PIANO: LEGGERO IN OSLO In Oslo`s Nordic climate, plunged into

FEATURES
COURTESY MARCO MONTERzINO
JOHNNY TUCkER
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LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL
Johnny Tucker and Veronica
Simpson report on the best of
the best in this year’s extremely
busy London Design Festival
programme across TENT,
designjunction, Designersblock
and beyond. Featured are the
latest innovations including
tactile light fixtures, machines
for agitprop street activism, an
‘exquisite corpse’ vase generator
from Baccarat and new avenues
for reader participation, using
interactive newsprint
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THE PROLIFIC MR PENGELLY
In an exclusive profile, Johnny
Tucker finds designer Simon
Pengelly is an unstoppable force.
Having spent five years working
on Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class
seat-cum-bed, he had no less
than 15 projects on show at the
London Design Festival –
ranging from door furniture
to upholstery. Blueprint traces
Pengelly’s trajectory from
learning dovetail joints at his
dad’s knee, via Habitat, to the
operation of his own studio
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ADJAYE IN AMERICA
Gwen Webber reports from
Washington DC on the strangely
schizophrenic brief awarded to
British architect David Adjaye,
which saw him designing two
separate libraries under a joint
commission. Under the purview
of a district library building
programme, and considerable
financial restraints, Adjaye has
created two distinct formal
expressions of learning spaces,
whose kinship can be read from
the inside
kIRSTEN LINHOLM ASTRUP
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JOSHUUA YOSPYN
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PIANO: LEGGERO IN OSLO
In Oslo’s Nordic climate, plunged
into darkness throughout the
long months of winter, daylight
is in short supply. Herbert
Wright visits Norway to
investigate how master architect
Renzo Piano has demonstrated
more of the poetry in glazing
for which he is so well loved,
and finds the newly opened
Astrup Fearnley Museum for
Modern Art to be an elemental
symphony of natural light, water
and wood
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
I T’S
A
LONDON
THING
LAST MONTHWE BROUGHT YOU A TAST
ER OF THE
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL. THIS MONTHWE DELVE
DEEPER INTO SOMEOF THE PROJECTS AND
PRODUCTS ON SHOW RIGHT ACROSS THE CAPITAL
DURING THE 2012 EVENT. JOHNNY TUCKER
AND
VERONICA SIMP
SONFIND OUT WHAT HAS DRIVEN
THE WORK THAT RANGES FROM ART INSTALLATIONS
TO HIGHLY ENGINEERED LIGHTING
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
This page: Tactile, haptic,
metamorphic, theseMuscar
lights turn people into
moths – you are drawn
to them and just have to
touch them
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WHO:THOMAS & VINES
WHAT:FLOCK LI GHT BY LINA PATSI OU
WHERE: TENT LONDON
a furry twist to pretty much any product
that you wouldn’t normally expect to be
hairy – from mirrors and ornate chandeliers
to cars. RCA product design student Lina
Patsiou, challenged by her tutors to design
manufacturer for it, was drawn to the idea
of working with Thomas & Vine after
She says: ‘I am interested in everything
that is tactile. I didn’t even know that
I’m used to working with wood and metal,
and for me, to work with something that is
little more than dust was very challenging
and interesting.’
Patsiou met with Thomas & Vine
founder Simon Thomas and convinced him
that she could come up with something a
bit different. ‘Simon was very open. He’d
never really worked with a designer before,’
she says. Patsiou immersed herself in the
material, discovering there are all kinds of
chandeliers but not the bulbs themselves,’
she says. ‘We did many trials. We tried
it with a really hot, old-fashioned
incandescent light bulb. It worked but the
glue went brown with the heat .’
They experimented with some 40 types
of light bulbs. Finally, a Phillips 20W Eco
bulb proved the perfect medium, along with
‘regular’ electric cord and cable holder.
