Temperature 2012 by Daniel Rubinstein

INTRODUCTION

TEM PERATURE 2012

VOLUM E GA LLERY

M useum of Art s and Design

Published on the occasion of The Home Front: American Design Now public programming series at MAD. January 12, 2012 Blurring The Lines: Between Art, Architecture, and Design Exploration into the growing connection between fine art, galleries, and design. Feburary 16, 2012 Product Placement at MAD: Design For Kids NYCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Product Placement makes MAD its home for a look into con.temporary design for kids. March 8, 2012 Show Time: Raising The Curtain on Design Events Four New York impresarios discuss the ABCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of conceiving, executing, and promoting design happenings. April 12, 2012 Local Behavior: What Makes an American Designer? Volume Gallery curators Claire Warner and Sam Vinz interview a cross section of designers working in various scales to discuss the effects of regionalism in a hyperconnected, globalized era.

This publication is made possible with the support of

I ND E X

Observers

Makers

Lindsey Adams Adelman Tanya Aguiñiga Brian Anderson Alan Brake Rafael de Cárdenas Wendell Castle Isaac Chen CMMNWLTH Joe Doucet Felicia Ferrone Patrick Gavin Johanna Grawunder Jerry Helling Christopher K Ho Sung Jang Michael Jefferson Seth Keller Scott Klinker Christy MacLear Kiel Mead Moorhead & Moorhead Jonathan Muecke Jonathan Nesci Object Design League (ODL) Charlie O’Geen Patrick Parrish Parrish Rash & van Diesel (PR&vD) Rich Brilliant Willing (RBW) Jen Renzi Meaghan Roddy ROLU Dan Rubinstein Silva/Bradshaw Snarkitecture Southern Design Concern Brooks Hudson Thomas Thaddeus Wolfe Philip Michael Wolfson

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Volume Gallery is an event-based gallery with a specific focus on American design, particularly emerging contemporary designers. The Volume Gallery releases editions, publications, and exhibits that showcase the work of American designers to regional, national, and international audiences. We are asking critical questions of what it means to be an American designer in a culture that is rapidly becoming global in scale, while simultaneously examining the American experience.

INTRODUCTION

Volume Gallery is pleased to present Temperature 2012 in conjunction with The Home Front: American Design Now at the Museum of Arts and Design.

At Volume we believe that designed objects are the visual representation of progress. Historically, design has been a direct reflection of the society from which it was created and utilized, and our exhibitions and publications ask questions of what it means to be an American designer in our global culture. The contents of this book are purely the product of the Makers, designers who are actively producing, and the Observers, the intellectuals and tastemakers of design culture. We developed a set of questions for each group with the intention of opening up a dialogue (which perhaps has created more questions than answers). For the Makers, questions revolved around how a contemporary designer works—technology, collaboration, theory, and location. For the Observers, the questions related to contextualizing contemporary American design, both globally and historically. The brief was to answer the questions in any fashion each participant felt appropriate. While the entries varied a great deal, each one is indicative of the Maker’s or Observer’s standpoint on the current state of American design. The resulting content provides an insightful analytic discussion on where these groups currently stand on everything from regionalism to globalism, handmade to computer generated, and 20th Century to 21st Century design. As one of the designers included in this project suggested, this is not so much a survey of American Makers and Observers; it is a diagnostic. Which is both a more clinical, and yet, humanizing term— there is the implication of a surgical approach to explaining a very living breathing subject matter—American design.

Claire Warner and Sam Vinz Volume Gallery

The Museum of Arts and Design (â&#x20AC;&#x153;MADâ&#x20AC;?) explores the blur zone between art, design, and craft today. Accredited by the American Association of Museums since 1991, MAD focuses on contemporary creativity and the ways in which artists and designers from around the world transform materials through processes ranging from the artisanal to the digital.

The Home Front: American Design Now is made possible by

with additional support from

I NTR O D U C TI O N

The Home Front: American Design Now

Returning for its second year, The Home Front: American Design Now brings together a range of respected voices to examine the current state of object design in the U.S. After 2011’s events that surveyed the challenges that the contemporary furniture scene faces from a variety of angles—from architecture and retail to education and small business—this year’s programming further explores the ideas, developments, and talents that are moving native design forward. Presented in three sections: a series of monthly lectures, designer residency in MAD’s Open Studios, and a publication containing interviews with over 35 leaders in the field, this year’s The Home Front seeks to lay the groundwork for American designers to gather, respond, and construct new possibilities for the success of American design on a global stage. The Home Front: American Design Now is organized by Dan Rubinstein, Editor-in-Chief, Surface and Jake Yuzna, Manager of Public Programs, Museum of Arts and Design.

The Home Front: American Design Now is one of the many programs organized by the Museum of Arts and Design’s Education Department. The Museum’s educational programs are made possible through the generosity of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Ongoing support is provided by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund for Education and Outreach Programs. Additional support is provided by the Museum’s Board of Trustees and the Chazen Foundation; Chubb Insurance Group; The Glickenhaus Foundation; the William and Mildred Lasdon Foundation; The New York Community Trust; Newman’s Own Foundation; The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation; the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund; the Barbara and Donald Tob er Foundation; private and anonymous donors; and the Museum’s corporate members. MADlab: Arts Access is made possible by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, with additional support from the Keith Haring Foundation and HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Programming in the Museum’s Open Studios is made possible in part by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation.

I NTR O D U C TI O N

Temperature 2012 is not so much a survey of American Makers and Observers; it is a diagnostic.

Lindsey Adams Adelman Burst

TEMPERATURE 2012

MAKER

Lindsey Adams Adelman Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I am mainly inspired by what I don’t see in the world and what could be.  Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Yes. Collaboration. The majority of my work is custom and the result of creative input from my clients as well as a response to the specific space in which it will hang. I also greatly value the contribution of each person involved in production, which is all done locally. I hope my light fixtures go beyond what one expects in a light fixture. I want to draw as much attention to what isn’t there as what is, in my pieces. I also hope to offer a certain emotional quality to a space and the life that takes place there.  What role does technology play in your design process? We are active in researching and collecting lighting industry parts as they are released to market to make prototypes. Combining a seductive, high-quality material with the most efficient, refined technology is always a goal.  What is the importance of collaborating / networking with peers? Collaborating with peers is important not only for mutual support, but for awareness of the current context; and a little healthy competition never hurts.  How does location play a role in your practice? NYC is an amazing place for technically advanced manufacturing as well as for extraordinary interior projects.  How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? On one hand we receive an instant informed brief of what is happening in the world of design everywhere. And on the other hand it motivates me more than ever to keep production local and support our economy at home. Lindsey Adams Adelman was born in New York City in 1968. Her current work is a culmination of endlessly making things with her hands as a little girl, to receiving a BA in English literature, working for the Smithsonian, and earning a BFA in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design. An ongoing interest in combining the hand crafted with the machine-made, the sensual with the practical, and the feminine with the masculine consistently marks her work. Adelman founded the company Butter with David Weeks in 2000 where they designed affordable products for the home until 2005. Since then, Adelman has focused on her own line of hand-blown glass lighting as well as an ongoing series of drawings painstakingly crafted with strands of human hair. The collective work has been included in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial and Design Miami and has received awards from the ICFF editors, ID, and Blueprint. It has been published in numerous magazines and books. Lindsey lives with her husband Ian and their son Finn in Brooklyn.

Tanya Agui単iga Felt chair

TEMPERATURE 2012

MAKER

Tanya Aguiñiga Where do you look for inspiration in your design? My work is mostly informed by materials, process, or a connection to a specific artisan region. In times when it is inspired by the material, I like to work with goods that have an interesting origin, story, or specific characteristic. When the process is what drives the design, I look to overlooked techniques as a way to push my learning and innovate within my discipline. More recently, I have chosen specific regions to travel to which have rich cultural and craft traditions. The experiences in these regions have taught me new techniques as well as introduced me to new materials while living in the region for extended periods of time. The people I meet and interact with become a huge part of these experiences and their stories and regional craft then become the impetus for designs. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? My practice is generally “craft centric.” The importance in my work has shifted to becoming less about me, contextually, and more about bringing attention to a marginalized craft region or tradition. Before furniture design, my background was in using art as a vehicle for community empowerment though installation art and community activism. My practice has slowly moved towards attempts at bridging community activism and design. What role does technology play in your design process? My work is very low tech, and I use computers to work out designs only upon a client’s request. All of my designs are worked out on paper and through hands-on model making. When having to present renderings for proposals, I have to hire freelance computer drafters to do my 3D modeling. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Since I am in Los Angeles, I do feel that my practice is pretty isolated as the local design community is not very large or organized. I make attempts to keep in contact with some of my peers that are part of the Brooklyn and New York design community since designers there are largely concentrated and opportunities arise more frequently as organized groups make their presence known to the general public. Outside of the design community, my work has also been widely embraced by the craft community, which is less centralized than the design community. Makers of craft are more widely spread throughout the U.S. and are often located near universities. Because many of the furniture makers/designers that I know that have been making a living selling one of a kind pieces at schools or participate in residencies, I have been able to travel extensively to lecture or work with many students all over the U.S. This has kept me pretty close to peers nationwide that exhibit one-offs. Many of us initially met during Furniture Society conferences and although some of us no longer participate in the conferences, we have stayed in close communication —mostly to bring each other to one-another’s schools and help pass knowledge on to the next generation of craft / design students.

TEMPERATURE 2012

How does location play a role in your practice? Location plays a huge role in my practice. As I mentioned before, some of my recent work has been driven by travels to a specific region, where I make work based on local traditions, materials and personal interaction with locals. Apart from the works that are specifically driven by travels, I think that I am very influenced by my own location — Los Angeles, CA. My work was very introspective when I was working on the East Coast, since I was so faraway from where I was raised: the U.S./ Mexico border in San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Mexico. I felt a strange disconnect with the East Coast; it was an unfamiliar culture and topography. Because of this, and missing my roots, my work was very much about exploring my own narrative through form. Now that I am back in California and I feel much freer to explore subjects in my work that are not self-reflective since my story is one that is similar to those around me. Being one of a few designers out here also makes me work alone and slightly isolated, which in turn has made me work on ideas that naturally evolve from one project to another, rather than following a trend or consumer focus. I am very energized and humbled by my surroundings: mountains, beaches, forests and deserts. Being here makes me grateful for being able to look out the window and see that the largest objects around me are natural rather than man-made, which consciously makes me more drawn to natural materials or organic shapes. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? The global nature of the design community has cemented my need to become a catalyst for good through design. I wrote of this in my proposal for Artists for Helping Artisans: “As globalization increases, the importance of hand crafted work and dignified wages decreases. Our society has been overlooking the importance of economic/social/ environmental responsibility as consumers. The artist/artisan communities that created economic growth and industrial development worldwide are dwindling as cheap labor and machines take precedent. I have educated myself in applied design/craft not only for a love of making, but to be able to share with others my education and to help create recognition and opportunity for artisans. Having formal training in woodworking, ceramics, metalsmithing, and textiles, as well as a commitment to community development and arts education, I would love nothing more than to facilitate ethical design and the spread of arts education/awareness. Creating relationships with artisan communities in the U.S./Worldwide and developing products that highlight communities’ strengths. Giving recognition to craftsmen and helping to provide an economic platform to those who need it most.”

MAKER

Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles based furniture designer/maker. Her sensitivity to materials and interest in creating furniture that responds to the users’ spatial needs have resulted in a playful and organic modernist approach to form. She holds a BA and MFA in furniture design, and continues to hand make all of her pieces. Her highly publicized work has been exhibited from Mexico City to Milan and she was recently named a United States Artists Target Fellow in the field of crafts and traditional arts. Over the past twelve years, Aguiñiga has carried out various projects throughout Mexico and the U.S. to deepen her commitment to using arts as a vehicle for community empowerment and the spread of craft education.

Tanya Aguiñiga Animal stools

Brian Anderson Paradise II

TEMPERATURE 2012

MAKER

Brian Anderson Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I seek out histories and catalogs of textiles, natural and man-made patterns, ceramics, fashion accessories, and sports styling over the past century. I am interested in deception, attraction, and illusion, including military camouflage and patterning and styling in objects ranging from fishing lures to lingerie. My projects respond to a combination of opportunity, problems, and identifiable constraints that help narrow the field. Opportunity is sometimes a partnership or collaboration, or an external force that ends up guiding development, such as a competition or exhibition. My favorite problem is ugly, the kind that’s signaled by cringing in the face of something outdated or out of fashion — an ugly color for example. I’m attracted to the challenge of taking a color that doesn’t work in isolation or no longer works in its original context and making it sensually compelling within a vitalized set of relationships. I find opportunities and problems to be greatly inspirational. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Along with many others, I am attracted to the Modernist adage “less is more.” In my practice this equates to a fairly strict aim to specifically align material, technique, and surface in an object. I always look for direct and appropriate solutions. What can this material or technique do that nothing else can? What is it particularly well suited for? What about the situation is absolutely unique and how? And fundamentally, what in it is worth pursuing, and what elements can be discarded? A “nothing less, nothing more” (Kenya Hara) ideal of appropriateness and adequacy nudges my practice in the direction of design Essentialism and into the arena of Sustainability. What role does technology play in your design process? Computing and technology play a central role but are not primary drivers in my practice. At one extreme, technology allows me to dream, and at another it helps me plan and communicate. Ultimately, I test and judge everything— from prototypes to final objects— in the analog world. I always have a pair of calipers and a measuring tape in hand to help my mind correlate the screen with its real-world counterpart. In some cases technology enables fabrication that would otherwise be impossible, as with digitally printing fabrics. I try to design patterns that speak to their printing technolog y—I prefer they not be feasibly manufacturable in any other way.

TEMPERATURE 2012

I sometimes build furniture or form metal without involving digital tools, and in those cases machines provide many of the fabrication and a portion of the design constraints that end up guiding the work. Where digital approaches are available, these physical constraints fall away and possibility opens to a dizzying degree. Suddenly, everything seems to have potential—the bounds have dissolved. This is a place where the need for self-discipline is highest, but it is also an arena for dreaming and daring where it can be relatively easy to test specifics such as colorways, scaling, pattern repeats, layouts for efficient use of material, and where occasionally I generate renderings in early stages of more complicated projects. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? On the one hand, I am deeply interested in collaborations especially where different worlds collide creatively, and on the other, design is necessarily competitive. How does location play a role in your practice? I spent my adolescence in Tokyo and since then have felt simultaneously dislocated yet solidly global — the world is small and people are people whether in Chicago or Kyoto or Wattens. I view location more in terms of pragmatics. Can I afford my practice? Do I have reasonable access to fabricators and cultural capital? Surely I would evaluate these questions differently if considering Eindhoven or New York or Milan or if developing textiles or large pieces of furniture. Currently, I live within reach of compelling resources in the middle of the North American continent. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? I think it’s incredible that we can write electronically or pick up a phone and be in contact immediately with another human being nearly anywhere on Earth. And the internet and social media technologies make it impossible not to keep at least minimally informed. I’ve recently been looking at potential partnerships in Germany, Austria, and Scotland. I purchase fabric in Los Angeles for printing in Pennsylvania to sell from Chicago in the global market. All of this is possible because of the global nature of the world. My practice depends on it. Brian Anderson holds a degree in chemistry from the University of California San Diego and a Masters of education from Harvard Graduate School of Education. He worked in engineering firms and in the field of education before concluding MFA studies in writing and design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. StudioBA is located in Chicago, Illinois.

OB S E RVE R

In our globalized culture, American design is harder to define than ever before. A

lan

rake

TEMPERATURE 2012

Alan Brake How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? In our globalized culture, American design is harder to define than ever before. So many people travel and work in studios abroad before coming back to the states to start their own practices. Designers from abroad work here as well, and people come from a variety of backgrounds often of mixed nationalities. Information and ideas flow freely across boundaries, often instantaneously. You don’t have to wait weeks for a magazine or a catalogue to arrive. Everything is at your fingertips. The big challenge for American designers remains how to get the attention and interest of manufacturers, how to get things in production. It is more difficult in the U.S. than it is in Italy or Scandinavia, for example, where companies have a long tradition of working closely with designers and supporting design culture. Certainly D.I.Y. culture is changing things here in the U.S., and has had a huge impact on the way young designers practice. There’s a certain American can-do spirit that meshes well with D.I.Y. Mass production isn’t necessarily the goal. Some designers actively oppose it, in favor of work that reflects traces of the hand or reuses materials to imbue the work with a sense of history or the particularities of certain places. The local food movement expresses a similar ethos, and it too has had an impact on design culture, often in interesting ways. Take for example +Farm, a mobile chicken coop designed and built by a group of students working with designers John Hartmann and Gia Wolff for a sheep farm outside Buffalo, New York. The project has a kind of 90s deconstructivist look to it—Hartmann jokingly said, “we’re putting the coop in Coop Himmelb(l)au”—that is highly irreverent given that it is for chickens. It also gave the students building and design experience as well as a real client and program. Apparently, it really got the neighboring farmers talking. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? Another project I like, which touches on the globalization question, is a loft in Brooklyn by two French-born designers, Grégoire Abrial and Audrey Ducas, both of whom work in the studios of American designers. Loft-living is a very American idea, which really took off in New York in the 1960s. It’s become an important way for neighborhoods—and cities—to evolve and grow in the post industrial period. Located in Bushwick, Audrey and Grégoire’s loft follows that trajectory, but adapts it in a way that feels very contemporary and domestic. The space is filled with furniture that they built from scrap materials and includes an enclosed sleeping pod capped with a pitched roof, so that it looks like a tiny house. The pod sits on stilts so that inside you can see a perfectly framed view of the East River through a horizontal window. The loft also includes their workshop, so it’s a functioning live/work space. The overall effect is much more homey than industrial. There’s an appreciation of craft and of comfort that is evident throughout, an emphasis on living well that seems French. They call their work “slow design,” drawing on the thinking of Slow Food, the European culinary and agricultural movement that has become a global phenomenon. They are both tinkerers and their home is an outlet for their creativity, one that will continue to change over time.

