Milan 2

Milan

Looking on the internet I've found some examples of recent exhibitions - trade fairs which I am imagining will be similar to what we will experience in Milan.

Images taken from 100% Design 2008 London - http://www.100percentdesign.co.uk/page.cfm/link=363 and the link is to a video.. get this, with John Miller on it talking about the show, it's really interesting and in light of what we are doing quite informative.

The buzz words for the show as stated by "that's design" are: innovation, sustainability and interactivity. So the design of the stand, and exhibits that we come up with must be reflected in these words.

I imagine innovation to mean new, exciting, different, unusual, experimentation.
I imagine sustainability to mean, materials, process and also desirability (links into innovation).
I imagine interactivity to mean, tactile, movement, audience participation.

Again all of this reflected within the work and the stand.

My view on the ideas that have so far been put forward amongst the group

...Before I write this, I want to make clear that this is my opinion and not that of the group.

Boxes

Pro's

Easy to stack or configure
Uniform - people can get on with there work and not worry about display
They are generally made of recycled material


Con's

They are cardboard, brown, not particularly attractive to look at and could easily look shoddy.
Although they are "recycled" so are a lot of other things, and we should not assume that everyone is blind to this.
They are not very durable and could easily bend crush in transit or on the stand.
Cardboard has been used before, and will not look truly original unless we can be very original with it.

Reinforced cardboard may work - but could be hard to work with - cut (band saw, router) - though needs to be considered, would be the better option.


My own view is that the stand should have objects within it, either in the form of plinths (which we can customise) and/or hanging objects. It will make for a much more interesting exhibition and it will draw peoples focus around the stand and this in turn will create a form of interactivity. The space is 6m x 3m, which is about the size of a container and the it would seem a shame not use the space to it's full potential.

Having looked at other stands on the net, I would be interested in putting a false wall, an illusion of a wall, maybe a textile with shapes cut into it, or cards hanging on fish wire, an object which people must move around.

contractworld - http://www.bustler.net

bouroullec_litclos_award_09_11 - http://www.scarlet.be

“The « Lit Clos » puts forward a simple idea. It’s a box that’s sufficiently closed to accommodate a bed and the intimacy that it presupposes, and at the same time sufficiently open not to be claustrophobic. The box is on an architectural scale, between a bed and a bedroom. It uses techniques from furniture manufacture: painted plywood, soldered steel, and above all there’s the DIY assembly of the kind that you get with a piece of Ikea furniture. These characteristics give you a certain ease of assembly and of installation. While it's admittedly more complex than an ordinary bed, it’s still simpler than putting a bedroom together. There is a play on the scale of the space. The « Lit Clos » frees you from the necessity of building a whole bedroom, and opens up numerous possibilities in relation to the place where one sleeps. The « Lit Clos » exists in a low and a high version, respectively 70 cm and 180 cm off the ground. “

Extracts from the book “ Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec” released by Phaidon in 2003.

http://www.d4th.com/31

Colony

I really like this idea, there is more to work with than in the boxes (I think), I recon I'm going down the route of having a space which contains objects of different shape and size, these could all be hexagonal but the size could change - the repetition of the shape would go some way towards creating a harmonized view, and still allow for one offs (peoples work)

salon_satellite,_Milan_Furniture_Fair,_Italy_2006 - http://www.bihain.com/

Materials

Boxes do not necessarily mean light weight, unless they are flat packed and assembled on the stand, they could be cumbersome to carry and very easy to break (unless they were made from reinforced cardboard)

I think that we could achieve a much better look using a different material, possibly a light weight ply (could be expensive) but we can cut it and it is strong, and because it is wood, it still falls into the green material.

We could create a good look and we could more easily make things with the ply - stacking system, shelves/hexagons, use it as something to print on, make something with.

These are ideas which will change.

MILAN

The things which for me have stood out at the Milan meetings.

• People need to feel happy about the way their work is being displayed.

