote about Artek 2nd Cycle in Helsinki where the Finnish design company takes back it’s furniture for resale if it comes with it’s back story. I have just checked and I’m glad to say that 2nd Cycle is still going strong.

It was interesting at Trends & Traditions to see that Fritz Hansen, to its credit, is now offering a service to supply new shells for some of its chairs and also offers a service on it’s web site where you can buy spare parts for chairs including spacing blocks and new castors or wheel sets.

Too often, a small break or damage to one part of a chair or table has, in the past, meant that the whole thing has to be replaced …. it is inevitable that in day-to-day use parts like handles or hinges get broken but for too many large, international companies, keeping and selling spare parts has not been to their advantage …. why sell a small rubber block and tell a customer how to replace it if you can either sell a complete replacement piece of furniture or save yourself the hassle and cost of maintaining a stock of spare parts.

One of the clear selling points for Danish design is the quality of production - with the presumption therefore that the furniture will have a long life - but also Danish furniture companies have a strong sense of continuity …. Chair 7 has been in the Fritz Hansen catalogue continuously since 1955 so that is a lot of chairs that might simply need a new set of plastic caps for the legs. 

Sometimes, restoring or upgrading furniture needs specialists or the work requires equipment or specialist tools so there has to be work for a workshop in a city like Copenhagen where, for instance, the metal frames of chairs or tables could be professionally cleaned and then repainted to a high standard to be reunited with an original shell or high-quality top in ‘real’ wood or where a new colour or new upholstery can give furniture a new and equally long second life. 

Fritz Hansen SPARE PARTS