OB S E RVE R

What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? I think there’s an entrepreneurial spirit to a lot of young designers. People are opening storefronts to sell their own wares or services, or selling at street fairs or flea markets. Designers are collaborating with different publics who might not otherwise be exposed to design or designers. There is a lot of effort to make design less rarefied, but also less anonymous, less slick. All of these are positive trends, but are they too limited in scope? How do you get beyond the preciousness, the boutique aspect inherent in this approach? I think that’s the next step. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? Many people consider the post-war period the apex of American design. It’s easy to see why Many of the classic pieces we live with today were designed in that period, and the names of many of these figures—Eames, Saarinen, Knoll, Nelson—immediately call images to mind. Most of these pieces still look great and are as functional as ever. One thing many people forget is that many of these people were friends and longtime collaborators. Many of them worked on a variety of scales and regularly commissioned each other. Saarinen commissioned Charles Eames, Alexander Girard, and Harry Bertoia and worked for Florence Knoll. She was a gifted designer of furniture and an important interior architect and space planner. Saarinen designed buildings and furniture, as did Eames. Nelson trained as an architect, worked as a journalist and critic, then became a creative director and designed many iconic pieces. As much as we talk about being multidisciplinary, today things seem much more rigid in comparison. People tend to stay in their disciplinary silos. Perhaps we’ve become more individualistic and less collegial. What is the future of American design? I am not a futurist. Most predictions looks pretty silly in retrospect, so I’ll pass on this one. Alan G. Brake has written about architecture, design, and urbanism for Architecture, Architectural Record, Azure, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Metropolis, The New York Times and other publications. He studied architectural history and urbanism at Vassar College and Yale University, where he earned a Masters in environmental design. He is the recipient of a research grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Rafael de Cรกrdenas Unknown Union

TEMPERATURE 2012

MAKER

TEMPERATURE 2012

Rafael de Cárdenas Where do you look for inspiration in your design? It depends on what movie I watched that weekend. Sources of inspiration can be as diverse as film, dance, and fashion for sure, always. I started out as a menswear designer and I see fashion and architecture as closely related in their atmospheric nature. Like in fashion design, form and material are related but separate concerns for me; materials are often my inspiration and starting point, and along with color, serve as a means to transform form. Ultimately, the inspiration for my designs comes from whatever is in the air coupled with whatever I ate that morning. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? I am interested in atmospherics and moody effects that suggest affect. AT ARCHITECTURE AT LARGE, based in New York and London, we favor the suggestive affect over the stylistic, though we realize that the stylistic plays a part in mood production. Our design generally samples from fields, patterns, and strategies that suggest moodiness. In residential projects, patterns may be a backdrop for objects to be curated within the space. The actual interaction of the objects creates a field that suggests mood. What role does technology play in your design process? We rely on email and we rely on table saws. Thus far we haven’t really relied on anything new and cutting edge in terms of technology. That doesn’t mean that we won’t in the future. Our aim is more to use materials that are readily available and to index fabrication techniques in the final product. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? As a practice, we find it helpful to know what our friends are up to. Some of them are like-minded and some of them are not, but dialogue with friends who have very different design ethos is valuable largely for that reason. We try to expose ourselves to as much as possible, and our peers are not always architects or designers; they can be musicians, choreographers, and even within our studio many of the designers are former dancers and artists. We have a long history of collaborating with other creatives, particularly visual artists, and it is important in realizing the full scope of many of our projects. At Niko—our 2011 SoHo restaurant —we worked with Jim Drain to create large sculptural pieces that function like primitive chandeliers. At Nike Bowery Stadium, we collaborated with Jack Greer on the basement design space to splatter paint lockers in order to create spatial divisions. We have worked with landscape architect Philip Nixon on multiple residential projects. These kinds of collaborations further the dynamism of our designs.

MAKER

How does location play a role in your practice? I think location plays a huge role. I grew up in New York most of my life, and many of my early opportunities came from friends and long-standing relationships I’d had just from living here. To a certain degree there has been a kind of “growing up together” relationship with a lot of our early clients in particular, but that is changing more and more over time. I think being in New York is good for us because we are in a cultural center of the United States. Location is also integral to our design on the level of each specific project. For example, Unknown Union—a menswear boutique we designed in 2011— is located in an eighteenth century colonial residential building. The specific street on which Unknown Union is located has a tropical colonial nature, and the terracotta tiles inside the building reminded us of adobe and led us to look at the work of Luis Barragán. The location was ultimately integral to the design process. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? Art and design fairs, blogs, and other types of information exchange are global and not tied to a specific location. That kind of information exchange within the international design community is crucial to our practice. Having a London office speaks to the growing nature of our global practice. As we continue to grow, we are excited to have opportunities to work in more and more diverse locations around the world, and we look forward to continuing to expand. Rafael de Cárdenas received his BA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Following graduation, he took a job at Calvin Klein, working for three years as a designer for the men’s collection. In 1999, de Cárdenas began pursuing an architecture degree at Columbia University, later transferring to UCLA where he received his Masters in architecture in 2002. His first project following graduation was working with the architect Greg Lynn on the redesign of the World Trade Center site. Their submission, a series of five buildings interconnected to create a cathedral-like space, was one of the six final entries. De Cárdenas then began work in the New York offices of special effects production house Imaginary Forces. As a creative director working on experience design projects, he oversaw a range of innovative concepts including the BMW Experience at their headquarters in Munich, and the HBO store in New York. In 2005, de Cárdenas opened his own design firm in New York’s Chinatown. His interest in creating environments with moods, as opposed to any specific style, has allowed him to work with an array of clients. Using color, light, and pattern, de Cárdenas has created artful, imaginative interiors for boutiques, restaurants, and private residences in London, Rome, Athens, Chicago, Miami, New York, and the Hamptons. His work has been featured in Elle Décor, Vogue Paris, The New York Times, Surface, and Metropolis in addition to others.

Wendell Castle Swivel coffee table

TEMPERATURE 2012

MAKER

Wendell Castle Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I look everywhere for inspiration. I believe everything has value, nothing is worthless. There is always more than one right answer, and one must be willing to be led astray. Everything I see, hear, and read may influence my work. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? I don’t have a specific ideology or design philosophy. I embrace organic forms and I have developed unique ways of building forms in wood and other materials. What role does technology play in your design process? Technology has become an important part of our process. We have scale models digitized, which then helps the program develop cross sections of a piece. We also have a 6-axis robot carve some of our work, and have experimented with having pieces printed three-dimentionally. However, I do not design on the computer. All of my sketching is done by hand. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? I collaborate only for technical expertise regarding processes like digitizing, 3D modeling, tool-path programming, and robotic work. How does location play a role in your practice? NYC is the center of the art world, so having a gallery there is extremely important. I have an apartment in Chelsea, so that allows me easy access to the major galleries and exhibitions, helping to keep me abreast of what is happening. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? The global nature of design means it’s important to participate on a global level. In addition to NYC, I have gallery representation in London, Zurich, Paris and Seoul. Wendell Castle was born and educated in Kansas, moved to Rochester, New York in 1961 and taught at the School for American Craftsmen. He is currently Artist-in-Residence at the school and maintains his art studio in nearby Scottsville. Castle has been a sculptor, designer, and educator for more than four decades. An influential artist, his work has led to the development of handcrafted, modern designer furniture as a major art form. Internationally lauded for his contributions to the American art and design field, Castle has received numerous awards and honors.

Isaac Chen Low table

TEMPERATURE 2012

MAKER

Isaac Chen Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I look for inspiration in the primaryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; gravity, mass, and shape. I observe people and physical relationships in our interactions with objects and the space they occupy. Where there are relationships, there exists comparison, evaluation, and room for one to perceive. Drawing on the familiar, my work seeks to create an awareness of these elemental relationships. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Taking the essence of something recognized and perceived to be normal and transcending it is an approach shared by many designers and artists. The idea of creating objects that function beyond their understood place and push the limit of our awareness of them is very much in line with my own interest in design. I like the phrase â&#x20AC;&#x153;seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one seesâ&#x20AC;?. What role does technology play in your design process? Technology is a facilitator in my design process. It is an important means by which my ideas are visualized, communicated, and executed. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Having colleagues that share the same passion for creating is important and can add momentum to design. In my own design process, however, I prefer to work alone. How does location play a role in your practice? Location is not crucial to my practice. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? The global nature of design has made it possible for me to travel to different countries and share my work with different people. Observing people and how they relate to design has deepened my own understanding. Isaac Chen was born in Taiwan and grew up in Vancouver, Canada, where he received his Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. After working as a design engineer in Taiwan, he continued his studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan where he received his MFA in 3D Design. Chen has exhibited in Detroit, New York, Tokyo, and at the Villa Noailles in Hyeres. Chen lives in New York where he continues to develop his own studio work through exploration of the primary and making.

CMMNWLTH Seltanica light

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CMMNWLTH Where do you look for inspiration in your design? David Boira: New York City. Its a very aesthetic source of inspiration. Manhattan constantly bombards you with imagery, smells, dirt— all sorts of urban textures and crazy juxtapositions. Manhattan is just gross and beautiful all at once. Zoe Coombes: Also, we have such talented friends: Ferran Adria, the Catalan chef of El Bulli is a friend of David’s. Tim Saccenti, the music video director and photographer, shares a studio space with us in Manhattan. Damien Loeb, the painter, is a friend we know through our children. We could go on and on about all the super-talented friends with whom we somehow happen to cross paths, and how that influence enters our work, but really it’s all just to say that having close friends working in other disciplines of art and design keeps us focused on the idea that design is multi-sensorial. Designing furniture comes from the music that surrounds our studio, from ideas about the possible roles of eating, and scent in our life. It’s a multi-sensorial vision of design that we try to produce. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? ZC: Of course! What fun is a world without theories, speculation, ideas— or even great dinner conversation? I have a degree in philosophy and David and I both have Masters degrees in architecture from Columbia (that’s where we met), and many of the ideas, modes, or theories we were exposed to there, are the foundations of our work. Greg Lynn has been a big source of excitement, and debate between us, to say the least. But you know, theory can also act as a crutch and divorce you from the outcomes, the real possibilities of what the ideas may signal. Getting dirty, and attempting to make it all is our true interest. What role does technology play in your design process? ZC: Love/hate, really… let me explain: What we strive for in our design is a sense of timelessness. On one hand, the idea of timelessness is often understood as opposed to the “technological”. However, on the other hand, I think that in order for something to be truly timeless, it also must feel “fresh”, “new”, or “now”. It must be something that captures you a bit off guard, yet feels natural, and resonates in a way that hasn’t yet been articulated. Closeness with our material things is built this way. Obviously, there are technological changes that are forcibly altering the way furniture, products, and architecture is produced. It seems natural for us to engage new software, and digitally driven manufacturing processes, even if we shudder from the idea of making automated, Jetsons-flavored futuristic design.

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DB: Yes—maybe it’s 50% of the process? Even though most of our work has its genesis inside some kind of modeling software, our design process has been maturing and feeling more comfortable with the idea of producing at least some initial hand sketches and drawings. This tends to work best for simple geometry-based projects. At the end of the day, we have a set of modeling rules and constraints that need to be developed inside modeling software. Something we continue to pursue in the design process is that the final piece feels or reads in a way that does not evoke “digital” all the way through— either by our chosen mode of production or because of its materiality. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? DB: Collaboration played a very important role during the first two years of Cmmnwlth. We really wanted to escape our architectural backgrounds as much as possible so we decided to open an art gallery where we would develop, with other artists, pieces and exhibitions that would allow us to collide our different backgrounds and levels of expertise. This allowed us to work with, but most importantly learn from, graphic designers, photographers, artists, and street artists, all the while sharing our inclination towards material objects affected by other creative fields. Networking, on the other hand, is something that has been naturally evolving into something fun and enjoyable. Rather than feeling forced to just put on a happy face all the time, we have been lucky to become friends with really amazing people and sometimes just put together a whole eclectic group of people for, let’s say, a pretty awesome lunch full of great food and liquor-a-plenty! That’s our idea of good networking. How does location play a role in your practice? ZC: You know, we live in this very romantic city: New York. It’s at once a very hard and industrious place, but it’s also the city where we have built our little family unit, birthed our baby boy, Pau, and launched our creative studio, Cmmnwlth. Life here is particular, and I think that when you are designing furniture, and other “lifestyle products”, you need to be very attuned to the daily rhythms and patterns in one’s own life, as well as those within culture more broadly. New York is both a weird anomaly in America and in other ways, it is its perfect mirror, like a romantic mirage of what one expects life to be. On one hand it’s so hard. It’s so full of history and neglect. It lacks so many of the things that most people take for granted. For example, we live in a fifth-floor walk up in a very old building with insanely high ceilings. Add a two-year old child who can’t quite walk all the way up the stairs by himself, and life becomes more physical than it might be in a suburban ranch house. On the other hand, when you arrive, there’s something about that vague sense of exhaustion you feel in your legs after all those steps

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that makes the sun in the living room feel all the more beautiful and soft. Nothing feels easy here. Nothing feels given. And I think there’s a natural sense of appreciation of very basic things built in to all that. I hope that in some way our work reflects a very New York vision of a basic, but beautiful life with simple pleasures of form, light, and craftsmanship built into them. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? ZC: It keeps us on our toes. I think that without it, we would be a very inward looking studio living on a mediocre, self-sufficient island and that our work would really suffer. The global nature of design is, in part, what I think makes “craft” an interesting field right now. Traditionally, the word “craft”, for me, evokes an inward attitude. It has long embraced the naïveté of closed, nationalistic cultures, historical purity, and expresses an anti-technological sentiment. Today, amongst relatively small studios working outside the comforts and constraints of industrial design for the masses, you see a revived interest in craft. But it’s craft produced by people who see themselves as designers in a globally connected design world. These are makers who have no choice—because of the ease of presentation and the bounty of smart journalists and curators, managing a packed schedule of annual design fairs—but to embrace technology, new techniques, and new forms. All the while striving to create something with a particular, sometimes “local” identity. I much prefer a con– nected, globalized, and competitive design world where I don’t have to feign ignorance of technology or a global perspective in order to produce something that is elegant and timeless, or particular. I like the title for the MAD series, The Home Front. It implies that there’s a kind of militarylike order and self-sacrifice for the greater good going on here, which I think is completely false, but it is indeed a beautiful vision of creative culture united. CMMNWLTH was founded in 2005 by Zoe Coombes and David Boira, as a furniture, art, and design studio based in New York City. Harnessing a new fluidity enabled by machine languages, CMMNWLTH’s interests are as material and emotional as they are technical. The studio has been commissioned by culture-driven clients such as Issey Miyake, Warp Records, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and currently produces designs for the new American furniture label MatterMade. Working within the worlds of contemporary art and industrial furniture design, CMMNWLTH aims to produce work that embodies a sense of elegant desire through an engagement with both the newest of tools and the oldest of techniques.

Joe Doucet Memoir

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Joe Doucet Where do you look for inspiration in your design? Most of my ideas come from two activities: reading and walking. When reading, I have a terrible habit of my mind wandering far from the words printed. Typically it’s only when turning to the next page that I realize I’ve been somewhere else completely and haven’t taken in a thing from the text. It is during that mental straying that some of my best ideas occur— great for my practice, bad for reading. When I am actively attempting to work on something with which I am struggling, I take a walk. There is a phrase from Diogenes, solvitur ambulando, “it is solved by walking”. Although I have taken it out of his original context, I have an affinity for the literal meaning of the words. Walking takes a low level of concentration, ironically the opposite of reading, but is conducive to that same in-between state where I find the ideas flow. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? First, let me express my appreciation at the use of the word “practice”. I believe one should think of oneself not as a designer but as practicing design in the same way one practices medicine. Not that we are in any way saving lives, I mean that you begin with a set of knowledge and understanding right out of school, and only through actively participating in design do you gain a deeper understanding of what your individual contributions to the field may be. The ability to know when something is right, or when something is not and exactly what is not right about it, results only from practicing design. As far as theories, yes, there is a driving principle behind my design. It is concerned with the thought that objects convey meaning as clearly as words do; i.e., Everything Communicates. Forms, materials, textures, colors—these are not aesthetic choices to me, but tools used to craft a message, to convey a specific idea I want to be communicated by an object. In terms of an ideal, that is simple: I am on a quest for excellence. Fame, money, success, although very nice cannot be the sole objective. When you are on top, you do not enjoy the view; you struggle to stay there. When money comes, you struggle to get more as what you have is never enough. I personally believe that excellence in your work is the only thing worth devoting a life to—trying and achieving your capacity as a designer—and as a person. What role does technology play in your design process? Think of technology in terms of defining a new expectation rather than as a means to move forward. Rapid prototyping, for example, allows for an understanding and adjustment of the details in a design that is hard to overstate. Although I am never without a sketchpad, I can quite easily take an idea and build a 3D model and see a design from all views. Not to mention the impact and amplification that social media can have—exposing your work globally, instantly. It’s an extraordinary time to be a designer.