WHO:BACCARAT
WHAT:EXQUI S BY KACPER HAMILTON
WHERE: DESI GNJUNCTION
Ever played the parlour game where
everyone draws different bits of a body –
continuing each section of the body on
another person’s drawing, so that you end
up with a series of (usually) hilariously
disjointed bodies? Well, the game has a
name – Exquisite Corpse, or Cadavre
Exquis, as its French surrealist inventors
dubbed it – and British designer Kacper
Hamilton has just used this technique
to create both a series of striking new vases
for Baccarat, and a tool for commissioning
future work.
French crystal specialist Baccarat came
across Hamilton’s work via its links with
Swiss art and design college ECAL in
Lausanne, where Hamilton studied after
graduating from Central St Martins. The
a way to celebrate Baccarat’s 250-year
history of decorative crystal craftsmanship.
Hamilton teamed up with Swiss
photographer Michal Florence Schorro for
factory in the village of Baccarat in
Lorraine, eastern France where the brand
was founded in 1764.
Astounded by the wealth of different
decorative techniques that had been
deployed over the centuries, the pair
wondered if there would be a way to revive
some of them in a contemporary range.
They played around with collages and
book’ to trial different designs, which they
proposed could be turned into an iPad app.
ALL I MAGES MICHEL FLORENCE SCHORRO
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Says Hamilton: ‘We showed this to Baccarat
and they found it fascinating. You could
own combinations.’ So Hamilton and
the tool as well as create three vases from
their designs. They worked with an app
developer to translate the concept into an
interactive digital platform, supplying
digital images while the developer
implanted them into the software. ‘The
difficult part was to make all the vases of
seamless bodies. As you can imagine each
vase is a different size with different
proportions; it took some tweaking but
In creating the iPad selections – three
sections make up a vase, top, middle and
clashing as aggressively as possible. It’s
Left: A sideways swipe on
the app gives you a
different section for your
‘exquisite corpse’-style
vase. Below: The three
vases that were made for
the show by this technique
incredible that one company has so many
decorative techniques.’ For the three vases
displayed at Baccarat’s stand at
designjunction, they united three very
different decorative or cutting techniques
for each vase, mixing 18th with early 19th
and 20th centuries.
Having worked in glass for a few luxury
brands, Hamilton was struck by how
different the crystal manufacturing process
was: ‘It’s a completely different way of
working, a completely different way of
vases had been selected, drawings and
then hand-blown in one piece.
The pair now hope that their iPad tool
will inspire Baccarat’s clients to commission
new and exciting products to marry the
brand’s historic techniques with modern
tastes for bespoke eclecticism.
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
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WHO:ROLF SACHS
WHAT: JOURNEY OF A DROP
WHERE: V&A
Utterly mesmeric, conceptual designer Rolf
Sachs’ Journey of a Drop was an exploration
of colour, time, sound and space as well
as a celebration of one of the V&A’s more
obscure staircases.
Commissioned by the V&A to produce
something for its exhibition Hidden Spaces,
Sachs and his design team were shown to
the Henry Cole staircase, in the Henry Cole
wing behind the Sackler Centre. James
Patmore, who worked closely with Sachs on
WHO: MARCO MONTERZINO
WHAT: DI Y POLITI CI AL ACTIVI SM
WHERE: DESI GNERSBLOCK,
This image and right:
The dichotomy of a highly
practical piece of
impractical agitprop –
the Walk of the Arc
Right: The Journey of a
Drop. From theI V-like
mechanism the organic
inks dropped through
the normally closed off
staircase into the lit
and miked-up tank some
32m below
Many people talk the talk, but not that
many walk the walk. Marco Monterzino,
does both – he talks and walks politics.
A product designer by training, following
the August 2011 UK riots – so vehemently
fuelled by the mass need to own branded
goods – he began to question the very
meaning of the objects he was creating. He
ended up an activist, albeit a design-led one,
in the more ideological Occupy London
Stock Exchange camp outside St Paul’s
Cathedral later that year. It was all part of
a self-initiated project that he dubbed DIY
Political Engagement.