• People want to be able to make their own expression and not feel pressed into producing something which represents the voice of the group and not them as individuals

• We need to create a good impression, and also drawing people in to the stand.

o The stand needs to be exciting to look at but not dominate the work.

o The work and the design of the stand need to ‘hang together’ correctly

• We have limited budget and time


Some ideas, only preliminary.



Example of how the rope could look..

Gendered Spaces

Something that I am interested in is how we interact in space. How the structures and landscapes that we move around influence the way we feel and perceive things. If we were empty shells just experiencing the world around us with no pre-conceived thoughts or ideas, how would we experience space?

There is a picture in a book called ‘Eye and Brain’ by Richard Gregory of a baby in a room and the floor is chequered in black and white. On one half of the floor there is a sheet of glass, and the exposed piece of glass is edged in a plastic strip, the other half is just the chequered floor covering. The baby is placed on the half of the floor which is not covered by glass, and left to crawl around, but no matter what encouragement the baby is given it will not cross the glass. The baby perceives the glass as being another plane and therefore will not risk crossing it in case it were to fall. This is an example of the way that our brain can trick us into believing that a situation is not what it seems.

The fact that we are preconditioned through our own personal histories means that when we enter into a space the way we read it often depends on the emotional connections that we assign to given aspects of the experience. For the baby the glass was understood as a step or a stair from which it would fall and this translated to emotions would mean an accident and the subsequent hurt. Any grown up would be not be fooled by this illusion. When we can gain control of our senses then we are able to judge situations clearly. No matter what our history is we will always have preconceptions, and interpret things in a personal way, our own set of transcripts running in our brains at any given moment. That said if all of these transcripts with all their different stories could be expressed in terms of physical objects, we would all be carrying literally loads of baggage, with each object relating to another ad-infinitum.

This is kind of related to what I am reading at the moment, Sexuality and Space edited by Beatriz Colomina, Her paper is titled The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism. The book talks about architecture of the 20th century. It especially focuses on the idea of gendered spaces, be they perceived, photographic or physical, and how spaces were designed for use with both, the male and the female in mind.

It goes further on to describe the way spaces were even designed with exclusivity in mind, separating the man and the woman by assigning each space that they would naturally gravitate towards, for arguments sake the kitchen for the woman and the garage for the man. It also goes on to say that because it was mainly men studied architecture, buildings were mostly designed by men, for men and by men for women. Which meant that the architects would often design with themselves in mind, not addressing the need to transcend the space in between. Although somewhat contentious this is an idea explored in the book.

In this essay she compares the architecture of La Corbusier (1887 -1965) and Adolf Loos. (1870-1933) Loos is obsessed with an architecture that looks inwards, focussing on the design of the interior.

“The house does not have to tell anything to the exterior, instead all it’s richness must be manifest in the interior.” (pg. 94)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirekkubicek/2144181366/

Using the human ‘gaze’ as a tool, Loos is able to control the perception of space. Putting the spectator at odds with themselves due to the way the building (Loos) dictates movements. With this aspect to his architecture Loos becomes the invisible hand that guides the movement within his spaces.

"Like the placement of the "theatre box" at the periphery of the Müller House, from which a view of the exterior demands a view through the interior, the inhabitants of Loos's houses become both actors and spectators. Loos locates architecture at the mirror stage, at the threshold between the pre-castration comfort of the womb and the subsequent tension of split-subjectivity. Indeed, in the Moller and Müller Houses, the male space--the library--is positioned apart from the household traffic, whereas the female space--the upper room--not only concludes but overlooks a sequence of social spaces. The female figure thus becomes the guardian of the private. Colomina further notes the proximity of mirrors to doors in Loos's Tristan Tzara house, which recalls the framed mirror hanging against the window at Freud's studio in Berggasse 19. Both function to conflate inside and outside, where the reflection in the mirror is also a self-portrait projected onto the external world."