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What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? The idea of a lone creator, stemming perhaps from the idea of the archetypal artist, passionate and disheveled, creating works of genius in his studio is an appealing one but rarely marries with reality. It is easy for a designer working alone or within a small group to feel quite insular. The need to look outside oneself is often unrecognized, but appreciated once it occurs. A larger community you can tap into for support, resources, or just to pass time with can be invaluable, but where to find this? Chad Philips, Kiel Mead and myself founded the New York Creative Social Concern Ltd. to address just this. We meet once a month at a different bar and operate as a creative mixer. No agenda, no speakers, just people in the creative field getting to meet and socialize with others like them. We’ve been thrilled with the response and the new projects, collaborations and friendships that have grown out of it. New chapters are opening in London and Chicago with more in the works. How does location play a role in your practice? Location has little impact on my practice. I feel that I could locate the studio just about anywhere with little consequence. This is one of the better results of the information revolution. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? I honestly do not feel like there is a strong global design community. I think there has been a recent interest occurring globally in design, [in terms of] designers and what they mean, but I don’t think there is a consensus in any meaningful way. There are a few superstar designers whose work can be seen in many homes and hotels throughout the world, but I think this has to do more with the globalized lifestyle and views of a certain strata of people, and is less specific to design. These are the same people you might see in an airport lounge, talking on their iPhones, wearing Italian shoes, English tailored jackets, Japanese denim jeans, drinking Australian wine. The only real difference is the language they are speaking. I believe this international behavior will one day be the norm, when we all celebrate the beauty that the cultural isolation of the past gives us, while enjoying a world-view that we are one people on one planet. Joe Doucet’s mantra is simple: everything communicates. He is an inventor, artist, and auteur. His work deftly hybridizes function and visual appeal while conveying layers of meaning and message. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Doucet believes that design and, more importantly, a designer’s thought process can play a larger role in innovation and problem solving, as well as aesthetics, whether that be for brands, their product portfolios, or for a broader social context. His portfolio, encompasses furniture, consumer electronics, corporate identity, jewelry, fashion, technology, children’s toys, environments, and architecture, delivering innovation across a variety of industries. With clients as diverse as Moët & Chandon, Braun, Target, Armani, Coty, P&G, Disney, Playboy, and Missoni, Doucet brings as much breadth as he does depth to his work. His commercial work is matched by his desire to develop innovations that quite simply make life better.

Felicia Ferrone Pika Pika

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Felicia Ferrone Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I find inspiration many different ways. Sometimes it comes from a process of playing with a certain material and molding it into shape, drawing various forms out of the inherent properties of the material. At times, it’s through the exploration of an archetype, other times it might be through my “misreading” of an object. Inspiration is all around. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Through my training as an architect, I was very much influenced by the Modernist movement. I still find function, form, user engagement, and technical production possibilities drive my work. The area of “emotion and design” and how it affects the subject-object relationship as expressed through the memory, poetics, and enduring characteristics of an object is something I have been investigating in my practice lately. What role does technology play in your design process? One of the key components of my work is manufacturing and realization driven by the process possibilities of industrial production, and technology, which simultaneously require a high level of handwork for piece completion. It is less about digital technology imbedded in the objects and more about the technology required in the process. Very often my work is deceptively simple, yet technically complex and challenging to produce, as I am constantly pushing the boundaries of production techniques and form. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? I don’t feel that anyone should design in a bubble and that collaboration, be it with a peer or a manufacturer, etc., is of the utmost importance. It is often through these collaborations you are able to achieve a greater dimensionality to the work than you would have otherwise. I find great inspiration in the work of my peers as it will often open up ideas I had never considered and new ways of looking at the world. How does location play a role in your practice? I am inspired by what is around me and that means everything from everyday objects to architecture. Beyond this physical inspiration, location plays less of a role as my work tends to be of a particular language that is more universal than vernacular. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? Living in Milan had the greatest impact on my work and still influences me to this day, be it through experiences, colleagues and/or manufacturers. Also, things that inform my work like historic and contemporary works and objects that inspire me are from all over the world. I consider my work to be less of a specific place and more about a specific language of form, material and production process that is globally driven and inspired. Felicia Ferrone studied architecture in the U.S. before beginning her career in Milan, apprenticing with some of today’s most influential architects and product designers. Her minimalist sensibilities are evident, as is her passion for reinterpreting conventional designs, offering fresh solutions that enrich our everyday environments.

Patrick Gavin Basic Boundaries

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Patrick Gavin Where do you look for inspiration in your design? The drawing process. I have developed a particular way of doing this: I start in the upper left corner of the paper and, as if I am writing a letter—from left to right, top to bottom— draw object after object. The overall image becomes quite idiosyncratic, which is very important to me. I read an interview with the German photographer Thomas Demand, who advises his students they will likely not succeed as professional artists. The odds are not with them, he says—these are the facts. So when they don’t “make it”, they should be creating work most honest to themselves. In this manner they will at least be content. I am most concerned with this, being content and continually provoked by the objects I make. They are a remainder of me. They pose questions to which I still do not know the answers. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? I have committed much time to creating objects which explore spatial suggestions. They are not always finite products but rather expositions of a universal language seldom written or discussed about void of jargon: that of space. What is the importance of collaboration/networking with peers? Having artist friends over for dinner is of utmost importance for my networking and collaborating. True networking requires mutual respect. What role does technology play in your design process? Technology plays a perfunctory role in my design process. I use sophisticated computer software and CNC machining to make my work, not because I am infatuated with those processes but because they aid in details developed in the most important technique I know: drawing. How does location play a role in your practice? I was raised in the inner-city. It just so happens design often occurs in big metropolises, so I’ve had good training for my profession. Cities make countries better: they encourage diversity among people and complex discussions of difficult issues. This is ever more important, especially when the world’s population has just reached seven billion people. Everyone should move back to cities. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? No more than the global economy has, which is to say: a fair amount. Being aware of the global design community makes one understand that the United States government is unsupportive to design. Though I am careful not to hold foreign design on too much of a pedestal. John Updike, in his writing, often preferred America as subject matter. He reminds us that there is so much to be fascinated by in our own daily lives. Patrick Gavin has designed objects for Alessi and been featured in Desire: The Shape of Things to Come, published by Gestalten. He holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he received awards from both the Florence Knoll Design Fund and the Industrial Design Society of America.

Johanna Grawunder Weston

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Johanna Grawunder Where do you look for inspiration in your design? 1. Architectural bones—the bones or constructional essence of a particular project I may be working on specifically of course, but also, more informatively, in the history of architecture itself. My work is very architectural in form, scale, abstraction, and statics and I often go back to the Source, that is, architecture, to keep things focused and reductive. 2. Contemporary culture, whether pop, street, or alternative. 3. Current events, as part of the collective consciousness. 4. Technology and materials sciences and the quest for new and better “matter”in the universe. 5. A way of living in the present, with a minimum of nostalgia, and that (nostalgia) only when it has a valid quality in the first place. 6. Political waves, which identify our collective state of being and thinking at any given time. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? I am a Sottsass disciple (Partner in Sottsass Associati from 1985–2001). The cultural values, aesthetic and functional freedoms, and social and political consciousness of that experience inform everything I do at a very deep level. Through this refined filter, I studied and experimented a lot with architecture and light and began to work with the idea of integrating man-made light into architecture with the same thoughtfulness and intention architects generally use to integrate natural light into buildings. Light is much more than just a functional requirement of so many lumens per square foot. It is a very emotional and subjective aspect of our environment. The building and lighting industry often has an almost Calvinistic way of looking at lighting—where anything beyond the maximum efficiency of the light is often deemed “decorative”. I am more interested in the emotional power and sensoriality of light. Now I specialize in projects and objects that propose man-made light as a part of the architecture, and less as an isolated object or featured afterthought. What role does technology play in your design process? I am very interested in new technologies and materials and translating them into objects, interiors or architecture that do not necessarily exude “technology” or “new material”. I am interested in technology to the point that it can enable me to do new things or old things in a better way, as opposed to using it for the sake of novelty. If I see one more intricate stereolithographic beige-plasma sculpture, I will scream.

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What is the importance of collaborating / networking with peers? I don’t network. I love collaborating on projects with architects and especially with artists. When I do “interventions” in an existing architectural project, such as the Freeport Singapore, where I designed all the interior and exterior lighting, I try to go into the architect’s structural mind-set and respect and exalt, as much as possible, the original intention. It is like the movie, Inception, wandering through someone else’s vision and making it my own, in some respect. In contrast, when I collaborate with artists, I am usually the adult in the room. Whether it is a collaborative exhibition, like the show Davos Dilemma, Rob Pruitt and I did at the American Academy in Rome, or designing Enzo Cucchi’s house in Siracusa, Sicily, I tend to be the one bringing the ruler and structural discipline to the table. I am very comfortable and excited in these collaborations, and they are an important part of my productive output. How does location play a role in your practice? I work in Europe, the U.S., and Asia. Of course, each location has its own prerequisites and cultural considerations. But the abstract quality of my work tends to be somewhat universal and non-denominational. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? The “globalization” of design, as with most other types of globalization, has created very distinct pockets of specificity, as opposed to homogenization. While materials and technologies may “globally” effect design in that they now easily transcend borders and are made available to a wider swath, the idiosyncratic quality of each individual designer is God. For good and evil. Organizationally, international events like Design Miami/Basel, which present art and design by many different artists and designers, living and dead, to a wider international audience, have been crucial to my specific practice, exposing art buyers and collectors as well as architects and decorators to my work. This has lead to very interesting collaborations and projects. Johanna Grawunder worked with Sottsass Associati from 1985–2001, becoming a partner in 1989. In 2001 she left Sottsass Associati and opened her own studio in San Franciso and Milan. Graduating in 1984 from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo with a Bachelors in architecture degree, she completed her final year of studies in Florence, Italy and in 1985 moved to Milan. Johanna was born in San Diego, California.

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American design is democratic and optimistic and its legacy will be replaced by a NEW! BETTER MODEL! COMING SOON! J

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elling

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Jerry Helling How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? Design in my mind is a broad concept that includes the design process and methodology, as well as space, object, experience, and systems. We are more distinctly American in some areas compared to others, but our perspective is about the future and about creating the future. American design leads the world in the digital and “product experience” frontiers in much the same way we did with physical products and a new way of life after WWII. We are leading creators of this century’s life experience. The soon to launch company Wantful, combines the best in product design, digital design, community inclusion, and the personal human experience of giving and receiving a gift. With respect to more traditional products we are resuming a leading role by refocusing our effort on design and quality, rather than simply price and production constraints. Since we’ve abdicated production in many industries, we don’t have the constraints of production assets that must be utilized and our role is to create a better product. Even in situations where we do produce, I believe there has been a realization that we must turn back to the principals of design and quality to guide us. The new Chrysler is a great example. I’m not sure there is a dominate theme or style emerging in American design— or that it can be simplified—but rather an acknowledgement that design plays an important role in creating better products, processes, organizations, and experiences. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? The word “global” is affecting every aspect of our lives. All decisions have to pass through a global filter, and the design community is just one element. The answer is yes, but this is not a unique phenomenon occurring specifically in the design community. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? In very general and pure terms, American design continues to celebrate a certain economy of materials and process, which is quite timely in today’s environment. American design is democratic and optimistic and its legacy will be replaced by a NEW! BETTER MODEL! COMING SOON! It is production and cost driven, standardized and created for a very broad homogeneous market. We have the ability to be ever changing and very adaptable which is a major asset. Compared to some other countries we do not focus as much on creating luxury items, which has been a perception problem regarding our ability to understand design and quality. However, we are excelling at designing quality “experiences” which is the new luxury, again pointing to our strengths in a post industrial world. Also until recently, due to the fact we are process driven, we have not created as many products that celebrate craft or the creator, or inspire devotion toward the object as a permanent artifact. One of our shortcomings is that we don’t adequately recognize the contribution of the designer in creating a national design consciousness, which in turn has made it a little more difficult to export the idea of American designers. We have never heard the names of some of our most talented designers. They work at Apple, Boeing, Chrysler, Disney, Google, Whirlpool, Target, etc. For the country that created celebrity culture, we have chosen to honor and focus on the company, the executive, and the prod-

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uct rather than the creative minds behind the products. I guess it is a matter of scale. The impact of the individual is less, proportionally, than it is in Europe, where well known designers work for smaller companies. It seems strange that in the entertainment industry we celebrate James Cameron rather than Paramount Pictures, but in the world of design we focus on the company and the product in lieu of the creators. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers. In 1946 we put a face to the “American Dream”. We built new cities and filled them with new houses, cars, appliances, furniture, and electronics all designed to be mass-produced economically. We embraced new materials and processes and sold the idea that products could make our life simpler and better. Mass produced and democratically designed products became the individual’s aspiration. Newly designed products and “new models” aimed at the mass market created the engine that helped grow our economy, with planned obsolescence as the driver. American design did not have to be influenced by history and nostalgia the way design in other parts of the world did, and we didn’t have to rebuild around legacy systems. We had the luxury of focusing purely on the future. The contemporary American designer is working with a similar canvas creating products, processes, services, and experiences that are relevant to the digital age and the new century. Just as we created the product driven “American Dream” in the 20th Century, we created Silicon Valley, and in this case, we are selling the idea that technology can make our life simpler and better. We have the ability to shape the design dialog for the future. In both situations American designers are focused on creating what’s next. What is the future of American design? American design is currently in a good place and has a bright future. Churchill said it best, “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” It is our time again, due in great part to the dialogue during the past five years regarding our apparent lack of awareness or practice of design of late. We have a renewed confidence that we will succeed in this area and confidence is 90% of the equation. The success of design in creating technology companies and the rebirth of key traditional companies boosts our confidence. In addition, the opportunity for our designers to work globally provides encouragement. These positive signs in the world of design are critical as they are offset by a loss of jobs and confidence in many other sectors of our life. Also, I believe that there is a realization that we must succeed in this area to remain relevant on the global stage. Jerry Helling is the president and creative director of Bernhardt Design. He began his career at Bernhardt and celebrates his 25th anniversary with the company in 2012. In addition to setting the creative direction, he also manages the business side of the company. Helling has repositioned Bernhardt Design from a domestic manufacturer of traditional wood furniture to an international brand. He brought Bernhardt Design to the global market by establishing international distribution as well as licenses for the brand in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Included in Helling’s many accomplishments is the development and launch of the award-winning “Go” chair with Ross Lovegrove.

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Christopher K Ho How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? Hermès, the French luxury company, recently announced an initiative called “Petit h” involving in-house artisans collaborating with fine artists to create unique objects out of detritus—excess material, cast offs—from the making of the company’s mainline products. Even though this example is not specifically American, I point to it because it encapsulates several leitmotifs in design. First, on the creative side, the trend towards inviting visual artists to oversee limited editions; this is in keeping with the increasingly coterminous fields of art and design, and also with the evolution of the artist into a service provider of sorts. Second, in terms of fabrication, the embrace of low-waste production. Finally, in the realm of consumption, the valorization of the offbeat or, in popular parlance, the “authentic.” Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? “Global” is a 20th Century term, laden with political implications, from corporate multinationals (on the right) to multiculturalism (on the left). A 21st Century replacement might be “sustainable,” which goes beyond the political, economic, and social. As the art critic Jonathan T.D. Neil recently noted, “sustainable” heralds a shift away from space (a global community of designers) towards time (an interest in multi-generational solutions). What this shift means for American design has yet to be realized (much less identified), but I believe that in retrospect, it will constitute our era’s signal contribution and characteristic. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? American design excels at providing everyday comfort. In the post-war period, this meant the rise of middle class standards of living (and indeed the ascension of the middle class itself). The U.S. Interstate System, televisions in every home, and semi-detached twocar garages are but some residuals. Today, American companies lead in specialized gear: skis, camping supplies, technical clothing. If there is a shortcoming, it is that with increasingly sophisticated supply chains and quick turnover elsewhere, American design becomes distracted with playing logistical catch up (a Sisyphean task given lower wages, larger populations, and more willing labor overseas). The best designers remain committed to addressing ambitious comfort-based problems: how to create personal envelopes of controllable light, or to shield entire coasts from inclement weather; how to conduct electricity wirelessly, or to implement self-cleaning surfaces in all public spaces.