In fact Monterzino talks and walks
politics in the most literal sense since part
of the empowerment process included the
project Ark of Many Voices. This is a piece
of high agitprop – essentially a palanquin,
but instead of the high-net worth individual
(the passenger), the person is replaced with
loudspeakers, through which Monterzino
can broadcast his message wherever he
chooses to carry it.
The tent city around St Paul’s
fascinated him and he began a photographic
/ethnographic study of the community and
staircase we were really excited. It’s a
double staircase with a large void in the
32m. It’s not symmetrical, so it’s very
interesting architecturally and visually.’
They felt their response to this space
couldn’t be expressed in a static sculpture,
but the situation was complicated by the
balustrade being too low for health & safety
to allow the public any higher than the
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
I MAGES COURTESY MARCO MONTERZINO
culture that began to evolve at the site,
right down to the group having a resident
carpenter with a makeshift workshop
creating furniture out of found wood.
‘When Occupy London took over
the public space in front of St Paul’s I
gave myself one month of participant
observation at the camp. I was struck by
the diversity of the people who congregated
in the square. Not just activists and
students, but also “upright citizens” and
young families were joining the excitement
and coming down to the square as if they
were taking part in a referendum.’
After his month was up Monterzino
charged himself with creating something
tangible: The Ark of Many Voices was not
designed to be a ‘better’ sound system for
the protesters, but is instead an attempt
ALL I MAGES SUSAN SMART
something can be captivating from the
bottom and also encourage visitors to look
up and explore the space,’ says Patmore.
Two options were explored. One was
based around a ‘shot tower’ – in the
18th century bullets were apparently made
by dropping molten lead down from a great
height through a sieve and letting gravity
form the slugs. The idea of ink also
emerged early on, and won out because,
says Patmore, ‘We were able to harness
the mystical elements of the ink at the
bottom by having a big tank of water
there, and when the inks come down
they’d mix and change.’
The team experimented with lab
equipment, and came up with a mechanism
similar to an IV drip, which was placed at
the top of the stairwell. ‘Each tube is
controlled by a regulator valve which
releases a drop according to timers we’d set.
It could be as random or controlled as we
wanted,’ Patmore says.
A challenge was to get the tank to clear
the ink solutions, rather than become more
and more congested. ‘We found that if we
dropped organic inks, organic pigments or
food colouring, with a bleach solution in
the water it would dissolve the ink,’ he
says. The ‘ink’ was a mix of glycerine and
food colouring, and a very diluted bleach in
the tank allowed the ink to linger just long
enough before dissipating.
All that remained was to add sound, for
the total sensory experience. The team
found an underwater microphone (used for
recording divers during the Olympics),
which revealed a nice mixture of sounds:
‘Sometimes you’d get a ping and sometimes
a plop. The variety was due to ink and the
way it fell. Rolf said it was like science
meets poetry. At the top of the stairs
everything was completely controlled with
mechanical precision. At the bottom
anything could happen,’ enthuses Patmore.
Five monoculars were also placed at
the foot of the stairwell so as to allow
viewers to see the mechanism at the top
and follow the journey of a drop.
of the new form of political engagement
in which the citizens ‘take the burden of
politics upon themselves’.
‘I borrowed the materials and design
languages of the artefacts made in front
of St Paul’s to create an iconic piece, one
that embodies the narratives of the protest
camp. With the Ark of Many Voices I
impractical it proved to be to take on the
burden of politics ourselves,’ he says.
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
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WHO:JAKE DYSON
WHAT:CSYS LIGHT
WHERE:DESIGNJUNCTION
OK, we hold our hands up and admit we
missed the launch of the original desk lamp
from Jake Dyson (yes, son of), but we’re not
too proud to make sure we bring you details
of the latest version – the CSYS Tall – that
was launched at designjunction. Quite
simply it’s a beautiful piece of engineeringled design, and while it looks good on page
it’s a product you simply have to get
up-close and personal with.