Extract from: The Mask of Architecture. Christoper Ho. Performing Arts Journal 19.3 (1997) 107-110

In Colomina's essay she shows Corbusier’s photographic advertisements for his own houses. There is an interesting paragraph where Beatriz Colomina analyses these photographs.

“We could accumulate more evidence. Few photographs of Le Corbusier’s buildings show people in them. But in those few, women always look away from the camera: most of the time they are shot from the back and they almost never occupy the same space as men. Take the photographs of Immeuble Clarte in the Oeuvre complete, for example. In one of them, the woman and the child are in the interior, they are shot from the back facing the wall; the men are in the balcony, looking out, toward the city (figure 26). In the next shot, the woman, again shot from the back, is leaning against the window to the balcony and looking at the man and child who are on the balcony (figure 27). This spatial structure is repeated very often, not only in the photographs but also in the drawing of La Corbusier’s projects. In a drawing of the Wagner project, for example, the woman in the upper floor is leaning against the veranda, looking down at her hero, the boxer who is occupying the jardin suspendu. He looks at his punching bag. And in the drawing Ferme radieuse, the woman in the kitchen looks over the counter to the man sitting at the dining room table. He is reading the newspaper. Here again the woman is placed “inside,” the man “outside,” the woman looks at the man, the man at the “world.” Extract from: Sexuality and Space, The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism. Beatriz Colomina pg. 104



This shows that spaces, gendered or otherwise can be designed in a way so as subtly affect the emotional experience of the spectator. I find it especially interesting to see the way women were marginalised in such a way that excluded them from engagement in the more serious world of men and their newspapers. Looking at space with this psychological twist highlights interesting things, including architecture and politics, when considering monumental architecture like palaces or the ‘Houses of Parliament’ you have to wonder what were the motivating choices behind the designs.






I find this image from a recent exhibition (‘Psycho Buildings’ The Hayward Gallery 2008) really amazing. It is eerie and dreamlike, making 'possible' out of 'impossible'.

“The space I’m interested in is not only a physical one, but an intangible, metaphorical and psychological one. For me, space is that which encompasses everything. So in that sense, one could say that my art looks at diverse forms and media through the prism called reflection on space.” Do Ho Suh, *1962 Seoul, South Korea

http://www.tba21.org/program/current/63/artworks/555?category=current

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

Panoramic picture of St Ives bay, November 2008.

Used perspective tool in photoshop. It doesn't match perfectly and it's published much smaller that I'd hoped, but I like it anyway.

Books

Books that I have been looking at lately, not in any particular order.

Ideas for manifesto

manifesto
• noun (pl. manifestos) a public declaration of policy and aims.

— ORIGIN Italian, from Latin manifestus ‘caught in the act, flagrant’.

Compact Oxford English Dictionary http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/manifesto?view=uk

During last term, when we started to look at manifestos, I had a vague idea that manifestos were political tools used to publicise a parties beliefs. This is true, but also it seems true of any person(s) who wishes to declare their beliefs political or otherwise for public scrutiny.

Whilst thinking about what to write in my own manifesto, I had a look on the internet to see what kind of manifestos already existed, and was happy to discover that you can pretty much find a manifesto to cover every topic you can think of, of which I read about three, not including the ones which we have covered in lectures, namely Dieter Rams of Braun and Bruce Mau from Bruce Mau Design.