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Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? If post-war American design mastered high-volume production, I believe that today, the emphasis is on low-waste production. The two clearly relate, but with key differences: the former is motivated by economic efficiency, while the latter (one hopes) by a sense of social and environmental responsibility. The former tends towards low monetary, high environmental impact, whereas the latter towards high monetary, low environmental impact. What is the future of American design? Recently, design schools—formerly the enclave of specialized groups—have entered the popular consciousness, through media mentions, increased enrollment, programs for community engagement, and well-connected faculty and administrators. At its direst, American design will become assimilated into dominant culture and/or instrumentalized: turned into a marketing tool for corporations, an extra-curricular activity for youth, a problem-solving consultancy for hire. At best, design’s unique and often mutable pedagogy and methodology—a potent concoction of analysis, research, imagination, collaboration, and technique—will fundamentally alter what a younger generation considers visible, audible, palatable, tangible, thinkable, and doable—in sum, possible. Christopher K. Ho is a New York based artist, writer, and independent curator. He teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and was the 2010 Critical Studies Fellow at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Sung Jang Stool T

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Sung Jang Where do you look for inspiration in your designs? I am always looking for design opportunities in daily life. I also look in the usual places such as design media and the work of others, though this isn’t always very effective for me. I find the best ideas come when I am in the right mindset despite location or the things I look at. I can be sitting on a train, staring at the back of someone’s head, and if my mind is “healthy”, good ideas come. So in order to be more inspired, I try to be in good mental state. Also, “who” is a very important factor when it comes to inspiration; being with or talking to the right kind of person gives me great inspiration as well. Similarly to taking a trip, the “whom” with which you travel is always more important than the “where” to which you go. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? I do base basic visual ideas on the traditional western concepts (i.e. traditional Roman ideals, Bauhaus, etc.) as do most designers. I like the concept of “nothing to add/nothing to take away” that many modern designers idealize. This very phrase means completely different things to different designers and I am not sure I am really practicing this as much as I like how it sounds. It is a relatively simple idea when it is viewed from a utilitarian angle. When a sense of aesthetic is involved, it suddenly becomes much more personally and culturally subjective. The traditional Korean concept “Dam-Bek” is similar to this idea and many Korean objects were built on this philosophy. My best attempt to translate this idea in English is “simple (or even bland) but fulfilling”. It is not easy to describe and I have a long way to go to implement this well in my work. What role does technology play in your design process? Most of my design process is not that high tech—lots of hand sketching and common software such as Adobe and usual 3D tools such as Rhino are involved. To me, it really is a stretch to call 3D modeling/rendering/prototyping a high technology, so I would say my methods are quite standard as a modern designer—moderate usage of technology. Technology at my level is used as a means of convenience rather than method of innovation. Technology does not make one designer better than another. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Having a good collaborator is a very important part of any work, not just design. I believe you can create good art in a closet but not good design. You need other people. I am also a believer in a single-designer-lead-process with collaborative team mindset. I do not believe that multi-design leadership or democratic approach creates good work. Each project must have a primary visionary and supportive design efforts. When there is good leadership present, collaboration is an extremely good/necessary way to innovate.

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How does location play a role in your practice? I am based in Itasca, IL with collaborators in London and New York, clients in Italy, UK, France, Korea, and Chicago. Location does not make a huge impact on my practice. I imagine that being in an urban environment however, does provide better access to the relevant community with clients, collaborators, manufacturers, suppliers, galleries, and more, which is valuable. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? My world used to be home and my town. It is now East Asia, North America, and Europe all in one day. I am not only allowed to work for remote clients, I am also able to work with partners from other continents. One of the projects I recently completed involved Guatemalan villagers and an organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The design took place here in Chicago but it was done with constant conversations with both Michigan and Guatemala. While I was unable to visit Guatemala, the project ended successfully thanks to the communications technology allowing global teamwork. Sung Jang received his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his Masters in design from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy. After working as a designer in Samsung Design Milano, he is now working under his own practice. Through design studio gregorysung, he has designed for known companies and galleries such as Samsung, Roche Bobois, Louis Vuitton, Cristina Grajales Gallery, Appropriate Technology Collaborative, Wright21, and many others.

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Michael Jefferson How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? American furniture design as a singular movement does not exist in a coherent form right now and any effort to imagine one is overshadowed and defined by its backdrop: corporate branding, convenience, video games, text messaging, foreign wars, politics—a.k.a. American values. What needs to emerge is a return to the bench-made, craft-driven ideal that was seen in previous decades of the 20th Century. Designers should first think small; thinking big is killing us. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? It is assumed that it has. The world is shrinking, and any publication or blog related to design displays design from around the world. This allows for a cross-pollination of ideas across borders, but also creates a homogeneity that needs to be guarded against. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? The strength of American design is technology, but this can be a crutch as technology will often dictate the design. This fact was seen in the early days of CAD design, where everything looks like a balloon animal or with 3D printing today where everything looks like a plastic pinecone. Technology should be used to create design efficiently so there is less waste, but the technique should be hidden through the creative process of the designer. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers. Post-War American designers collaborated more extensively and were more interested in problem-solving. With the support of manufacturers like Knoll and Herman Miller, executives saw the value of a radical reinvention of the way in which people live. Today, there is not the vacuum of war that produced a need for modern design for the masses; instead, war has vacuumed the spirit out of this country and taken creativity with it. There is a new infancy in this country by which everything we do and how we do it needs to be reinvented and reanalyzed; we need to start over. Tools of the new technology are scattered about and they need the ingredients of time + exploration by curious minds in order to be mastered. What is the future of American design? I am optimistic about the future of American design. What is needed are a few designers who can seize the moment and lead the way toward a new design movement in America. Michael Jefferson is at the forefront of the international design market as senior specialist of 20th Dentury design at Wright in Chicago. With a BFA in painting from the University of Michigan, Michael’s pursuit has consistently been to find the context and meaning of the 20th Century, exploring materials and form as they relate to the time in which an object was designed and its relative place in the history of art.

Seth Keller Monolith

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Seth Keller Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I suppose the three places I look for formal inspiration are architecture, geometry, and fine art. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? My main thesis is that there is an ethical dimension to design. The world is full of shit, driven by a culture programmed to consume. As designers we can either contribute to the accumulation of shit, or we can design things that are more meaningful, last longer, and don’t exploit people or the environment. I try to make a chair, for example, that is beautiful and well made, and is easily repairable if broken. I also look at design not as an expert, but as a novice. Otherwise, one forgets to ask important questions. What role does technology play in your design process? In one way, it is central to my design process. I use CAD and modeling software like Rhino and 3D Studio Max to work through formal and structural questions I might have about the massing of an object or the mathematical sequence of elements. I frequently use it to measure complex angles. I also use a 3D printer to execute objects at miniature scale or full scale, depending on the object. Personally, I don’t use technology as a source for creative inspiration, but rather as a tool, just like a sewing machine, table saw, or utility knife. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? I would say that it is very important. I like to talk out a particular design challenge as I am working through the challenge on paper or in prototypes. I have a number of peers with whom I constantly converse to share ideas and get feedback. Sometimes during the fever of a prototyping phase, it is possible for me to get so close to an object or idea that my opinion gets colored or biased. It is always valuable to have people whose opinions you trust weighing in on your ideas—which of course you can take or leave. When you leave your area of expertise, also, it is important to listen and learn from anyone who knows more than you. How does location play a role in your practice? Well, I think the legacy of modernism has shown that one-sized design does not fit all, and that a structure or object that belongs in the Southwest desert does not necessarily belong in the Swiss Alps. Furthermore, the aesthetic of modernism devoid of its original rigor prevails as the de facto “high style” which is a travesty. Location can not only shape ideas and concepts, but also give value and perspective to a culture saturated by visual imagery. Wherever I go, I try to understand what happened in a place before globalism—what resources were available locally, and what did this culture or place produce. This is very interesting to me.

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I was reading an article about learning and memory, and was fascinated by the notion that the brain begins to atrophy when it stops learning. Moving and traveling are two of the greatest ways to keep the mind agile and open. Of course, on one hand, there is Joseph Cornell who rarely left his attic and managed to create meaningful and creative work. On the other hand, Louis Kahn spent a year in Rome in his fifties. His entire architectural legacy is work he created after this year in Rome. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? I think it can be viewed as detrimental or beneficial. Capitalist and consumerist values are disseminated throughout the world, where the idea of owning a single family home with two extra-cab pick-ups in the driveway is the paradigm. Rarely are we reading literature about the value of multi-generational homes in Malawi. So far, globalism is a one-way street and can easily be viewed as imperialistic and opportunistic. While there are efforts to design for â&#x20AC;&#x153;the other 90%â&#x20AC;?, I think cities and regions in the U.S. are being written off as wasteland. Unemployed auto workers in Flint, MI need economic help the same way Burmese farmers need help. I initially think of designing objects, but quickly I think of designing systems to make those objects in a way that is most beneficial to the greatest number of people. Seth Keller was raised in St. Paul, MN. He has lived in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, New York, Minnesota and Michigan, where he currently resides. He studied design at Parsons School of Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art. His most recent work focuses not only on the final objects, but also the systems and context in which the objects exist. Materials, manufacturing, labor, logistics, environmental impact, and final consumer all enter into the equation that yields each object. Keller believes in an integration of research and intuition in the resolution of final forms.

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If Charles and Ray Eames were young designers today, would they find the same support as 60 years ago? S

cott

linker

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Scott Klinker How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? American design is not one thing—it includes many separate agents involved in various discussions. To narrow this question, we could generalize that national design identities are often measured in the category of furniture. Currently, we can speak of a certain French sensuality, a Dutch wit, a German pragmatism, an Italian poetics, or a British refinement. Until recently, the American scene has been identified with technology and big business. The Aeron chair (by Stumpf/Chadwick for Herman Miller) is a relatively recent icon of American design that embodies this idea. Its technical innovation was driven by corporate research and development. A new trend in the American scene is a shift away from the top-down, mass production model toward new bottom-up processes enabled by social networking—sites like Kickstarter. com, for example, are using “crowd-funding” to develop new products. While this is not an artistic characteristic per se, it does reflect an American fascination with building new connections between technology, commerce and culture. These new connections are beginning to enhance the more cultural side of an American design dialogue, as social networking brings about more design-centric events and discussions. In the next decade, I think we’re going to see American design really come into its own cultural identity. This series is already an early indicator. Has the global nature of the design community had an effect on American design? There’s much more measuring of America’s design culture relative to Europe’s and we can more clearly see the differences. Europe’s scene centers on a glamorous furniture industry and supports a star system of “signature” designers to differentiate their brands. With so much emphasis on formal signatures, designers there can be more attuned to the nuances of form and are often more invested in the idea of the individual “rock star” or artist who lends their signature style to various manufacturers. The American business scene has less need for glamorous individual signatures and instead looks for designers who can understand and solve their business problems. The result is less refined, but often more strategic. In the world of glamorous signatures, American design is not in the high ranks. In the area of new interdisciplinary processes, American design leads the way. But if furniture is the measure of a national design identity, then there is a huge transAtlantic divide: Europeans have proximity to the most relevant trade fairs, government programs to promote young designers (as a national identity for cultural export), many small to medium-sized manufacturers willing to take risks, a more sophisticated market audience with an interest in modern design and authorship, and finally, less expensive European tuition. There are more “platforms” for young European designers to compete and seek exposure for their talents. Americans can access those platforms, but have more barriers of entry—like the considerable expense and logistics of shipping

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furniture prototypes to Milan. Without industry or government support of young American designers, American soil has been less-than-fertile for growing this kind of talent. Most American contract furniture manufacturers now consult with European designers, while blaming American schools for not producing useful talent. If anything, our view of the global scene has exposed these hypocrisies and made it clear that we must improve conditions and build platforms for young American designers if we are going to build a stronger design identity here. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? Generally, American design is good with innovative problem solving, but bad with refined execution. This imbalance may get worse if American design schools continue their heavy emphasis on the business side of the design equation at the expense of teaching the rigors of form-giving and communication theory. American designers like to point to Apple as the voice of American design, but Apple is really an anomaly on the American scene—partly because they are more relentless about refined execution than any other company in America AND they are driven by a new cultural proposition (iLife), rather than market statistics. They put design first, knowing that the business will follow. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? Our context is vastly different today. Modernism is no longer a radical notion. A beautifully designed modern chair is no longer big news. The world is full of beautiful modern chairs. I have a unique perspective on this question in my post as Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook—the birthplace of the most iconic Mid-Century Modern designs by Eames, Saarinen, Knoll, Bertoia. After this “golden-age of American design”, there have been decades of high expectations for Cranbrook to produce more stars—but the reality is that today’s American scene generally doesn’t support the launch of star designers—no matter how well we train them. If Charles and Ray Eames were young designers today, would they find the same support as 60 years ago? These great designers first had platforms for exposure—Eames and Saarinen were both recognized in a competition held by MOMA. Eames then earned the patronage of a small, risk-taking furniture company called Herman Miller—at that time, not so different than the smaller, family-run Italian manufacturers that today build the careers of young European designers. It seems fair to ask what MOMA is doing today to support the careers of young American designers? What is the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum doing? What is the American furniture industry doing? What are American schools doing? At Cranbrook we’ve built new collaborative relationships with Herman Miller and Alessi—two design-driven companies firmly committed to fostering the next generation of design talent. American design schools need more of this kind of support.

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What is the future of American design? American business now regards design as a key strategic tool, rather than a styling exercise. Design is seen as a necessity rather than a luxury. American designers can now spend less time justifying their existence to the business world, and more time doing great work. This new connection will improve both business and design. And yet, we still need leadershipâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from industry, from our cultural institutions, from our professional organizations, from our schoolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to create platforms for young American designers to be showcased on the global design stage, and to build American design as a national cultural export. Scott Klinker is Principal of Scott Klinker Product Design and 3D Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. His studio has consulted with design-driven companies like Steelcase, Burton Snowboards, and Alessi. He is an alumnus of Cranbrook and IDEO.

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Christy MacLear First, by way of introducing myself: I’m a design collector, not a scholar. I have commissioned design, and, in my professional life, have always been involved in the strategy and formation of design-related public institutions. I take a very broad view of design. For me, it bleeds into industry, architecture, urban planning, fashion, and even fine art. These categories are increasingly porous today. How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? I’d like to focus my answer on three main drivers of the design world today: the economy, access/distribution, and technology. Competitive trends in the American economy have made design industries focus their efforts and products on cost efficiency, modularity, and scale of production. Consumers are price sensitive and manufacturers know and hold themselves to their investment hurdles. As a result we are seeing a rise in modular home design that is going beyond the double wide, “tiny” homes with pre-designed patterns, and products like lamps assembled from pre-production parts, following the new “Detroit” paradigm of batch assembly: buying assembled dashboards externally, for example, and “plugging” them into the chassis. America has not yet embraced design to the point where it is ubiquitous in our culture but it is getting there fast via a “high/low” pincer movement. At one end of the spectrum there has been a proliferation of “mass design”. We have wonderful examples of Target commissioning design—which can be seen more broadly on an international basis with IKEA, H&M or Uniqlo. At the other end, there is a vogue of high priced low volume commissions or limited editions produced by Industry Gallery, Phillips de Pury, Volume Gallery, and Wright21. Even fine artists like Richard Phillips and Jeff Koons are making items to sell in museum gift shops and the like at mass price points, as they “brand” themselves globally. Technology, of course, remains the key driver. Beyond removing geographic market boundaries, it affects the fundamentals of the design process. Technology allows Frank Gehry to produce more sculptural building forms and CNC rapid prototyping lets nearly everyone execute their designs without the craftsman as intermediary. In other words, it’s easier to prototype what you design, and this opens up whole realms of creative expression. Of course, that extends to manufacturing design as well. Aranda Lasch is a good example of architect/designers who leverage technology in the design and production. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? It’s a terrible cliché that to be global you have to think locally (and vice versa) but it is inarguable that local design challenges and solutions can have an impact globally. There are three Americans who represent this phenomenon well: Yves Behar, Cameron Sinclair and John Carey. Yves of course is the industrial designer who solves challenges

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with design, as in his project to bring the computer to every child. He is anchored in Silicon Valley but impacting the world. Similarly, Cameron Sinclair and John Carey could be considered “design advocates” who bring a uniquely American point of view, with its D.I.Y. optimism, to the global discussion of how to integrate a design mentality in solving the world’s most pressing problems, such as inadequacy of housing stock, sanitary conditions, or literacy. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? America has a tradition of problem solving. We are a culture of engineers, not artists, although that is shifting as design works its way into the American vernacular (think Frank Gehry vs. Thomas Edison). Since we are a young country with new traditions, it is easier for us to address the creative destruction wrought by the complexity of the new than some other cultures, and cut across traditional disciplines. In France, for example, Jean Prouvé was vilified by both the architectural and engineering professional mainstreams because he was trained and certified as neither. In capitalist America, it would have been much easier for him to be a “design entrepreneur.” America is uniquely positioned to move design into the mainstream. Look at Steve Jobs and his collaboration with architect Peter Bohlen, putting the architecture of his stores on a coherent continuum with his product design. Our shortcoming is our focus on brand rather than design—which is wonderfully parodied by the hip hop trend of leaving designer and store labels—even the price tags— on garments and wearing them. But design always wins...eventually. Muji, albeit Japanese, is a great example of how a generic brand, with great design (the brandless brand) becomes a portfolio of luxury goods. Design always wins. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? History has a way of culling out and presenting the best individuals or achievements, so we are beginning to understand whom the postwar greats were. It’s a bit premature to see this in contemporary times. But what is clear is that the barriers of entry for young designers are higher. Post-war designers such as Florence Knoll, Eero Saarinen, Charles & Ray Eames were all able to individually “incubate” by setting up their own shops after completing school. Today the thresholds for financial risk and costs are so much greater that most young designers have to rely on private commissions or alliances with large design manufacturers. The two major design commissioners of the postwar period, Herman Miller and Knoll, are still active but there is no current American analog. In the past decade most design support has come from European companies such as Flos, Established & Sons, and Vitra.