Every element of this light is
running through it, multifunctional, as it
also acts as the track mechanism for the
arm containing the light sources. This
glides up and down and from side to side
with such consummate ease that it’s
tempting to just sit there and move it
around for hours on end. You can also add
to that the swivelling base that rotates fully
round without any chord getting tangled up.
Central to this light is the LED light
source itself. The bright, warm, white light
emitted is the result of long hours of
research with LED manufacturers looking
at how to control the light from the LED
chips. These are used to overlap the light
Dyson is particularly proud of this
element and at designjunction had one of
the tubes to hand, a kettle and a couple of
beakers – one for the hot and one for the
cold water. Like a casually dressed, gleeful
scientist he cajoled visitors into testing the
efficiency of the cooling rod. And this is
an essential part of the design, which means
that for this light there is now a projected
lifespan of peak performance of more than
37 years, based on a very heavy 12-hours-aday continual usage.
Dyson enthuses: ‘We believe the age
of the LED light is here and we want to
be a part of it. But we needed to address the
issue with other LED products of early life
failure, and we think we’ve solved this with
this bespoke thermal cooling technology.’
So there are now two versions, the desk
lamp and the Tall, which goes up to 141cm
they use, making sure that it produces
a smooth pool of light with no hot spots
or multiple shadows. The light is also
smoothly dimmable and when turned off
will remember the last light setting and
return to that when turned back on again.
The miniscule size of the light source
that carries it, staying virtially the same
size through out its length with no
unseemly bulges (for more on how LEDs are
affecting the aesthetics of lighting design
see Produce, p65). Built into the arm is the
bulb’s thermal management in the shape
of a copper tube containing a vacuum and
a small drop of water. This pulls any heat
away from the LEDs and quickly dissipates
it as it moves away up the arm.
Above: diagram of the
heat dissipation
technology. Below: the
short and Tall CSYS range
2.5m wide. To my eyes, it’s stripped back,
form-follows-function minimalism, and
is elegant, but I wonder if it may be just a
little too gadgety for the whole market. The
other colour choices over and above black
and silver now being brought in will help.
WHO:FIELDGUIDE
WHAT:INTERACTIVE NEWSPRINT
WHERE:CROMWELL PLACE
Above: A copy of the
Lancashire Evening Post,
which is trialing this
technology, referred
to by the developer as
a kind of ‘reverse internet’
Festival outing showcased both the thinkers
and makers that inspire them, as well as the
socio-cultural and technological
investigations that inform their output.
One of the most exciting items was
‘Interactive Newsprint’ – it looks and feels
like a newspaper but readers can interact
digitally with its content, via their own
headphones.
Imagine the potential: see a review for
a new album by a band you like? Touch this
spot and you can hear a snippet. Want to
hear the full, unedited version of the paper’s
interview with Prime Minister David
Cameron? Press a spot and you can.
It’s no surprise, for a collective that
produces its own occasional printed
journal, to learn that this project was born
of a passion for print. Tom Metcalfe, part
of Fieldguide and a researcher on the
Interactive Newsprint project, says: ‘We
don’t believe print is dead. There is a quality
to paper that you don’t get on screen.’
Metcalfe is convinced that people
engage with printed information in a
different manner from digital. So, in
partnership with various design, technology
and media departments at the Universities
of Surrey, Dundee, Central Lancashire
called Novalia, which has helped Fieldguide
develop the technology, it’s been
investigating the most satisfying and
user-led way to develop news information
that is both physical and digital.
The prototype shown at the LDF has
been developed over several months, thanks
to the involvement of volunteer researchers,
contributors and community groups, along
with the Lancashire Evening Post.
The printing technology is not
complicated. As Metcalfe explains: ‘We use
the traditional printing process that prints
CMYK inks but prints the conductive ink
as well. On top of that we need to connect
to the internet – that requires traditional
circuitry (little bits of silicone) that sticks
to the paper. It’s not commercially viable in
this format, but we are future scoping and
SEE A REVIEW FOR A NEW ALBUM
BY A BAND YOU LIKE? TOUCH
THIS SPOT AND YOU CAN HEAR
A SNIPPET. WANT TO HEAR THE
FULL, UNEDITED VERSION OF THE
NEWSPAPER’S INTERVIEW WITH
THE PRIME MINISTER? PRESS
A SPOT AND YOU CAN
these components.’