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Dieter Rams, foermer head of Design for Braun http://www.designmuseum.org/design/dieter-rams

Allow events to change you
Forget about good
Process is more important than outcome
Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child)
Go deep
Capture accidents
Study
Drift
Begin anywhere
Everyone is a leader
Harvest ideas
Keep moving
Slow down
Don't be cool
Ask stupid questions
Collaborate
_______________. Intentionally left blank
Stay up late
Work the metaphor
Be careful, take risks
Repeat yourself
Make your own tools
Stand on someones shoulders
Avoid software
Don't clean your desk
Don't enter awards competitions
Read only left hand pages
Make new words
Think with your mind
Organisation – Liberty
Don't borrow money
Listen carefully
Take field trips
Make mistakes faster
Imitate
Scat
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crack it, fold it.
Explore the other edge
Coffee breaks, cab rides and green rooms.
Avoid fields. Jump Fences
Laugh
Remember
Power to the people

Bruce Mau http://www.brucemaudesign.com/incomplete_manifesto.html

Both of these manifestos are amazing, and just reading through them it becomes apparent how complicated a manifesto can be. The idea that by stating your intention you are in fact challenging yourself to stand for your beliefs, or embody your ideas. Creating a list, from the most important through to the least important (through no other reason than it is the last in the list) seems to say that if I could just focus on the top four then the others would not matter, presents a problem in itself.

There are a couple of other manifestos which I think are really interesting. The first one is very succinct, but complicated. It seems to cover many of the issues that face designers today, and states the obvious need to think about the planet before we rush headlong into design. But not only that, it also highlights the problems which we face from 'over design', having created a world of superfluous items whose life it is only exist to fulfill our insatiable appetite of ever changing needs and wants, that is at once rendered useless and throw away. Well, not in all cases, but many things do seem over designed or badly thought out. My own example of this is my phone charger, having got the phone about two years ago, my nokia charger broke about 10 months after getting it, and now I am on my 5th, (not nokia) and it annoys me.

...designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about, this is kind of grotesque. "Consumer" isn't a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be.

The Manifesto is by Allan Chochinov. 1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design. http://www.core77.com/reactor/04.07_chochinov.asp

It’s really good to read and totally up to date so everything that he says is relevant.

The other one I’ve looked at, but don’t claim to understand is ‘The Manifesto of Surrealism’ by Andre Breton in 1924, it goes on for a total of 14 pages, written as a rebuttal to the DaDa movement, also in response to the political unrest of the time. Many artists and avant garde thinkers were suppressed throughout Europe at this time. Andre Breton was a dadaist and then surrealist writer, who wrote poetry and philosophy, exploring ideas concerned with self expression and stretching the imagination to it’s limits – through whatever means possible.

Definition of Surrealism in Document:
Manifesto of Surrealism http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm

Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

Andre Breton explored idea to do with ‘automatic writing’ as well as dream analysis, concepts first used by Freud as a tools for psychoanalysis. Both of these ideas were quite new to science at the time and so by experimenting with them Breton was actually trying to break into new territories.

The manifesto is interesting because it tries to approach it’s subject from a philosophical (and very surreal) standpoint. The thoughts suggest how to ‘proceed forward’ in their fashion, in this aspect similar to other manifestos. I find the surrealists very interesting because their work is often about distorting and rearranging normal ideas and processes to create something very different, possibly in opposition to the initial idea. A website which sets out to examine this document and others in detail is Surrealartportal.com, with pages dedicated to the Manifesto of Surrealism. http://manifesto.surrealartportal.com/passages_by_nerval.html

Glass Dome

These images were taken from XS Green, a book which contains small architectural designs. The glass dome (Lighter Than Air, Stuttgart, Germany 2004. Lucio Blandini with Werner Sobek) is 2.5m long and 8.5m high and is made of several pieces of curved glass all stuck together with a special type of glue, the first glass structure of its kind because of the fact that the glass is supporting of it's own weight.

I also think that it is very beautiful because of the invisibility of it in it's setting. Probably it does not appear to you until you are nearly upon it, and the different weather, snow, rain, sun rays would all create a different narrative for the piece.

I did this a while ago, but was not really sure how it connects to the rest of my work. It was just messing around but I still like the idea, thought that I could do something similar outside but the practicality of it is quite complicated.


Andy gave Emma these little figures to give the idea of scale, they do change the way you perceive the space. Queen mum having a rest, and there is a toy soldier in the background looking for targets.