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What is the future of American design? The future of good design depends on its elevation to the short list of primary values in our culture...which is happening. As design thinking becomes integrated into city planning (like the High Line), everyday architecture (like Global Green/New Orleans), or into everyday objects easily accessible (like Michael Graves for Target)—design will become an expected standard. Once demand for design becomes a differentiating factor, all of the support systems will rise to the occasion. It’s interesting that design’s momentum is grassroots more than it is trickle-down. Christy MacLear is the inaugural executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in New York City. RRF oversees the artistic legacy of Rauschenberg as well as programmatic elements that support his philanthropic position that “art can change the world”. Her expertise is in the strategy and start-up planning for large scale art, architectural and design related projects. Prior positions include being the inaugural executive director of the Philip Johnson Glass House, director of a project in Chicago to move Lakeshore Drive to create a lakefront park and the manager of strategic planning for Walt Disney Company’s Celebration Project. MacLear is on the advisory committee for Harvard’s Historic Homes, Stanford University’s Arts Committee, and Cranbrook Academy of Art’s National Advisory Committee. She holds a degree in architectural history from Stanford University and an MBA from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School where she was a Barnes fellow.

Kiel Mead Cinder Block

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Kiel Mead Where do you look for inspiration in your design? Inspiration has to come from all aspects of life. I tend to look at the things that make us laugh. It is my personal mission to create objects that make you happy. What you live with and what you wear should make you smile. Current events inspire me a lot. I am a little bit of a news junkie. I find myself reading random stories in the paper and online when I should probably be designing something. Stories infiltrate my work constantly. Everything I do tends to have a narrative behind it. For me, it is not so much how beautiful the object is but what that object means to you. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? I try not to subscribe to any one ideal. I will let theories and movements influence my work but I tend to jump around looking for the spark that ignites the next idea. Although, there are a few things that I consider while creating. The environment is important. Every designer should consider the earth when creating something new. Though the green option might be more expensive, it should at least be explored. An organized workspace helps the creative process. Having your tools, materials, and inspiration in order will give you one less thing to worry about. Taking pride in maintaining your workspace will translate into your work. I personally try to spend one day a week working on maintaining my studio. I have a good amount of retail experience. Watching customers shop is a very interesting thing. Ownership is personal, tracking what people pick up, comment on, and eventually buy tells you a lot about what they want, hate, and canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live without. What role does technology play in your design process? There are two parts to this question. In reference to the creative process, I tend to avoid technology as much as possible. I like the physical act of drawing and the unique quality of building something by hand The first few steps of developing a product are the most exciting. The second part to this question is how technology has affected the way we communicate. Being able to get feedback, research information about materials, and find inspiration is a large part of my design process.

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What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? When I was still in school I worked with a few designer/woodworkers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These designers were part of a larger community of creative people in New York. They organized shows, introduced each other to retail opportunities and discussed projects. Every opportunity was a direct result of a willingness to share. This experience allowed me to see the importance of being part of a community. In 2008, with a group of friends, I helped found The American Design Club (AmDC). This organization helps to foster and promote emerging and established designers. We do this by showcasing work in as many interesting ways as possible. There have been so many success stories with our club that it has accrued quite a following. We are doing more than just “networking”; we are establishing life long friendships with people who have similar goals. How does location play a role in your practice? It is hard to answer this question, as I have never worked in another city. New York City has given me a lot of great opportunities. I am sure I am able to do things here that I cannot do anywhere else. The benefits of living in NYC are the stores, community, press, museums, trade shows, exhibition opportunities, manufacturers, materials, etc…. However the pace of this city can be overwhelming. Things move quickly and competition is strong. It is important to take a break and get out every once in a while so that you can recharge. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? My work has been known in the global market for several years. I sell in France, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, and a few other international destinations. I have been fortunate to be on the radar of some great media outlets. Still, there is so much that we don’t know about. Unless you are a mega design star who is producing work for a big company it is incredibly hard to be noticed. We need more groups to focus attention on designers. The AmDC started because we want to help broadcast the individuals who are coming up with the most exciting creative projects. We are excited to be organizing a show in Poland in 2013. We hope that is the first in a series of collaborations with different countries. With the way technology is allowing us to communicate, I believe we are on the cusp of something huge with international collaborations. New ways to share are popping up all the time. The internet is making the oceans seem a lot smaller everyday.

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Kiel Mead was born and raised just east of the Midwest, where he got rather used to ordinary things. After relocating to Brooklyn, he recognized that while most of the everyday objects we see do not change on their own, our perception and appreciation of them varies greatly in terms of the nostalgic imprints they leave in our minds. Out of matchsticks, car keys, previously chewed gum, string, and even onomatopoeias, Mead fashions jewelry that is overtly non-descript, into pieces of desire. His approach to design yields results both remarkable and unexpected. Meadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s innovative designs have been featured in magazines, museums, and a myriad of web sites.

Kiel Mead Driftwood hooks

Moorhead & Moorhead Design / Miami tent

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Moorhead & Moorhead Where do you look for inspiration in your design? Materials and their related manufacturing processes are often asource of inspiration for our designs. We are also interested in, and influenced by, art and other design disciplines. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? We aspire to design inventive objects and environments which are simple, functional, and responsible. We also believe strongly in making things locally, whenever possible. What role does technology play in your design process? A broad range of accessible CNC technologies are making it increasingly easier, both financially and technically, to fabricate relatively complex elements in small batches. This economy of scale and cost can make it easier for a manufacturer to take the risk of putting a piece into production, or allow a private client to do more for less. With this in mind, our design process is often informed by these manufacturing technologies. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Collaborating with clients, engineers, and fabricators is a fundamental part of realizing our work. Sharing experiences with a close circle of designer friends is invaluable in navigating the challenges of running a design studio. How does location play a role in your practice? New York is an incredible resource, with great art museums and galleries; a robust design community of architects, product, fashion, print, and interactive designers; and access to all sorts of materials and fabricators. It inspires and challenges us. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? While we follow whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening on the global design scene, we are more excited by the richness and possibilities of smaller, local design communities. New York, for example, is ripe with small furniture companies working on interesting projects with young designers. At its best, this smaller scale allows for a greater level of risk and experimentation in design. Moorhead & Moorhead is a New York-based architecture and industrial design studio formed in 2000 by brothers Granger and Robert Moorhead. The pair collaborate on projects ranging in scale from furniture design to architecture, for design-focused clients including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Design Miami, and MatterMade. Their work has been widely published and exhibited, and is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Jonathan Muecke Frame

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Jonathan Muecke Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I am not aware of inspiration—I am more interested in the development of a project and its ability at something new—something that I could not have seen in something else. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? My practice is developing and participating in the very large idea that design is no longer only planning for industry. What role does technology play in your design process? Technology is an assistant—it has no more value than anything else. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? What is important is the development of a practice capable of collaboration because of its individual strength— a practice that is combustible when mixed. How does location play a role in your practice? I cross the Mississippi river on my way to studio and on my way home each day. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? It is now less interesting to imagine what is elsewhere—there is no longer a frontier. Jonathan Muecke Design Office was established in 2010 after testing was complete at the Cranbrook Academy of Art proceeded earlier by an education in architecture and an architectural internship at the office Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland.

Jonathan Nesci Sol chair

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Jonathan Nesci Where do you look for inspiration in your design? This is a tough question and I’m not sure if I can answer it clearly. It seems like I’m always looking to the past to help me answer my current questions about design, connections, and the reasons why they exist. I think the force that drives anybody to create is our insatiable curiosity about the world around us, and the drive within that suggests we can add to what has already been done. My passion for contemporary sculpture and 20th century design heavily influences my own interpretation of these forms. Inspiration really can come from anywhere and for me, asking questions about what’s already made gives me the information to produce new work. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? A lot of my forms are geometry driven. I have self-imposed constraints that my work revolves around. I try to push the shapes in many ways around the constraint and when I’m tired of it I start working on a new set of rules with which to work. I also like to work on seamless connections; I like uniting two planes in a way that causes you to question how it was produced. What role does technology play in your design process? 3D computer drafting really helps me understand the details and work out a thought before I get into physical prototyping. Even with all a computer can do, I gain the most from building a prototype with whoever is going to produce the work. A lot of problems in production can’t be foreseen without years of trial and error experience. I gain the most from producing the first work. What is the importance of collaborating / networking with peers? I have trusted sounding boards that let me know when an idea is working. I might feel I have the best idea in the world and then I wake up the next morning hating it. If I wake up the next morning and I still like it, I know it might have a chance of survival. Normally, I can’t fully see the completed work in my mind before I start working. It starts as a seed of an idea and it slowly matures and gets refined. I trust a few advisors along the way to help me work through my thoughts. For me, the bulk of my collaborating is with the people fabricating my work. They help me to understand what can be done and that constant push and pull of the details makes for a better design. At the end of the day, I want for my ideas to become a reality and the people who make it happen have all my respect as they help me achieve what I want.

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How does location play a role in your practice? I really count on skilled craftsman to produce my work. The closer you live to an urban area the more chances you have to find talent. I moved to a small town called Scottsburg in southern Indiana two years ago and it has been challenging to find the people who can produce my work locally. If I didn’t live a short drive from Louisville I don’t think I’d have much of a chance finding help. It’s an odds game; the more people who live around me, the better chance I have of finding someone who can make my work. I’m constantly getting manufacturing tours of different local vendors’ shops. I like to see what their capabilities are; I might not use them right away, but I come back to them once I have the need. I always want to have “a guy that can do that”. It keeps me flexible with the many fabrication needs that come up. I’m four hours south of Chicago, so I’m there quite often and stay involved with my tried and true craftsmen. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? The collectors who have purchased the largest percentage of my work have been European, particularly French. I feel like Europeans invest more in design in general than anyone else and they are historical patrons of the arts. Without that type of patronage for new work, I’m not sure American designers will be able to sustain new work without the global design community’s support. Jonathan Nesci founded HALE, an industrial design company, in 2006. Part-design firm, part-production firm, HALE is based dually in Chicago, IL and Scottsburg, IN. The company uses a direct, intimate approach in securing quality, detailed, decorative art, and fine furniture products from craftsmen in fields beyond the furnishing markets. In many cases, the designs are formed around industry capabilities and employ experts in a variety of manufacturing and production processes. HALE has created a wide range of products and has received recognition from leading design publications such as Wallpaper, Dwell, Metropolitan Home, Surface, and Art + Auction. HALE has won the annual Wallpaper Design Award for the “Library Bookcase,” a minimalist shelf sculpted in aluminum and commissioned by Ugo Alfano’s Casati Gallery. Nesci’s designs have been viewed in numerous exhibitions including New York’s ICFF, and with Casati at Paris’s Pavillon des Arts et du Design, Design Miami, Design Art London, and Milan’s Salone del Mobile. Nesci had his first solo show with Chicago’s Volume Gallery in 2010 and had his second solo show with Patrick Parrish’s Tribeca gallery Mondo Cane.

Object Design League Balloon Factory

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Object Design League (ODL) Where do you look for inspiration in your design? We look for inspiration in all the usual places‚ design publications, gallery shows, furniture fairs, and the internet‚ but mostly in our own everyday experience. We are interested in unlocking the aesthetic/experiential magic of domestic spaces created by people similar to ourselves. To challenge our assumptions about this, we also examine other ways of living, whether through found artifacts, documentation, or direct experience. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? We are interested in making objects that are as genuine as possible, that have a truly rich life in space and use. This means that we have to experiment in a very direct sense: make prototypes, test them, flip them over, break them, and read them. What do the objects we make do? More importantly, what do they want to do? Our interest is in the space between behaviors, objects, and spaces. To pursue this, we have to work openly and are growing more comfortable with loosening the control systems that we’ve been trained to use, such as industrial design methodologies or precise digital fabrication techniques. The territory of the rough, approximate, and wild is one that we are still learning how to occupy. It’s an exciting direction for us. What role does technology play in your design process? We’re open to all methods of making and thinking, no matter where they lay on the continuum of analog to digital. It’s important that no project starts and ends in a 3D modeling program. Technology moves into the process when speed and control are necessary, but to start a project so precisely cheats us of discovering something unexpected. We prefer to think with our hands, doing rough mock-ups in simple materials that keep the concept open towards multiple outcomes that are refined iteratively. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Working with people is integral to the studio. We started as a loose association of designers and are now developing a design brand and retail front. This requires collaboration at many scales. First, between the two of us, as partners. Then, with others that are part of the larger team; for example, Michael Savona continues to develop our visual identity in constant dialogue with us. Beyond that, we also work closely with outside designers on special projects, the first of which is the Wabi Nabe pot by Gabriel Hargrove for ODLCO. And, of course, we’re always thinking about the non-design audience, as participants in our events.

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How does location play a role in your practice? Chicago is a nurturing home base, not a geographic boundary around our thinking and conversations. At the same time, we celebrate, through our work, what the Midwest has to offer. Proximity to manufacturing and industrial services plays a huge role in our practice. The city’s industrial history is not only still palpable; it’s available to us. For example, when prototyping the Wabi Nabe cast iron pot, we were able to move from digital file to milled wooden positive to a foundry-poured aluminum reproduction in a matter of hours. We’re learning to navigate Chicago’s resources in a smooth way, which is invaluable to working quickly and effectively. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? We want to operate on an international register, but without ignoring the fact that we are working in the USA. We’re interested in working with American factories‚ the ones that have been in business for decades and are experts in what they do at an industrial scale, but open to smaller projects. In this way, we hope we can contribute to our own economy, while making original objects that are relevant in international contexts. Object Design League (ODL) was co-founded by Caroline Linder and Lisa Smith in early 2009, after completing their Masters degrees in designed objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Since then, ODL has evolved into a design brand and collaborative studio. In July 2011, ODL showed the “Balloon Factory” at We Are Here: Art & Design Out of Context at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Their design brand, ODLCO, launched its first product, the “Wabi Nabe Cast Iron Pot” by Gabriel Hargrove, in October, 2011.

Charlie O'Geen Removed material from 12527 Klinger Street

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Charlie O’Geen Forward: I build things with people. I always build things with people. It didn’t feel right to interview myself. The following questions are answered based on a conversation with past and current collaborators. Where do you look for inspiration in your designs? With Maria Simon, a project architect at the Organization for Permanent Modernity in Boston, Massachusetts. Two agendas meet at a SITE. The agenda of MATERIAL brings a clarity to the process allowing the site to be authentic and simple (honest). The agenda of BODY brings constraints to the material, asking the material to support, challenge, and observe the weighted proportions of the body against a surface. Through the balance of these agendas an unexpected, understated confidence is established, is made. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? With Victoria McReynolds, a visiting assistant professor of architecture at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Yes Yes What What Do You Have What is Site and What is Its History What is Existing Excavating Physical Material Baggage History How How Can It Be Done How Can Recording be Revealed How Can Physical be Seen Nuances Engaged Material Played How are Translations Made Site Re-Seen Past Re-Trained Answer By Action

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What role does technology play in your design process? With Tamas von Staden, the principal of von Staden Architects in Birmingham, Michigan. Scale. Technology is about scale. It’s about the scale of building. It’s the how. It’s about working with materials at one to one but being able to see the hand in production, in the making at many scales. Contemporary production is becoming more and more capable of being exact. There is less room for change, less room for movement, less room for the hand, and material to express the how. The how and the scale are being divorced for the forced. Forced proportion, forced materials, forced production. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? With Frank Fantauzzi, the head of architecture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Collaboration is essential, it’s primal. We wouldn’t be where we are today as a species without working together... it’s impossible. Collaboration is about energy. It’s an energy that has to do with motivation and momentum capable of magnifying or channeling individual forces. It’s a potential that when orchestrated well, is far greater than the sum of its parts—the true power of combined knowledge and resources. Usually, people that work together are (or should be) seen as colleagues, “fellow workers.” Alternately, the definition of peer describes “a person who is equal to another in abilities, qualifications, age, background, and social status.” Huh (?), at that point you might as well be working alone. Perhaps, rather than colleagues or peers, collaborators should see each other as “piers” (…a solid support for resisting (vertical) pressure). If we thought of a person as a pier, they would be that stalwart friend who is somehow always by your side, helping you while you help them, another shoulder against the wheel...a true collaborator. How does location play a role in your practice? With Kate Daughdrill, who teaches community engaged art at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Location = Detroit = Place

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It’s hard to separate place from practice. Rather, it’s best to not separate place from practice. It’s best to live the work, live the place. Living the work changes you, changes the work you do, the way you do it, and the way you think about it. It doesn’t hurt the work; it helps it. It’s all about what’s around you and how you can use it, twist it, work with it. It’s a challenge though, it’s not easy, but when you live the work you realize that living is essential...thereby working is essential so naturally the fat, the excess begins to shed. Get deep get deep get deep... GET DEEP!!!! How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? With James Haddrill, who teaches sculpture at Oakland Community College in Rochester, Michigan. You could call it good coffee but others would call it oppression. It’s all about perspective... Charlie O’Geen’s work involves site-specific, architectural investigations that respond directly to the conditions of the site and often utilize found objects as building materials. He received both his Bachelors and Masters degrees of architecture from SUNY Buffalo and then went on to earn a second Masters in architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. O’Geen currently lives in Detroit, working independently on full-scale architectural and building projects.