The real beauty of this project is that
it is user-focused, and not technology
driven. In other words, it’s not taking what
we normally get from our printed media
and grafting that on to a variety of online
and mobile technologies. Metcalfe says:
‘It’s very much about starting with
a material that exists and adding the
internet functionality on top of it.’
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
ALL I MAGES COURTESY JAKE DYSON
Fieldguide is a Scottish design collective
formed designers and educators – all with
a link to the University of Dundee’s
pioneering product design department –
who wanted to develop a more exploratory,
collaborative approach for their work,
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
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This page: Wonderfully
tactile, the wooden keys
work within a wooden
keyboard frame, but how
does it register the
keystrokes? Well... if we
told you we’d have to kill
you – that part is secret
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WHO: STUDI O TOOGOOD
WHAT:TRIBUTE TO THE TRADES
WHERE: COVENT GARDEN
Visitors to Covent Garden are usually too
busy window shopping to raise their heads
skywards. This September, however, there
Designer Faye Toogood, paying homage to
the area’s rich history of trade and crafts,
had hung 49 traditional workers’ overcoats
along a series of cables strung between the
buildings of Monmouth Street. Each of the
outsized coats represents one of the trades
practiced here – from brewer to silversmith,
and from wigmaker to prostitute – from
out its design.
Toogood was commissioned to create
Seven Designers for Seven Dials initiative.
Known for championing the handmade and
small-scale work of traditional artisans,
Toogood says: ‘This area of London has a
rich, varied, prosperous and lurid past – like
most of London – so for me this installation
was celebrating the individuals behind the
area. I not only considered the piece to be
a celebration but was also aware that I was
communicating an undertone of loss – so
much of our British manufacturing has not
only left this area but Britain.’
How to represent these individuals
came quite easily to her. She says: ‘The
silhouette of a worker’s coat, a simple
utilitarian design, is indistinct and
democratic in its appearance.’ The coats
are fashioned from heavyweight recycled
canvas and then treated with everything
was to ensure ‘that this army of uniformity
was made up from a series of unique,
singular and individual parts’, says Toogood.
‘Each coat was numbered, recorded and
given a metal sign to pay homage to the
particular trade.’ Rusty mild steel, chosen
to contrast with the manicured appearance
of the area’s shops, was handpainted with
the name and number, evoking the
traditional shop signs that would have
hung outside their doors.
For this year’s LDF, Toogood also
invited members of the public and the
design community to her canal-side
workshop in north London in an event she
dubbed The Back Room. It was a mixture
of in-progress work and a new take on the
Above: The large workwear
coats celebrated the trades
and professions that have
made the Seven Dials
( Covent Garden) area of
London what it is today
ploughman’s lunch: The M25 Luncheon
devised by the ‘locally sourced’ foodie
evangelists at Arabeschi di Latte, and the
launch of Toogood’s own solid ash
furniture, now available in small batch runs
and appropriately enough named Batch.
WHO: ORÉE
WHAT:WOODEN WIRELESS KEYBOARD
WHERE: TENT LONDON
They said it couldn’t be done, but high-tech
entrepreneur Julien Salanave has managed
to create a highly covetable, customisable
wireless wooden keyboard for less than
the price of an iPod Touch. The resulting
Orée Board, which retails for just 125 euros,
is like the modern-day equivalent of
ditching the ballpoint and buying yourself
a rather nice pen.
when, a few years ago, he started exploring
how he could realise his vision for creating
lasting and customisable handcrafted tech
objects made from premium materials. His
alternative to the Apple wireless keyboard.
‘We looked at some very sophisticated
materials including hybrid super complex
materials. But while we were delving into
this we had a Eureka moment. We thought,
if we look at the market, 95 per cent of the
high-tech products are made from plastic or
aluminium. Most of the new complex
often not environmentally friendly. That’s
when the idea of using wood came in.