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Patrick Parrish How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? I don’t think much about American design. I think about design daily, maybe hourly, but I don’t segregate designers into nationalistic ghettos. With historic/vintage pieces, the filter of time allows us to group and segregate designers into movements and styles such as “Post-War Italian”, or “Eames Era”, but when I am thinking about current designers and their output, I try not to make that distinction; it’s too early in the process. The internet presents another problem with trying to group people/designers into these neat boxes/boundaries within countries. Anyone and everyone has access to anything and everything (at least visually) at almost any time or any place. Hell, I can now surf the web on my iPhone while waiting underground for the subway here in NYC. This interconnectedness also makes it harder to see designers and their designs as anything more than just now, last year, or 5 years ago. What country they are in while they have their ideas, and execute and fabricate those designs, is of secondary interest to me really. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? Absolutely. The constant interconnectedness of everything and everybody, (i.e. internet, websites, blogs, etc.) makes it super easy to see anything you want, any time you want. Don’t have time to go to that new lighting show in Prague? Someone will have a virtual tour on their website, someone else will have photographed it for their blog, and a third person will have interviewed the curator for his magazine. You will be able to stream that same interview on Vimeo or YouTube, maybe even watch it live! I mean, it’s not like you were there, but you’re pretty damn close. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? Since I am not a fan of acknowledging the nationality of design, other than to maybe register where that design is literally coming from, I won’t single out “American design” from “British design” or “Czech design” or “Australian design”. That being said, the strengths I see are Americans’ willingness to use affordable, humble materials. Designers such as ROLU not only use plywood, they use the cheapest, knot-filled pieces they can find. True, they spend time to select the most beautiful or interesting sheets, but a piece of Finnish Birch plywood just does not interest them as much as the cheap, knotty, and imperfection filled pieces do. In the early days, Donald Judd (and his assistants who built his furniture) was not very concerned with finding the most beautiful, flawless piece of Baltic birch plywood in the stack. Not until the chairs became “art” did the market force them to start picking out the flawless pieces. Just look at these early Judd chairs: they are knottier than a macramé wall hanging. The kids today seem for the most part to be going in the same direction as the early Judd functionalism and thumbing their noses at the “purity” of his later pieces. Even being the perfectionist Modernist Virgo that I am, I like and admire that.

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Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? The advent of the internet and advances in general technology offer the greatest differences between post war and contemporary designers, but frankly, most of the CAD/computer/laser aided designs leave me a bit dry, and while they have allowed designers to create things that used to be impossible to make, I don’t feel these technologies have moved us forward in any significant aesthetic way. Post-war designers had trade magazines, travel, and to a lesser extent, TV and film to explore and mine for ideas and inspirations and also for sharing and collaboration. But the fact that a designer in Tokyo can Skype with another designer in Stockholm, then one in Berlin and then another in São Paulo for “free”, anytime he or she wants, is a real game changer in how quickly information can be shared. What used to take a car, a plane, a train, or a boat for a face-to-face exchange can now be completed in seconds with virtually no cost and no jetlag. That ability to freely and quickly exchange information is just going to get quicker, smoother, and easier. What is the future of American design? The future of American design relies on the future of other designers in the world just as international design will rely on American design. I don’t mean to say that there isn’t great American design, not at all! But if we make that distinction, where do we stop? Great New York State design? Great Brooklyn design? Great East Williamsburg design? The great designers of Bedford Avenue? All of that is fun to look at, especially through the lens or filter of time, to see where little hotbeds of activity and creativity sprung up and to try figure out why then and there, but I see the activity that matters now on a more global scale. That being said, I like what I see when young designers combine what technology has to offer and use old school techniques and materials. Jonathan Nesci of Hale Industrial Design is a good example of this spirit. He is hi-tech and low-tech at the same time. Who else would get an Amish carpenter to execute his CAD designs of a table in native Indianaian cedar! Gotta love that! Patrick Parrish is the owner of the Manhattan design gallery Mondo Cane and the creator of the popular blog MONDOBLOGO. He has recently contributed to Apartamento and Bad Day magazines with his photography and interviews of Martino Gamper, ROLU and Project No.8 and is helping to produce a coffee table book on one of his favorite designers, Carl Auböck. Parrish received his BFA from Florida State University and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a collector, a sometimes painter, and ALWAYS has a camera in his pocket.

Parrish Rash & van Diesel Hernan Diaz-Alonso Le Chaise Grotesque

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Parrish Rash & van Diesel (PR&vD) Where do you look for inspiration in your design? We are facilitators — our inspiration comes from the hundreds of artists / designers / companies for whom we design. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? We began our business very much mired in a world of design intelligence and prototyping. We started fabricating because the amount of data was greatly outpacing physical matter. Blindly, we started making things that were “impossible” to produce — pushing to find innovation within the projects we were producing. The thought was that any “thing” was a treasure trove of content that would translate monetarily or in other values. In the end, the true innovation has shown in the ability of design and art to mobilize economies. For example, a roof top deck in New York, designed by a top designer, comprised of “weird” geometries, leaves a lasting educational footprint on the person designing in Kentucky. Each designer has market share potential. No longer is there the excuse of the lack of pathways. Technology brought the simultaneity of designing, making, and selling. We now need to find our place in a design food chain that values innovation above all else. Designers need to understand the real investments they make in product development— whether in building or product design — so that they can more fully reap the rewards that come to those who add real value. Ultimately, this will only come for designers as a whole with the scalability of mass-entrepreneurship, and that is because only this has the potential to sway markets and potentially re-shuffle the design food chain. What role does technology play in your design process? Technology is omnipresent in our work. It’s a bit annoying. Our firm is comprised of children of 90’s digital design, where everything must be done with the computer — almost as an imperative. The irony is that over time the complexity of the problems we face can often only be solved with the fuzzy logic of the hand. With that said, the greatest advantage technology awards us is speed in getting more information to and from so that ultimately we can be more nimble in using our hands. What is the importance of collaborating / networking with peers? Very important — or at least it should be. One central tenant for us is that the business of making needs to change in order to allow great explorations in art and design. In order for that to happen, all makers, facilitators, and producers need to think more holistically about bidding. We are part of a globalized fabrication world predicated on efficiency. However, art and design projects demand more atypical processes. This drives price up and disallows so much potential. With that said, collaborating rests on our ability to build financial systems that allow for more atypical work to compete with value-engineered work. In order for this to happen, all the small nimble folks need to play nice and leverage themselves against the larger machine.

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Project Legend James Corner Field Operations Ryan McGinness Zaha Hadid Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe Affect_T

How does location play a role in your practice? I used to believe that location played an enormous role. We are in Kentucky, which has obvious advantages cost wise, but also deficiencies in work force. The work we do is very much outside the standard education and work training of people within 200 miles, which leads us to the problem of how to attract the talent necessary to build a business. This problem, however, has led us to a more active leadership role, where we are investing in work place education and training. Ironically, our location has led us to developing a kind of Hershey Pennsylvania, Willie Wonka approach, where in order to maintain place in Kentucky, we must build a spectacle that attracts workers and talent.

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Map Key Lexington Kentucky Fabrication Value of goods Direction of goods

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How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? As mentioned above, it is everything to us. We feel a drive to develop a countermodel to the globalized art and design fabrication complex. It’s weird, rural places, such as Kentucky, really have had no place globally (as compared to major markets), but it has harbored entrepreneurs in distilling alcohol, farming, and small tool and die shops. This in turn breeds a certain adventurer type that ultimately has large world reach. It’s the notion of cottage industry that inspires us. Every artist/designer represents potential market share. It is our goal to find the best possible path through global jet streams to make very unlikely things, likely. PR&vD (Drura Parrish, Timothy Rives Rash II, Bart van Diesel) provides custom fabrication, product development, manufacturing, and sales and marketing services for museum art and design objects, custom interior design installations, and innovative interior design product concepts. They have produced work that is in the collections of MAK Vienna, SF Moma, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to fabricating art and design, PR&vD co-founded with Dima Strakovsky the Land of Tomorrow (LOT) Gallery as a project space dedicated to the making and showing of experimental work in the fields of art, design, and music in Kentucky. LOT operates over 25,000 square feet of exhibition area supported by many amazing and talented people.

Rich Brilliant Willing 3.09 ft続

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Rich Brilliant Willing (RBW) Where do you look for inspiration in your design? Charles Brill: I see design as a process of creating something new. Parameters are set and the goal is to create, or design, a solution. Alexander Williams: Our inspiration often comes from necessity. We need a bracket to connect these two pieces of wood. Finding an existing solution to that problem is a great source of inspiration. Theo Richardson: Natural materials! [They are] best for the environment, best for wear, and patina over time. Seeing other products made in natural materials is quite cool too, like learning from a leather saddle, or from a cast brass part. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? CB: Make something good that people like. AW: We have a way of working with what’s out there. Lampshades have been around since before any of our great-grandparents. They’re engrained in the common domestic vocabulary. We can play on these traditional techniques, materials, and forms to create something familiar and yet entirely new. What role does technology play in your design process? CB: It is a tool just like any other. AW: Our projects often consist of finding the right tool for a job or even finding the right job for a certain tool. A sufficient grasp of the resources available to you is essential. TR: In our process it is fantastic to see 3D models in person, update them in CAD, send files for cutting, and then rebuild the models. It’s a repetitive process of layers and it’s very exciting to me. What is the importance of collaborating / networking with peers? CB: It always important to know what other people are working on, but it is more important to create your own voice and stick to it. AW: I think it’s extremely important to communicate with your peers. You are advancing the design field as a group and the knowledge that your group holds can only be of value if everyone shares it. It’s like one leg knowing something that the other leg doesn’t and you just walk around in circles. TR: Collaborating amongst ourselves is obviously the central part of our studio, however it doesn’t stop there, the collaboration is just beginning by the time we work with manufacturers, the representatives for our work, and then a slightly different type of collaboration occurs with the user.

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How does location play a role in your practice? CB: It’s not the location that is influential, it is the people that you surround yourself with that will place influence on your work. AW: We identify with our community here in New York City. It’s a great place, full of energy and resources, and truly a melting pot. Could RBW exist anywhere else? Yes! TR: Being NY based, we have access to all kinds of things, it shapes our head space as well. Of course even our neighbors impart something on our work. We’re fortunate to be in a really creative building with other tenants who are photographers, illustrators, a couple galleries, and more. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? CB: It’s a great thing to be able to share your ideas with a global population. The design minded individual is a small percentage of the population, so we need to be able to speak to the world. AW: We’ve had the opportunity to travel to some incredible places, China, Bulgaria, Italy. We find ourselves at the intersection of a wide range of disciplines and ideas. It has allowed us to maintain an open and ever-changing perspective. TR: Our exposure is a global audience; from very early on we were offered space to participate in shows in Milan, Shanghai, London, and more. More than ever it is a global audience and this has shaped our practice to think about this global impact. Rich Brilliant Willing was founded in 2007 and is now an internationally renowned design studio. They consult for an international clientele including SCP, Innermost, Artecnica, and lighting. Designing at various scales from packaging to spaces and installations, their methodology is evident in all their work. With a combination of technical sophistication and old-fashioned sleight of hand, they appropriate existing products to interlink components and strategically rethink them. The moniker Rich Brilliant Willing is exemplary of this process; re-imagining what was there to begin with: Theo Richardson, Charles Brill, Alexander Williams. Rich Brilliant Willing was named among the “Top 40” designers by ID Magazine in January 2009 and named an Avant Guardian by Surface in November of the same year and recently awarded Best New Designer ICFF editor awards 2011. With recent publication in Wallpaper, FRAME and multiple appearances in The New York Times their notoriety continues to grow.

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Jen Renzi How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? This answer might be a bit of a cop-out, but I’d define American design as, literally, all over the map. Trying to define it as a cohesive movement or scene fails to account for its diversity, its pluralism, its breadth. In fact, American design is: American-born designers living and creating abroad; foreign-born designers living and creating on our shores; New Yorkers designing for European manufacturers; Italians and Asians designing for High Point makers; mass-market brands; woodworkers selling their creations on Etsy; creatives making limited-edition functional objects sold in galleries. It’s just too sprawling and diverse and diasporic to define and generalize about unless we qualify what segment/subset we’re discussing. Even within those subsets, those of us in the media tend to find what trends/styles we want to see. (Guilty as charged.) There’s a gap between American design as it exists in real time and real space and “American design” as a media construct. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? Absolutely. Although perhaps not how we anticipated that it would: that national/regional design movements would lose their integrity and uniqueness and conform to some homogeneous pan-global style. Thankfully, that hasn’t come to pass. If anything, hybridization, not assimilation, has resulted. And I think designers in the U.S. have tried to differentiate their work within the global marketplace by seeking ever more localized (and personal) sources of inspiration. When borrowing motifs, techniques, or stylistic inspiration from other cultures, contemporary designers generally do so from an informed point of view—i.e. not just co-opting the visual language of others, but understanding and acknowledging the cultural mindset and philosophy behind it. Which adds another layer of meaning to the work. That perspective and knowingness is, of course, a byproduct of globalization— namely, easy-access information (largely via the internet) about how other cultures interpret themselves. One of the more intriguing consequences of globalization has nothing to do with superficial style but with production: more direct access to overseas fabricators, componentmakers, craftsmen, and specialists. Many designers credit the ability outsource abroad (and not just to China) with helping them make pieces more affordably. And in smaller quantities, which often allows for more experimentation. These conditions have empowered a lot of independent players to distribute their own work and to cultivate their own audience.

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What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? Gross overgeneralization alert! First, the negative: many U.S. designers are still too preoccupied with their European counterparts—and how our furniture industry is less designer-friendly than theirs. We need to get over it. Yes, they have government support, more contemporary-minded buyers, and manufacturers who take greater risks with respect to producing designs that will never be big money makers (even if they generate a lot of press). But our uniquely American hyper-commercialism has made our practitioners more entrepreneurial, I think, and inspired many to find creativity within its constraints. There’s a tendency to problematize (even to some extent pathologize) American design as if it needs to be fixed/made less commercial. But I see that quality as a condition, not a flaw. Balancing out our commercial side, there is a similarly strong—and underacknowledged—tradition of high-concept work. Think of artists making furniture (Donald Judd, Richard Artschwager) and designers shown in a gallery context (Roy McMakin, Allen Wexler). Plus many designers working today have fine-art backgrounds, having been trained as sculptors, painters, installation artists, etc. The U.S. has also produced talents like Sam Maloof and George Nakashima who’ve influenced generations of designers—but who often get lumped into the “craft” category. Which brings us to another shortcoming: our media and collecting/exhibition/teaching institutions are too quick to draw dividing lines between art and design, between craft and design. The Europeans one-up us here: they consider craft to be part of the design process; we think of craft as its own genre distinct from design-making. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? It’s such a different world today that it’s hard to compare the two eras. We’re more jaded and less idealistic, of course. But if anything, there are unexpected parallels between the post-war period and today—including an optimism about industrial processes and the liberating potential of technology. Of course, current-day designers exploit technology for very different means than did their midcentury predecessors: not to mass produce but to micro produce (i.e. in small batches); not to democratize but to humanize (perhaps those two aren’t so different?); not to achieve uniformity from piece to piece but to make each one unique without having to do so by hand. And our technology derives from different sources: military research vs Silicon Valley. A big difference between 2012 and 1950 is that, today, because it’s so difficult to get a royalty contract with a big domestic manufacturer, fewer designers pin their hopes on getting represented by the Herman Millers of the world. Because of that, they’re more inclined to take matters into their own hands, to self-produce, and self-distribute. That entrepreneurial spirit is very American.

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What is the future of American design? I believe and hope that our culture of anonymity vis-à-vis mass-produced furniture will change, which will have a trickle-down effect to smaller players. As it stands now, most big brands put their stamp on products rather than promote the talent behind the work. Even Anthropologie—which, while not generally considered a bastion of cuttingedge design, is a player in terms of volume of furniture and design objects sold—has been guilty of this, despite the fact that it has built its brand on craftsmanship and authenticity and the personal touch. (They’ve been singing a different tune the last few years, bringing the wizards out from behind the curtain.) I think we’ll see more such companies start to promote the designers behind their product, to use names a selling point. Just today I discovered that West Elm is collaborating with Paul Loebach, one of our more exciting designer/thinker/craftsmen. And that the pieces were affordable to a broad audience. I think this only bodes well for the edgier, higher-end, and more intellectual corners of the market. Other thoughts: The future of design will be more expensive. It will still fetishize the handcrafted. It will reflect upon and draw from its own heritage. It will enjoy more opportunities to exhibit and promote itself outside of purely commercial channels. It will be less New York–centric. Much of it (namely the majority of the furniture that makes it into American homes) will still be overscaled and a little too brown. It will get its hands dirty. It will be less proprietary, more open-source. It will be eco-friendlier, but less smug about its sustainable attributes. It will blog about (or otherwise document) itself, and people will leave comments. And it will continue to defy any of our predictions, including mine. Jen Renzi is a freelance writer based in New York. Previously a senior editor at House & Garden and Interior Design magazines, she has written for publications including The Wall Street Journal (where she pens the monthly “My Favorite Room” column), Architectural Digest, Modern, Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times Style Magazine, The Miami Herald, Surface, Wallpaper, Interiors, and Architectural Record. Renzi has also authored and/or contributed to design books for Abrams, Princeton Architectural Press, Sterling, and Clarkson Potter, among others.

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Meaghan Roddy How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? This might be colored by the fact that I specialize in works from the American studio craft movement so I’m paying attention to how that has translated from its roots to now, but I’ve noticed an emphasis on craftsmanship and traditional materials/methods in a lot of the work I’ve seen recently. Across the board internationally, there’s a bigger focus on eco-friendly or sustainable design. But even if it’s not blatant, like working with an organic material, a lot of the work has a handmade nature that shies away from mass production and is an updated, more innovative version of the craftsman tradition. For example, Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch of the firm Aranda\Lasch, whose work typically has a very fractal-inspired mathematical approach, began to explore basket-weaving a couple years ago as an element of their design oeuvre. Another example is Tanya Aguiñiga who frequently explores the craft traditions of Mexico and adapts them to her work. She has a series of work in which she takes existing designs that are somewhat ubiquitous, like a metal folding chair or an Eames DCM, and covers them in wool felt by hand. Or Stephen Burks who collaborates with artisans around the world to produce handmade pieces and support non-profit organizations that aid developing countries. The output seems more conscious. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? The international discourse that exists among all the trade shows (Milan, Basel, etc.) is still powerful, and it makes it a little more evident what we’re lacking in the U.S. in terms of support. There isn’t a lot of middle ground between a huge manufacturer like Herman Miller or Knoll and a small contemporary design gallery, and even still neither of those options is necessarily specifically promoting American design. Instead of designing for a major firm, American designers have to take a bit more of an independent, D.I.Y approach. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? I think the independence referenced above is somewhat responsible for the focus on traditional craft that I’ve noticed, and I think that is a big strength. There also doesn’t appear to be an overarching “school of thought”, and while that may be a shortcoming in the sense that there isn’t really an organized presence or stylistic output, it allows for so much more to develop organically, which again, is a strength. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers. On a very basic level, changes in technology have had a major impact on our physical needs in terms of design. Even things that were designed a decade or two ago are now obsolete - we no longer need TV cabinets because our TVs hang on the wall, or stereo cabinets and CD racks because we have iPods.

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Additionally, idealistically things have changed – the bulk of American design immediately post-war was about mass production and utilizing new materials that could make that possible. We now know that fiberglass and plastics are not eco-friendly, so contemporary designers are saddled with the responsibility of producing work that isn’t going to exacerbate any of our environmental problems. The U.S. has typically been a massive consumer culture, but we’ve entered into an economic crisis, and our priorities and needs have shifted, which has had a domino effect into every aspect of life. Consumers are considering whether the pieces they’re buying will be worth the investment – will it stand the test of time, will it hold its value, etc. From an auction perspective, contemporary design, which had been riding the high tide of contemporary art at auction in the height of the market in 2007, took a deep hit with the financial crisis and has been struggling to regain the market’s confidence ever since. The middle class that post-war designers were designing for doesn’t really exist anymore. This economic division means you are either designing furniture on the high end in limited runs for a specific clientele, or you’re designing on the low end mass-production scale of a major retailer and there isn’t a lot of room on the market for everything in between. Post-war America had manufacturers like Herman Miller and Knoll who would recruit their team of designers from places like Cranbrook. This sort of fostering doesn’t exist so much in the present day, so there is no real equivalent for a contemporary American designer. Herman Miller and Knoll are giants and anyway they’re still manufacturing the tried and true works from their post-war roster, like Eames and Nelson. The output from American manufacturers isn’t as fresh as it was when these companies first started and the opportunities for newer designers to present new material are limited. What is the future of American design? Honestly, there is nothing I’d love to see more than a revival Objects: USA show. Meaghan Roddy is a specialist in the design department of Phillips de Pury & Company in New York. She has worked previously at David Rago Auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey as a cataloguing specialist for works from the American arts and crafts movement as well as mid-century and contemporary American studio craft, and maintains a special focus on the studio production of Pennsylvania designers George Nakashima, Harry Bertoia, Paul Evans and Philip Lloyd Powell. She has been consulted for television features on American studio ceramics and furniture design for programs including Wall Street Journal Weekend, On the Block, and Crane TV. Roddy received a BA in art history from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

ROLU After U.R. ( a magnetic superbox )

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ROLU Where do you look for inspiration in your design? A broad answer would be — everywhere. Ridiculous, but true. We’re looking at art and architecture. Nature. The design disciplines...furniture, fashion, graphic design, set design. Dance. And of course, music. We often discuss our work in terms that apply to music: rhythm, dynamic, balance, repetition, texture etc. We are thinking about art history, culture and philosophy, perception, mystery, empathy and love. It feels like we are searching for something — the convergence of knowing, forgetting, remembering, and foreseeing. It’s somehow about trust. A more specific answer [would be], the internet—not just as a place to look, but as a thing. We’re interested in how the internet is changing what we see and how we see it. We are inspired by the relatively new phenomena of seeing photos of art, architecture, or design without very much context and generally without the institutional construct and critical hierarchy that are present in books, museums, and even magazines as more traditional “places” to encounter inspiration. We feel like it allows us to see in a purer fashion...which is really inspiring. There’s also something mysterious about inspiration. So it’s hard to answer. Inspiration finds us as much as we find it. It often feels as though our work is leading us and we’re following. As Robert Rausenberg once said when asked about his process, “I am following the process and the process is following me—and we are both bewildering each other.” That seems right. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Yes and no. It feels like it’s always evolving but there are some themes we seem to be returning to frequently. Often, our approach involves encountering an image of some type of form, usually on the internet. It could be architecture, sculpture or some designed—or even non-designed object with little or no context about place, scale, or authorship—and we set out to make our own version of it. We’re interested in what we see when we look at photos of objects. Joseph Kosuth’s piece, “One and Three Chairs”, feels related: an actual size photo of a chair, displayed next to the chair, along with the definition of the word chair. We’re also interested in the context that we all create when we are looking at photos, the answers to questions that were never really asked, and the assumptions we make. Because of the popularity of so-called “mood board” blogs and Tumblrs, the encounters we have with mysterious photos is growing. We seek to recreate the image in a way that is vaguely related to appropriation, but since we generally recontextualize the objects we reproduce by making them from simple hardware store materials, we think it has more in common with sampling in music. I have sometimes described our work as “field recordings made of wood”.

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There’s an essay by the artist Seth Price called “Décor Holes” that’s been important to our thinking lately. It appeared in Dot Dot Dot #13 in 2006. I didn’t read it while it was lying around the studio for all those years. I read it in relation to a set of designs we were commissioned to do for OMMU in Athens, Greece. I discovered it in a more recent Dot Dot Dot related publication called Extended Caption (DDDG) which was comprised of scans of certain items from the publication that had been shrunk down a bit and were next to impossible to read. Appropriately, I had to re-scan the pages, enlarge them, and print them in order to read the essay comfortably. It only occurred to me that I had the original after the fact. This story though seems like a great metaphor for our work. What role does technology play in your design process? Beyond the way we use the internet, not that much. There is generally a stage where we use 3D modeling software but, we’re really partial to making things. The designer Peter Nencini recently used the phrase “making as thinking” to describe a collaboration we’re working on. This has been a recent mantra around the studio. We are taking some of our cues from online language translators. We are excited about the clumsy but often poetic inaccuracies present. This feels connected to our work. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? It’s really important. We’ve met so many people through the ROLU blog. It’s incredible. Whenever I meet someone online I almost always add a “we should work on something sometime” to the initial communication and it has often turned into actual collaborations. Most of the people in the community of blogs we are in touch with, or are paying attention to, are artists and designers who are interested in similar things: David John (You Have Been Here Sometime), Patrick Parrish (Mondo Blogo), David Horvitz, Ashley Helvey (Hunter/Gather), David Hamlow, Mary Manning (Unchangin Window), Matt Connors (And A-Half), Greg Allen (greg.org), Andy Beach (Reference Library), Charlotte Cheetham (Many Stuff), Michael Dumontier (Stopping Off Place), Jabari Jordan-Walker (Black Taiga), Jennilee Marigomen (Happy Accident), Maryanne Casasanta (Box For Standing), Wary Meyers, Andrew Post (An Ambitious Project Collapsing)...man, we could go on and on. Both in literal and abstract ways, it feels like collaboration is happening. There is some kind of energy exchange. And it’s been amazing to have so many things start to happen between these people in physical space too, not just on the internet. Looking back, starting the ROLU blog was one of the best things we ever did. In the abstract I have been thinking about how our appropriating of forms is in a sense a form of one-way collaboration. Maybe it involves spectres? Not sure how that will end up. Something involving hauntology I hope.

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How does location play a role in your practice? We are based in Minneapolis but most of the work we’ve done and sold has been related to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, and soon Paris and Athens. We are really glad the Walker Art Center is here and they’ve been really supportive but in some ways, again, it’s the internet that seems to have helped us almost circumvent place, or the way that place may have been limiting in the past if you weren’t in New York or some other design or art hub. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? It never really occurs to us that it’s global (maybe because it seems like we rarely leave the studio!). And thus, our community is global but it’s happening on the internet which feels local. ROLU, rosenlof/lucas, ro/lu is a design and art studio located in Minneapolis, Minnesota whose focus is on modern residential landscape design and installation. Its practice also extends to relational architectural projects, urban planning work and innovative collaborative public art. The studio was founded in 2003 by Matt Olson and Mike Brady.

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Dan Rubinstein How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? American design is getting harder and harder to define each year. With little support and a bleak economic landscape, designers are sticking to what they know. We’re therefore seeing a lot of very unique portfolios out there. People aren’t jumping on the bandwagon to do something that’s trendy just to make a buck. Too much originality like this often makes their work less commercial, adding to the difficulties that contemporary designers already face in the market. I really think that some of the best designers in the world today are living in the U.S., but they’re isolated in a way, so you don’t hear about them as much. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? It’s certainly raised the bar. So much access to information online has created a new breed of designer who mainly looks to Europe for inspiration. Not just for their work, but also on how they approach their careers and the manufacturing process. They seem to be much more aware of branding, identity, presentation, and marketing than perhaps 10 years ago. What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? The greatest shortcomings for American design are visibility in the culture at large, and it’s not the fault of our designers, or their work. Last year, at the first iteration of The Home Front, each event investigated American contemporary furniture design from different angles—retail, education, architecture, small business, and so on. It was easy for frustration to mount when it came time to criticizing American design. But no matter what direction a conversation started from, it always seemed to end up in the same place. Simply put, America today is not a fertile place for design. The educational system is outdated and underfunded, there’s little access to manufacturing, no general awareness of what contemporary design is or means in the consumer market, and there’s a pathetic amount of government support. It’s hard to champion contemporary design in a country that’s consistently getting older and more conservative demographically. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? We’re no longer a country that makes things. Instead, we’re a service-based economy. This has given to rise to the greatest level of income inequality since the 1920s. When you combine those two factors, design has been forced to cater only to the super-wealthy. This only compounds the problems of visibility. Great design, in a way, has been ghettoized to the country’s art galleries, cosmopolitan cities, and so forth. They don’t have

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much chance of selling their skills to corporate America any longer, so making precious artifacts for the so-called one percent is their only hope of survival. On top of that, our culture—with its disposability, mobility, and low consumer prices—is suppressing originality and experimentation. What is the future of American design? It’s impossible to predict the trajectory of something when there’s so little data with which to work. For a country of our size, an editor like myself should be finding an amazing new American design talent every month or so. Instead, I had to recently cancel an “American Design” issue at Surface. There just wasn’t enough new work out there that hadn’t been covered already. It’s getting harder and harder to find good work that can compete on a global level. But it’s not all gloom and doom. We can only go up from here, right? Dan Rubinstein began his career as an online editor during the dot-com boom for sites such as AOL and others, moving into print, beginning in the design department of House & Garden under the tutelage of design editor Mayer Rus for three years. Following that post, he spent time as a full-time freelance journalist for a variety of clients, including Oprah’s O at Home, before becoming the associate editor at the international contemporary design magazine Surface. Three years later, he took the top post as Editorin-Chief. The brand is now a part of the Interior Design Media Group, a division of Sandow Media. In addition to his duties at the magazine, Rubinstein is an active member of the contemporary design community as a freelance writer/editor, curator, and consultant. Rubinstein is the guest curator for The Home Front series at MAD.

Silva/Bradshaw Dyvel

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Silva / Bradshaw Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I wouldn’t say that there is any one place we look for design inspiration. Of course there is the internet with its well-curated blogs and random sources to find interesting imagery. And then there is the physical space we inhabit—New York. I’d say that somewhere between these two spaces, one tangible and one not, is where we get inspired. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? In our work, we strive for ideas that are simple but intelligent. We were once paid a compliment that lauded our work for being “simple, but not simplistic”. I’d say that that is our ideal. What role does technology play in your design process? We love technology. We use it and we find endless inspiration in it. With that said, we just bought a cutting mat and are really excited about it. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Sergio and I met in our freshman year at Pratt and we’ve had a very close working relationship ever since. There are times when I need to be told that what I am doing is stupid, and there are times that a bad idea becomes amazing when you look at it from another angle. In that sense, collaborating with someone is invaluable. How does location play a role in your practice? We just moved into an amazing space right on the water in Brooklyn. Immediately outside there is an active dry-dock, and beyond is an awesome view of the city, not to mention the fact that its really easy to receive McMaster-Carr shipments. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? As a studio we have shown internationally and we sell internationally. The internet has made the world smaller and we consume design from every corner of the globe, but it’s difficult to say how much that has influenced our approach as a practice beyond the obvious financial benefits. Silva / Bradshaw is a multi-disciplinary design studio founded in 2010 by artists/designers Matthew Bradshaw and Sergio Silva. Long time collaborators, they met while studying industrial design at New York’s Pratt Institute. From their studio in Brooklyn they design and produce conceptually driven objects, informed by a shared passion for technology and materials. Current projects include the design and branding of a restaurant, furniture for a high-end residential project, as well as a continuation of their already popular collection of simple jewelry pieces

Snarkitecture Dig

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Snarkitecture Where do you look for inspiration in your design? Much of our work takes familiar spaces, materials or objects and manipulates or reconfigures them to create something new. We aim to make architecture perform the unexpected. The way children interact with architecture and objects is also informative for us. Their curiosity and energy combined with the fact that everything they encounter in the adult world is two or three times the size it should be means they are continually inventing new ways to use space. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Not as a rule, but there are certain concepts we continue to explore or will return to. The idea of play is one that we think about a lot. What role does technology play in your design process? In terms of digital technology, we try to use it as a tool to increase the efficiency of the design process, but we are not interested in exploring digital form making. Our design concepts nearly always evolve from sitting around the ping pong table in our studio and discussing and drawing ideas, but programs such as Rhino will allow us to look at countless iterations of those concepts and different possibilities in a fraction of the time and cost it would take to produce physical models. Of course at a certain point the material studies, physical models and prototypes are essential to the process. In some projects, digital technology is nearly entirely absent and we instead rely on craft or primitive technology. For Dig, we filled the gallery of Storefront for Art and Architecture completely solid with EPS foam and Daniel then spent three weeks excavating a void within it using only picks and hammers. For our retail installation for the fashion designer Richard Chai, we used a similar strategy of solid and void, but every surface was cut entirely by hand using different types of custom hot wire tools. The first visitor to the space was an architect who wanted to know what script we had used to generate the forms. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Collaboration is an important part of our practice, starting from the basic concept of a collaboration between artist and architect. Our different backgrounds and approaches bring a range of ideas to the table that we then work together to filter into a coherent work. We also are continually interested in engaging other artists, architects and designers outside of our practice. We are very much interested in working across disciplines and our evolving practice has been engaged in areas such as theatrical design and performance.

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How does location play a role in your practice? In terms of our installation-based work, location plays a significant role given that many of our built works and proposals are very site specific. We are much more interested in the specificity of objects or materials than we are in location. For instance, our work may engage the drywall surface of a space, however the space itself is often less important. We often use the idea of reconfiguring or playing with the surrounding environment and architecture to create new moments. For this, the structure, materials and experience of the actual location are all taken into consideration. On the other hand, most of the objects we design are inherently siteless. I also see the location of our studio as important to our practice. We are based in a large building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that has the raw space required to be able to experiment with new ideas and fabricate work. It also provides enough of a remove from the city while still being able to access everything that makes New York a great city. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? It is playing an increasing role in bringing our work to a larger audience, but our practice and the work we make is rooted in the creative environment of our studio. Snarkitecture was established by Daniel Arsham and Alex Mustonen. Snarkitecture is a collaborative practice operating in territories between the disciplines of art and architecture. Working within existing spaces or in collaboration with other artists and designers, the practice focuses on the investigation of structure, material and program and how these elements can be manipulated to serve new and imaginative purposes. Searching for sites within architecture with the possibility for confusion or misuse, Snarkitecture aims to make architecture perform the unexpected.

Southern Design Concern Occasional Loveseat

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Southern Design Concern Where do you look for inspiration in your design? As a collective, we mostly work separately and then circle back to the group for feedback or support in exhibiting the work. Each of us has different design priorities, but we’re united in a shared appreciation of our context, in this collective, in 2012, and in this region. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? Along with the stereotypical Southern ideals of friendliness and hospitality, we like the scrappy, resourceful, self-reliant attitude we observe here. In addition, there’s a younger generation that exhibits a genuine interest in sustainability, prioritizing local businesses, technology, social consciousness, and a prevailing pride in craftsmanship. What role does technology play in your design process? Technology primarily plays a supportive role for our group; we only utilize it where it advances the cause at hand—not for its own sake. There are exceptions but it’s fair to say that most of us begin work with our hands and let that interaction drive the process. what is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? The reason we got together to begin with came from our desire to meet other designers from our region. We hoped that if we put the word out about our projects and those of our friends, we’d meet other interested designers and design enthusiasts. So far, it’s worked—the response has been great. How does location play a role in your practice? This is a major topic of discussion for our group. We’re at once fascinated by regionalism and vernacular and also skeptical. We wonder if the economic advantages of working in the South (cheaper cost of living, etc.) bring themselves to bear in any of our work; does that decreased financial burden free us up in other ways? What does it mean for us to be so far outside of the major design centers? What do we have to contribute to the broader design community? We’re currently trying to organize exhibition opportunities outside of the South to begin to answer these questions. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? It’s played a large role for us as observers and consumers of design. In many ways, we were inspired to start our collective thanks to the success of groups started by our peers in other parts of the world. Seeing their achievements has validated our own inclinations. Southern Design Concern is a collective of designers who are from or currently working in the American South. The group was founded in the fall of 2010 by Stephanie Aron, Matthew Alexander, Melissa Alexander, Kevin Byrd, Shelton Davis, Travis Ekmark, Collin Farill, Skylar Morgan, Steven Sloan, and Joshua Tuminella, with a mission to bring attention to the work of Southern designers.