‘We wondered if we could turn back to
something more durable and sustainable.
I was going around the world and met quite
a few people involved in the wood industry
and they all said no, this is not possible. No
wood could tolerate being processed to that
level of thinness, or the only way you could
get something close to it would be if the
product was completely rafted by hand.
But that would be much too expensive.’
Salanave didn’t want to create a hugely
expensive luxury product. He wanted his
keyboard to be premium, but affordable. At
this point, he met product designer Frank
Fontana, who has a long history of working
in wood, and Christophe Della Signora,
a master woodcraftsman who could see
a way of putting the thinnest of wooden
keyboards together.
The manufacturing process minimises
waste: a single piece of wood is cut into
three ‘sheets’ to preserve the grain across
the shell and keys. Out of all the woods
they experimented with, only maple or
walnut could withstand the required degree
of processing and remain robust.
The main frame sheet is only 20mm
at its thickest (where the feet extend down
from the frame at each corner). The key
sheet is only 4 or 5mm thick, and the base
sheet is about 12mm. A key ingredient (and
one that Salanave cannot disclose details of)
is the technology allowing for individual
keys to register despite being attached to
the same sheet of wood. It’s powered by a
low-power Bluetooth 3.0 chipset from
Broadcom, works with any tablet,
smartphone or PC with Bluetooth. And
here’s the clincher for detailmeisters: each
keyboard can be customised and engraved
WHO:PROOFF
WHAT: SI DE SEAT BY MAKKINK & B EY
WHERE: SUPER BRANDS LONDON
Above: Going through the
motions – the simple
180-degree swivel changes
the nauture of the chair
and its usage dramatically
and effectively
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
layout and fonts you like for on the keys.
BLUEPRINT DECEMBER 2012
Jurgen Bey and Rianne Makkink’s
Rotterdam-based Studio Makkink & Bey is
known for its multidisciplinary,
investigative approach. Its designs for
Prooff are likewise the results of deep
investigations into ‘knowledge landscapes’.
Take for example the Prooff #006 SideSeat,
launched in the London Superbrands space.
This swivelling seat/desk was born of some
extended brainstorming on the fact that
mobile and laptop technology means that
people can work or network anywhere
– whether it’s in a museum cafe, waiting
to meet a client at their office, or hot
desking at home or at the workplace.
It concluded that the static
combinations of furniture still prevailing
really don’t make sense any more: an office
stacked with sofas; a cafe whose chair and
table set-ups favour two or more diners,
and not solo workers/iPhone browsers.
Such a multitasking lifestyle requires far
The SideSeat is a simple desk and chair
combo, but the 180-degree swivel of the
chair means that it can be used for relaxing
(with the desk doubling up as an armrest),
for working (with the chair pivoted in
towards the desk) or for socialising (the
chair swings out away from the desk). Bey
particularly likes the economy of space –
the desk only has room for a laptop/tablet.
‘This means it’s always a clean desk’, he
says. ‘You can really concentrate. It also
feels like a private space. Nobody can sit
next to you and work at the same table.’
The inspiration was entirely
contemporary, but Bey likes the way it
refers back to the typing pool of the Fifties.
secretaries all sitting at desks no bigger
than their typewriters. They just had a
drawer for paper and stuff.’ Likewise, the
SideSeat also has options for a built-in
cupboard and drawer at the back of the
desk, for pens and paper. The shape of the
desk also has a sleek, aerodynamic Fifties
feel, which Bey says was inspired by a
motorbike and its sidecar. The chair pivots
on a simple pin and socket mechanism.
Made entirely from MDF, the top of the
desk is laminated in linoleum, the sides in
linoleum. The base, which has weight and
substance to it, can be ordered in a range
of colours. ‘The colour scheme is different
between all sides, and in soft colours that
part of the design concept, says Bey.’ He
adds: ‘It had to look very solid. We want it
to be like a piece of interior architecture, not
something you move around all the time.’