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Brooks Hudson Thomas How would you define American design right now? Furthermore, what themes or prevailing styles do you see emerging? I think American Design is really interesting right now. I think of a term used by Marc Augé: Supermodernity. Both in the U.S. and internationally, artists and designers are free to mine history, only now that history includes movements like Memphis and PostModernism. Rather than the end of history, these movements proposed that there is actually a rapidly expanding creative inventiveness that fuels design. Historical themes and movements have made objects that everyone has seen and used. In the present, we can take or leave information with careful precision. The internet makes it possible for everyone to be exposed to more visual culture than at any time in the past. If Augé’s [Introduction to an Anthology of] Supermodernity describes a non-place, we have all been there before, and we can pull from it what we need to nourish and enrich our world and our work. We can make the world and connect to the world in remarkable new ways. The local is truly global. The efforts of contemporary designers and artists, whether actively or passively informed by this glut of information, are, I think, expanding into new territories and are breaking out of a “taste” uniform that had become prominent in the last 20 years. I think across the globe you see design, and production of objects looking at local materials (be that a political position or simply a financial necessity) that are both natural and synthetic. Materials, techniques, and concepts are manipulated with both traditional and technological methods to generate a new object. Technology assists the speed with which everything can be brought into the public consciousness. The paradox is that the same process that is allowing for invention, experimentation, and rapid integration into the expanding informational media is also responsible for the proliferation of homogeneity and reinforcing of prescribed notions of what is creative and what is new. I think that this push and pull of identity, class, and taste, coupled with play of borrowed historical themes and inventive styles, makes this an exciting time for design and art and the places where they overlap. Has the global nature of the design community had an affect on American design? Indeed, if there is an “effect” from globalization it is “affect” in design and art. I am always amazed how often one can see the same thing wherever one looks. The mass adherence to prescriptions of meaning and identity produced by design and art are nothing new, but are accelerated by the global nature of the media we consume. Fortunately, this is also matched in creative practice by attempts to invent or re-invent ways to generate objects that can confront and alter these affects with varying success. The work of making meaning inside of these cultural constructions is where new ideas are being made. This work is happening internally within the artist negotiating the world and in their individual studios. The work is projected to a broader audience than ever before because of the internet and most importantly because of blogs. Everyday, and even multiple times a day, somehow it is possible to see something new, not just in its novelty or literal first presentation, but something that has cracked open some kind of original territory from inside a previously closed system. It’s possible to see and to feel like you have never been “here” before.

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What strengths are you witnessing in American design? Conversely, what are some of the shortcomings? I’m not sure if this is a strength but I do think the overlap of design and art is particularly exciting right now. I am not sure if it is the economy or a return to previous movements that sought to analyze and propose new ways of living. Regardless, it feels like something new is happening in the way creative practice is producing objects that re-evaluate how something can be used or re-used and how something can function on multiple levels. If there is a shortcoming it is that there is too much of an emphasis on styles from the past used to imitate or recreate an older mode of meaning in response to contemporary problems. I am also skeptical of the focus on luxury. I appreciate finding luxury in unexpected ways that transcend class and signification of social ranking. Reverence for given notions of luxury and borrowed ideas of good taste produce the empty and soulless objects that we consume to self identify with a certain social class. What seems like a strength to me, is the artists and designers making objects in the space between their respective fields. Thinking differently about how an object is to be classified, how it is to function, and proposing new destinations for the objects they make seems exciting and more than a little thrilling to me right now. Discuss some of the differences you see between post-war American designers and contemporary American designers? The American artist and designer can produce objects of amazing complexity from an infinite variety of material and labor sources. Some of them can collaborate with one of dozens of companies dedicated to making good looking, functional, and meaningful design. Some of them have the opportunity to experiment with their ideas in gallery settings before ending up with a saleable product. The dedication and generous support of a few small dealers and collectors can pluck a special talent and can position their objects as the new, rarefied objects for an Elite hungry for new blood. Or the designer can set up their own shop, either “brick and mortar”, or more likely online. With a few press releases to the right blogs and a good design, their lives can change overnight. I think that post-war, mid century design is incredible on many levels. Like other idealistic movements of the past, its solutions to problems and embrace of new technology changed the way we look at our homes and our lifestyles. And, as in previous movements, what was proposed for the many ended up being for the privileged few. What did stick for everyone was the proliferation of what technology could produce cheaply and could be afforded by the masses. The original utopic objects and their reproductions became symbols of good taste and status for the elite. I mentioned earlier a distaste for prescribed notions of luxury. What I am not against is elitism.

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The work of many of the post-war designers has rightfully become the objects of speculation and investment that place them in a historical lineage of styles and details and techniques that rise to the top to represent a particular era. I think contemporary American designers benefit from this lineage and model of thinking. While I do notice a continued ambition to make affordable objects for the many, I think there is an unavoidable elitism that will be attached to the best of new contemporary design. Today, there are so many options for manufacturing and distribution of objects that when a designer makes a decision to have something made by hand, made locally, made with expensive materials, or made one at a time, economics change the destination of the product. There continues to be an embrace of technology that can be utilized to make good design more affordable, and use of expensive technologies that can produce rare and incredibly special objects. The economics of a thing made by hand in Brooklyn or Los Angeles or Portland often means a lead time of many weeks or months and labor and materials whose value would prohibit most consumers from enjoying the work in their homes. I think what the contemporary designer has that the elite mid-century designer didn’t have is affordable and lightning fast avenues for exposure and sales. I think that with this comes a new problem of being the next new thing or this week’s object for sale at a reduced price for a small (several hundred thousand), self-selecting group of consumers subscribed to this or that email list. That being said, I have faith that the best of these contemporary designers will continue to be acknowledged, supported, and buoyed to the top. What is the future of American design? I honestly don’t know. But I am working on it… Brooks Hudson Thomas is an artist and the proprietor of Specific Merchandise. Specific is a retail experiment and platform for promoting work by artists, designers, architects, and musicians. What started out as a storefront project space in Los Angeles has evolved into a program of temporary projects that have visited Joshua Tree, New York City and San Diego. Recent projects include curating work by ROLU & Welcome Projects, Adam Silverman, Scout Regalia, and Von Tundra into High Desert Test Sites, 2011, and a 6-month Pop-Up collaboration with Blaire Dessent & thevitrine.com called Product Porch at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Brooks earned his MFA at UCLA and has an ad-hoc-lowercase-mba from Crate & Barrel, Margo Leavin Gallery and Blackman Cruz. Brooks believes that corporations are not people and that all colors look great together.

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Thinking differently about how an object funtions seems more than a little thrilling to me right now. B

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Thaddeus Wolfe Assemblage vessels

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Thaddeus Wolfe Where do you look for inspiration in your design? I look at plants, rocks, shells, and other small objects that I find and save. I like to look at buildings, art, and illustrations in the New Yorker. Most inspiration for me is visual, but it can be something I read or music I hear. I am never really aware of the act of looking for inspiration. I think it just happens. My tastes filter out what I like or do not. Anything can be inspiring, but inspiration is a fleeting feeling, and whether any real ideas come from that feeling is rare. Most ideas come while working on something else, maybe even something unrelated. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? My theory is to make what interests me, and not think about it too much. I try to make things as perfect as possible, but to leave elements of roughness by not overworking the form. I try not to make the same thing over and over even if I am working in a series. What role does technology play in your design process? I have generally been a late adopter to most technology, and in turn, it has not been a big part of influencing what I do, nor is it a tool that I use to do what I do. The craft of glassblowing has not had many technological innovations in its two thousand year history. Of course the furnaces we now use have their temperatures regulated by computers, however the basic hand tools used to form the molten glass, have changed very little from those used from the beginning. I find some solace in this fact that the tools I use to shape the glass are the same basic tools that all glass, artisans have used throughout time. The particular tools that I use are all handmade by a few people in Italy and in Germany. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? I do not generally collaborate with anyone on the idea end of making things. However, in the process of blowing glass, there is an inevitable collaboration in each piece due to the fact that almost everything I make requires the help of at least one other person. This is simply the way that glass is made. Traditionally one works in small teams of glassblowers, with someone in charge (the master) and a few helpers (assistants). This is because it is nearly impossible to execute most pieces without the constant help of another set of hands. We call this â&#x20AC;&#x153;assistingâ&#x20AC;? but it really is a form of collaboration in most cases, especially when trying something new. I always work with the same few people, and have developed a great amount of trust in their physical abilities to help me, but more importantly, I often rely on their insights and thoughts as to the best way to complete a certain piece. I would think the same of networking with peersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it is very important to have some people you can trust to provide you with criticism of your work. This is how ideas progress.

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How does location play a role in your practice? Living and working in New York has been influential in so many ways in that it is an inexhaustible source of visual input, people, exhibitions, and culture in general. It has allowed me to apprentice under some great glassblowers and learn a great deal about the craft. This city has been very nurturing in that sense, but it is easy to starve here too. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? I benefit from being here in New York, where I can see in person, art and design from all over the world. But I would say that I have not been impacted much by the global nature of the design community, nor have I had much impact on it yet. Thaddeus Wolfe studied art and design with a focus in glass at the Cleveland Institute of Art where he received his BFA in 2002. He has held artist residencies at Pilchuck Glass School, the Creative Glass Center of America in New Jersey, and the Tacoma Glass Museum. His work has been exhibited in a solo show at Volume Gallery, as well as various group shows in New York at Heller Gallery, Matter, and Still House. Wolfe lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Philip Michael Wolfson Origami Mirror

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Philip Michael Wolfson Where do you look for inspiration in your design? We look primarily to the dynamics of movement. Whether it is a soundwave, vectorscope, topographical lines, or the movement of a drawn pencil line. Each series that I’m working on (i.e. ORIGAMI series, SOUNDFORM series, LINE series, etc.) has it’s own reference. As an architect by training, there is also the influence of scale and surrounding references, and how these can be manipulated. The way in which an architect approaches an examination of site and contextual influences is very much a part of my approach to each piece. Are there certain theories or ideals that your practice participates in or has developed? [We are most interested in] theories of dynamics and movement—how these fields of movement can be interpreted and “felt” in a concrete object. ORIGAMI – LINE – SOUND – FORM – D.LINE – LIQUID are all names given to the different series of works. The most recent works completed are the TSUKUMOGAMI which are a series of experimental studies using Concrete Canvas, a new material developed for emergency structures and industrial sites, with very compelling possibilities for sculptural work. “Tsukumogami” (artifact spirit) are a type of Japanese spirit—living inanimate objects. What role does technology play in your design process? In the creation process, there is always the decision as to which material is to be used, and in a number of works, we have found that certain fabricators with more advanced methods of working their material would be more able to carry out a particular design. With most of the designs, technology is a vital aspect of the actual creation process, in order that the work is achieved as desired. We rely on an array of specialized technicians and/or structural engineers to assess various aspects of each project and, with the carbon fiber pieces for example, to design internal structural systems needed to give these pieces the necessary strength that works with the carbon fibers. The initial inspirations to work with carbon fiber came from the material itself, in that the technology of what is possible with this material, led to the idea behind the LINE series, which is about works created by a pencil sketch of a line in motion. Carbon fiber is really the most appropriate material to achieve these works and one that allows for exciting possibilities. What is the importance of collaborating/networking with peers? Collaborating is not something we’ve really done that much of until recently when we worked on a dance/design/film project. This was a day at the Rambert Dance rehearsal studio in London, where a filmmaker (Maxim Nilov) shot one of the dancers/choreographers (Kirill Burlov) “responding” to one of my designs (Origami chair) with a soundtrack composed by a Swedish composer (Annelie Nederberg). The film has been presented at an exhibition with plans for a live performance. From this work, collaborations with dance, theatre, and music is an avenue that is exciting to follow and develop.

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How does location play a role in your practice? To date, location has been less important than the series of works being designed. It’s in the latest works, ANIMATED UNOBTAINIUMS — TSUKUMOGAMI, that the location determines the theoretical idea behind the design. The first is called the London Series 1, and explains the ideas behind the Tsukumogami, which is a spirit in Japanese folklore, of a household object that then takes on a living form after 99 years. These were meant to refer to the concrete paving slabs and construction pipeworks of London streets, infused with the Tsukumogami elements — buckets/stools/plates/cups/bowls/etc. How has the global nature of the design community played a role in your practice? One way is that we can have works fabricated in different countries. In regards to the presentation, the market in which we have been dealing has been a very international one — there might be a request to carry out a project in any number of different countries. We are just now finishing a large sculptural “bar” which has been commissioned by a London PR company, on behalf of a Scottish firm, owned by an international group based in France, for exhibition in China and Taiwan. Philip Michael Wolfson studied at the Cornell University School of Architecture in Ithaca, New York and the Architectural Association of London, England. After graduating, he worked for Zaha Hadid at the outset of her career, leading design teams on numerous projects, and establishing a strong collaboration with her office, which subsequently spanned some 20 years. Since setting up his own Practice in 1991, Wolfson has worked throughout Europe and the USA, predominantly on residential interiors and exhibition/gallery design pieces. His designs are radical and greatly inspired by the early experiments of the Russian and Italian Modernist movements. He combines a unique approach to design, as informed by the dynamics of fracture and fragmentation— layering and manipulating his materials into fluid shapes and forms, where shadow and reflection are an integral part of the seduction of the work. The exquisite use of noble materials, as well as new materials, brings dynamic elegance and an individual contemporary feeling that enhances his unique approach to his own design ideal.

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It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. W

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Lindsey Adams Adelman http://lindseyadelman.com

Felicia Ferrone http://fferronedesign.com

Burst Photo by: Joseph De Leo

Pika Pika mirror Photo by: Thea Dickman

Tanya Aguiñiga http://aguinigadesign.com

Patrick Gavin http://pgavin.com

Felt chairs Photo, courtesy of the Artist

Basic Boundaries Photo by: Patrick Gavin

Animal stools Photo, courtesy of the Artist Brian Anderson http://studioba.org Paradise II Photo by: Studio BA Rafael de Cárdenas http://architectureatlarge.com Unknown Union Photo by: Inge Prins Wendell Castle http://friedmanbenda.com Swivel coffee table (Molar Group) Photo, courtesy of Wright Isaac Chen http://isaac-chen.com Low table Photo by: Travis Roozee CMMNWLTH http://commonwealth.nu Seltanica light Photo by: Paul Barbera

Johanna Grawunder http://grawunder.com WESTON Photo, courtesy Galerie Italienne Sung Jang http://gregorysung.com Stool T Photo, courtesy of Wright Seth Keller http://sethkeller.net Monolith Photo by: Seth Keller Kiel Mead http://kielmead.com/ Cinder Blockw Photo by: Kiel Mead Driftwood hooks Photo by: Kiel Mead

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Moorhead & Moorhead http://moorheadandmoorhead.com

ROLU http://ro-lu.com

Design/Miami tent Photo by: Moorhead & Moorhead

After U.R. (a magnetic superbox) Photo by: Thea Dickman

Jonathan Muecke http://jonathanmuecke.com

Silva/Bradshaw http://www.silvabradshaw.com

Frame Photo by: Thea Dickman

Dyvel Photo, courtesy of the Artist

Jonathan Nesci http://hale-id.com

Snarkitecture http://snarkitecture.com/

Sol chair Photo by: Sam Macon

Dig Photo by: Snarkitecture

Object Design League http://o-d-l.us/

Southern Design Concern http://southerndesignconcern.com

Balloon Factory Photo by: ODL

Occasional loveseat by Chris Held Photo by: Steven Sloan

Charlie O’Geen http://nipcrete.com Removed material from 12527 Klinger Street Photo by: Paul-David Rearick

Thaddeus Wolfe http://thaddeuswolfe.com Assemblage vessels Photo by: Devin Ehrenfried

Parrish Rash & van Diesel http://parrishrash.com

Philip Michael Wolfson http://wolfsondesign.com

Hernan Diaz-Alonso Le Chaise Grotesque in process Photo by: PR&vD

Origami mirror Photo by: Maxim Nilov

Rich Brilliant Willing http://richbrilliantwilling.com 3.09 ft³ Photo by: Thea Dickman

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Special Thanks to Peter Blair Plural Meghan Maloney-Vinz Dan Rubinstein Jake Yuzna

Design by Plural Plural is a Chicago-based creative studio practice. With a focus on pursuing meaningful projects, Plural explores new approaches within the design process, experimenting in a wide range of media including print, web, video, sound, interactive and installation.

Founded in 2008 by Jeremiah Chiu and Renata Graw, Plural collaborates with various cultural and educational institutions, artists, and musicians including DePaul Art Museum, the S達o Paulo Art Biennal, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Public Media Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago, Volume Gallery, Classic Color, Ether Feather Records, K7! Records, and Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Collectively they have received recognition by the Art Directors Club, AIGA, The Type Directors Club, Communication Arts Design Annual, Print magazine, How magazine, Creative Review, Gallery Magazine / HK, Taiwan DPI magazine, and The Society of Typographic Arts, among others.

http://weareplural.com

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